Belgrave Gate Project 9: Completed Painting - 'Festival Of Lights 1'

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2014

This recently completed painting, ‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’, is the latest component of my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’.  I had hoped it would be the last significant piece of 2013 but found myself still working on it, (with a wee dram at my elbow), as the fireworks were launched at the turn of the year.  A few hours later it was finished and so is, technically, the first significant piece of 2014.  Either way, it was pleasing to complete a painting that, whilst involving plenty of work, had come together reasonably quickly by my standards.  It is essentially a fairly straight full-scale translation of a well-developed sketchbook study; a procedure that has worked well enough for me in recent times.

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Sketchbook Study,
Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 2013

If I’m honest, I find the most enjoyable stage in any painting usually comes around three quarters of the way through.  At that stage, the major components will usually be well established, (I tend to ‘build’ my paintings in a fairly methodical fashion), many significant pictorial problems will have been resolved, and I can usually get a reasonable sense of how successful, (or otherwise), it will be.  There also tends to be a certain provisional freshness that is nearly always diminished as the final nuts and bolts are tightened.  I’ve often thought the best painters are the ones who let their paint do just enough and no more, or are unafraid to leave passages of a painting unresolved, providing an overall conclusion has been reached.  It’s never really been my own M.O. but maybe it takes thousands of hours of doing too much before one can learn to do just enough.

For now though, I can take considerable satisfaction from seeing a painting through to completion after so many earlier years of false starts and projects abandoned through lack of perseverance or belief.  I no longer get too bogged down in ‘the struggle’, as I once did, instead taking the view that, if a particular painting isn’t wholly successful, - perhaps the next one will be better.

‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’ picks up where the previous ‘BelgraveGate’ paintings left off.  It’s becoming clear that part of the agenda for these pieces is the attempt to integrate representational passages with more abstracted or textual elements.  At root, I think this is a reflection of their origins within a specific physical location, and the fact that the photographic sources on which they rely include recessional space, rather than the surface-emphasis that has usually informed much of my work.  Put simply, they are based on observed 'scenes'.

'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2013

On a slightly more abstruse level, I’ve also become increasingly engaged with the potential of a painting to employ contrasting modes of depiction self-reflexively, within the same image.  Authenticity is of relatively little interest right now and these paintings represent, as ever, a search for subjective synthesis.  However, it is my belief that this approach does reflect my actual experience of specific environments such as my chosen tract of inner Leicester.  If my initial apprehension of such a place is a general visual impression, immersion within it, (often focusing on specific details), reveals multiple strands of meaning and association.  I find the act of ‘being’ on site for any length of time, (or on repeated occasions), releases numerous sensations and as a result, a complex web of thoughts and feelings that radiate out in different directions.  It’s the opposite of finding the singular ‘essence’ of a subject but, rather, a desire to account for the complexity, dynamism and transitions prevailing within a modern city.

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

Where this painting does differ from the small ‘Belgrave Gate:Cave Wall’ paintings that preceded it, is in being something of a simplification, formally.  If they ultimately felt visually over-cluttered by too many layers of meaning, this one relies more simply on a single subject image featuring the conjunction of Belgrave Gate, Burleys Flyover and the roundabout junction beneath it.  The entire composition, including the strong central traffic lights in the foreground, is based directly upon this original source which plays a more important role than ever before.  The main textual and semiotic components, while relatively bold, are pushed back into the background, (where they are incorporated by colour and tone into an implied sky), or float insubstantially over a middle ground that feels like it could be receding behind the traffic lights.  The inclusion of words in my images remains as important as ever, despite playing second fiddle to an overall illusion here.  

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

Divali Lights, Belgrave Road (Looking Towards 
Belgrave Gate), Leicester, 2013

The subject of ‘Festival Of Lights’ is a pretty clear reference to the traffic signals that chop and dice the flow of traffic on both of the Belgrave Gate roundabouts, and, even more famously, along the stretch of Belgrave Road extending in the direction of the painting’s direction arrow in its blue roundel.  That ‘Golden Mile’ might be so-named for the numerous Asian-owned jewelers or the endless parade of lights that seem to be perpetually turning amber, (in the folklore of local drivers).  It's also the site of Leicester’s famous Divali celebrations, (the Hindu Festival of Lights), and during the painting’s preparatory stages my daily commutes were illuminated by the elaborate decorative lights that festoon the route each year.  Belgrave Road itself is beyond the scope of my current project but the intermediate nature of Belgrave Gate makes it feels like a bridge to both that main artery and the South Asian cultural zone surrounding it.

Despite all this, the painting itself appears to be bathed in daylight.  This is actually a legacy of the original image, taken on a brilliant, windy day in early 2013 when the whole world seemed to flicker in a rather different kind of light-fest.  It’s also worth noting the red linear elements in the extreme lower foreground.  Whilst initially deriving from the pattern of white line road markings, their red colour now also implies the brake light trails of vehicles that habitually decelerate towards the junction.  They also supply a much-needed element of artificiality to a colour palette that was in danger of becoming just a little too naturalistic.

It’s too early to really judge the success of this painting but I’m happy enough with it for now overall.  Whilst it employs the kind of half-painting/half-collage techniques with which I’ve become pretty comfortable, the real issues it raises are around the efficacy of the representational modes employed.  I’m not unhappy with the decision to combine a variety of muted impressionism, (in the background architecture), with a looser brand of ‘painterly collage’ to depict passages of foliage.  I’m slightly less content with my handling of a kind of ‘straight’ illustrative style in the traffic lights and advancing flyover, (although, again, not actually with the decision to employ it).  If anything, this is just a reminder of how long it is since I seriously tried to engage with representational painting.  I can’t pretend that this painting wasn’t influenced to some extent by the work of Hurvin Anderson that impressed me so much at Birmingham’s Ikon last year.  A look back at that exhibition's catalogue reveals just how much work remains to be done.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

Still, - no one ever promised me this stuff was easy…