Tuesday 27 August 2013

Belgrave Gate Project 6: Completed Paintings - 'Cave Wall 1, 2 & 3'


'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel. 60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

I’m not sure which is more dispiriting really, - the fact that the six-week academic summer break is over, or the sense that I didn’t really make sufficient constructive use of it this year.  I seem to have been plagued with various distracting minor ailments and a general lack of energy but, thankfully, things did improve towards the end.  I feel doubly guilty, as it’s a luxury that many working folk can’t enjoy and a long, unbroken period of (theoretically) creative time that many other amateur artists would envy.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel. 60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

One big plus is that I did complete the set of three related paintings I’ve had in hand for far too many weeks.  Another is that, whilst lacking some motivation generally, at no point did I lose belief in the essential ideas I was engaged with.  I’m not sure if the paintings are completely successful, but they do hint at some possible ways forward.  I’m already thinking about my next move(s) and that can only be good.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 3', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel. 60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

‘Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 1’, ‘2’, & ‘3’ are closely related in both composition and themes.  I’ve already written about the source subject and basic premise behind them so won’t repeat myself about all that now.  Anyone perplexed by the inclusion of certain vulgar motifs would do well to read my previous post on the subject.


Burley's Flyover, Leicester, 2013

What they do represent is a more organic approach to developing an idea than before.  Previously, I’ve tended to produce paintings from highly finished sketchbook studies, having already solved most of the formal problems up front.  This time, the paintings (in tandem with on-going small studies), represent more of development process themselves.  My previous multi-panel projects have been planned as a single statement in several pieces designed to hang together.  These three act rather as experimental variations on a theme that could easily hang separately.


Burley's Flyover, Leicester, 2013

At 60 cm X 60 cm the panels are three fifths of the scale I’ve often painted at.  If I mistakenly thought this would help me to work faster, it really just proved that working on a smaller, more congested scale can have quite the opposite effect.  If they do point towards a more definitive resolution of their themes (as I suspect is the case), it would definitely be larger.  Certainly, the original subject does suggest a greater sense of environment through scale.


'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 1' (Detail), Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 2013

The real challenge of these paintings was my continuing attempt to incorporate passages of representational imagery as distinct layers of meaning into compositions based on text characters and abstract elements.  This began with my previous ‘Belgrave Gate Project’ Painting (‘Belgrave Gate: Yours 1’), and will, I think, continue to distinguish future attempts under the same banner.  How to achieve this is probably the biggest conundrum I face at the moment.  Certainly, each ‘Cave Wall’ plays with a different mode of depiction in their illusionistic background passages.  The one that pleases me least is the first, with its rather leaden attempt at ‘straight’ realism.  Further exploration of different, (possibly photographically derived), modes of depiction seems to be required.


'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 2' (Detail), Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 2013
Another feature worth noting is a moderate heightening of colour palette as the three panels progressed.  It’s necessary to look past the vivid top layers of ‘Paleolithic’ motifs to really appreciate this but it reinforces my conviction that the synthesis of impressions felt in a given situation is best achieved by abandoning excessive realism and certainly, local colour.  Wherever they may sit within the triangle of abstraction, representation and conceptualism, it’s important to me that my paintings should remain highly artificial constructs.


'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 3' (Detail), Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 2013
Despite this, I’m undecided how well that almost arbitrary top layer of artificial motifs really works in pictorial terms.  On reflection, I now realise that it’s partially influenced by Gerhard Richter’s strategy of smearing paint directly onto photographs, or images painted in a completely different manner, to create a tension between alternative visual ‘realities’.  I remain fascinated by that idea but also suspect I may have replaced his spontaneity of gesture (in both senses), with excessive deliberation and an attempt to keep too many plates spinning at once.  The incorporation of this floating layer and the text elements subsumed into the formal layer below, (plus the illusionistic passages), may just mean that far too much is going on.  Perhaps an either/or approach would make more sense here.


Gerhard Richter, 'Ohne Titel (9 Nov 1999)', Oil On Photograph, 1999
Gerhard Richter, 'Ohne Titel (9 Nov 1999)', Oil On Photograph, 1989

So, plenty to think about but then these paintings were always intended as something of a test bed.  They are successful in that respect if no other.




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