Rural Retreat ('Run Away')

All Images: Washingborough, Lincolnshire, December 2015

The remaining Christmas leftovers are being turned into soup and the wrapping paper being consigned to the recycling bin.  The festive period, (and indeed - the year), reaches its culmination, as I write.

As in recent years, I spent a few days over Christmas itself, at my Mother’s home on the outskirts of Lincoln, where I grew up.  It’s normally been my habit to spend a little time wandering the streets of my old hometown, camera in hand, if only as an aid to digestion, but I didn’t really find time to do that this year.  Instead, snatching a brief window of respite between the seemingly endless procession of deluges, I made do with a brief turn around, Washingborough, the village my Mum and Stepdad inhabit.

Washingborough is a combination of dormitory and retirement home, and lies in clear view of the city - just a few miles distant, across the River Witham.  It’s a pleasant enough spot, and I’m sure, a perfectly comfortable place to grow old.  Sadly though, I can’t pretend I find much sensory or intellectual stimulation there.  Indeed, spending time in such placid places makes me realise just how reliant my own creative sensibilities have become on the sharp edges, stimulating frictions and perpetual churn of urban life.  These days, it feels distinctly odd to walk past walls devoid of graffiti or illuminated signage, or to find myself not negotiating a complex architectural and psychological labyrinth, by whatever means.

Anyway, creative activity shouldn’t be about stubbornly revisiting the same old sources with potentially diminishing returns.  It’s important to work the visual and mental muscles a little harder sometimes, in search of what stimulation may actually be hidden beneath the surface of superficially less interesting environments.  As this handful of images prove, there’s always something there, even if you have to work harder, or zoom in a little closer, to find it.

As it turned out, what I eventually found was actually more of the same kind of stuff I might easily have found in Leicester, Nottingham or Birmingham, albeit in smaller, more marginal pockets.  Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these images derive from the site of a disused, partially redeveloped railway house and adjacent river wharf, at the very edge of the village.  It can be no accident that the location that drew my lens is one characterised by marginality, liminality and functional transition.  I can’t help noting that it also marks a way out of Washingborough, (and potentially back to town), via the alternative route of the waterway, and the cycle path, (now replacing the decommissioned railway line), that runs alongside.

I suppose you could argue this is just another example of my resort to a familiar, (anti-) picturesque aesthetic, and that the truly creative path might have been to find ways of engaging with less customary subject matter, - to interact with the environment on its, rather than my, own terms.  But I’m just not ready to become a Ruralist, I’m afraid.  On the day, in a world of mellow stonework, mud and tweety birds [1.], the discovery of some fragments of graffiti, evidence of a lost notice, the repeat-patterns of metal grid work, some whited-out windows, and the inevitable hazard stripes, felt like small triumphs.

Actually, I suspect the real resonance may have derived from the juxtaposition of the two sensibilities, or perhaps from the realisation that the ideas of ‘Urban’ and ‘Rural’ (more Sub-Rural here, to be honest), are essentially artificial constructs.  That is equally represented by the possibly misleading premise on which I began this post.  The British may remain resolutely wedded to the idea of the pretty rural village, but in an island so tightly packed, and long since industrialised, (and now, increasingly de-industrialised), this can be seen as artificially fictional a vision as any born from the city.  Indeed, the reality of Washingborough is actually one of a situation only just beyond the city boundary, connected by easily accessible roads and high-speed broadband, in which the Lord of the Manor’s Hall is now a hotel, and the original core of the village adjoins a much larger, mid-twentieth century housing estate.

The hour I spent taking these shots, (and the subsequent hour spent reflecting on them whilst writing this), remind me that, for all my habitual focus on a contained urban milieu, and the contrasting, persistent British reverie of an imagined Arcadia beyond the city walls, it’s at the points where one bleeds into the other that the reality of our contemporary experience often really lies.

Anyway, philosophising aside, the real point of this post is really about the happy acceptance that my own creative process/practice runs as a continuous narrative, even if  only in the background or in less promising situations, (or via admittedly, fairly standard motifs).  I couldn't turn it off now, even if I wanted to.  That’s not such a bad spirit in which to step into another year.

Happy New Year…

[1.]:  Please don't think I'm opposed to tweety birds.  My own city-centre back yard currently boasts four bird feeders and is regularly visited by mobs of greedy Tits and Finches.  It's a bit like an ornithological McDonalds, I suspect.

'I'm Dreaming Of A Grey Christmas...'

Merry Christmas, - Bleak, Grey Imagery Fans.  

Central Leicester, November 2015

All joking aside, I'm feeling surprisingly festive this year, despite the sodden weather and general mood of foreboding.  I hope you are too.

Completed Studies (Good Intentions)

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink, Spray Enamel & Pencil On Paper,
30 cm X 30 cm, 2015

This post features four more of my recently produced, small-scale ‘studies’ on paper.  (Are these technically ‘studies’ in the traditional sense? – I’m never quite sure if that’s the correct term for them.  Whatever, - it’ll do for now).

It’s definitely been a slightly disjointed year artistically, broken rather neatly into two halves around June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition.  If the first half was all about the intensity of producing the ‘MM’ work, and just meeting the deadline generally, the second has, felt like something of a bit of a creative recovery phase, with nothing like the same intensity of output.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink & Spray Enamel On Paper,
30 cm X 30 cm, 2015

That’s not to say I haven’t been engaged during that whole time, what with the commissioned piece produced for my workplace taking up much of the late summer and early autumn.  Nevertheless, things have just felt a little more disparate and less urgent, overall, - certainly in terms of work produced purely for its own sake.  That's partly due to my decision to draw a conscious line under ‘Mental Mapping’, and to move things in a new direction.  It may actually resemble more of an evolution than a revolution, but my thoughts are definitely in a slightly different space.  Unlike that phase of work, I've opted to eschew any clearly defined set of pre-defined parameters, or thematic banner, up until now, and to just let whatever might emerge do so in a more organic manner.  An obvious consequence o has been a certain amount of ‘casting around’, considering options and general reflection, often without too much evidence of overly-urgent action.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink & Spray Enamel On Paper,
13 cm X 13 cm, 2015

Thankfully, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m much better at accepting this kind of ebb and flow as an intrinsic part of ‘the creative process’ these days.  I no longer aspire to unachievable standards, and can happily accept that if work isn’t in full flow, it doesn’t mean I’ve dried up altogether, or am ‘just no good at it’.  If a dozen of these small works on paper (and a larger archive of related photographs) seem like a relatively modest haul over two or three months, so be it.  Each has actually been fairly intensively worked on, and often went through several earlier stages before reaching their final state.  More importantly, they do seem to point the way forward, both thematically, and in terms of possible working strategies, which was always a large part of their intended function.

'Untitled', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink & Spray Enamel On Paper,
30 cm X 30 cm, 2015

Here then, in no particular order, is a list of my current thoughts about them and what may follow.  These seem to be coalescing into a kind of thematic framework that I’m happy to move forward within over coming months, and to include a number of specific intentions as regards more developed work to be attempted in 2016...

Central Nottingham, October 2015

• As usual, when not sure of my next move, I have trekked into the urban jungle with my camera, in search of resonant imagery, (a few more examples of which I’ve included here).  Whilst open to new stimuli, I find it’s still primarily walls, surfaces and various species of texts that draw my gaze.  I also find that the subjects that really fascinate me just now are the grungier, more eroded, damaged ones.  Texts are of most interest when they fail or break down.

Deritend, Birmingham, May 2013

• Following my lens intuitively, I have quickly found my images beginning to organise themselves into several identifiable subject categories.  These include: erased or cancelled signage and graffiti; examples of things being painted out or obliterated; cleaner 'ghost patches', and borders of tape residue where posters or signs have disappeared; the squiggles and dots of failed mastic that also once fixed lost signage; white-washed windows in vacant or abandoned buildings; other examples of windows blinded by grilles, screens, boards or barricades; and examples of general erosion, weathering, damage and entropy, (no real surprise, - I've been drawn to many of these things for a long time now). 

• All of this imagery starts to inform, more or less consciously, the small paper based ‘studies’ of recent weeks.  For the most part, I try to avoid drawing too specifically to any single photo-reference, but allusions to many of the above motifs seem to creep in to what are still nominally abstract statements.  One exception is a particular ‘clean ghost’ patch, which remained before me as I worked on one of the previously highlighted studies.

Central Leicester, November 2015

• This latter feels like something that could provide the basis for a small series of more resolved paintings, utilising the idea of variation within a repeated symbol, (that has just started, in fact).  I love the idea of such sparse, nuanced formality, and of a subject that is essentially ‘no longer there’.

Lace Market, Nottingham, April 2014

• Another possible series of closely related pieces might derive from the subject of whited-out windows.  These are a familiar sight, and one that represent a routine form of cancellation.  Despite their ad hoc functionality, each is subtly different from the last, displaying a wide variety of gestural wipes, accidents, clear gaps, hand prints and comedic doodles.  The reflections of the outside world that augment them add an important extra dimension to their nominal blankness, as do the glimpses of interior space beyond, (and the interaction between them).  Would it be rewarding to experiment with pieces actually painted onto glass, or another impermeable substrate, in order to take account of some of this, I wonder?

Central Leicester, October 2015

• This process of subject categorisation also makes me contemplate the possibility of presenting photographs as final statements in their own right.  Would it be desirable/feasible to produce a series of artist’s photo-book(lets), I wonder?  Ed Ruscha would be an obvious precursor of such a form, although many others have utilised it too.  Possible series might include the afore-mentioned windows, a more general category of ‘absences and cancellations’, or (slightly tangentially), empty, flattened cardboard boxes.

Central Leicester, October 2015

• That last one is a subject that has fascinated me for a while, and which feels slightly separate and yet somehow related to all this other stuff.  I realise this is because the general themes that seem to over-arch all of this include: absence, vacancy, disappearance, lost voices, messages and meanings, abandonment, loss, emptying out, cancellation, removal and erasure.  Flattened boxes clearly allude to a loss of content, in a rather poignant but deliciously formal way.   Overall, it’s more accurate to say that what really seem important are the clues and allusions to those states, possibly still in process.  I'm not introduced in these ideas as absolutes or in conceptual purity at this stage.  Ragged ghosts, messy vestiges and shreds of vanishing evidence seem key here.

North Leicester, July 2009

North Leicester, November 2015

• Perhaps it’s appropriate that my current chosen palette appears to be fairly neutral, - verging on monochrome.  Hightened colour feels like something else that is being drained out of my work for the time being.  Could this also be a reaction against the artificial colour that partly characterised my ‘Map’ paintings and (even more so), my recent school commission?  Perhaps sometimes you just need to rest and recalibrate your eyes.

North Leicester, November 2015

• Could it also be that this chromatic desaturation also reflects a somewhat depressed or alienated mood within much of this imagery?  Rather than simplistically ‘depressed’, perhaps I’d prefer to see in it as a partial reaction to some of the nihilism and pre-apocalyptic gloom that seems to permeate so much of the society and wider world around us just now, (at least as it’s reported).  If there’s a suggestion of fear for one’s own obliteration in there, I’d have to say that starting to pick up the pace of work again, and making these little studies specifically, feels like a profoundly positive, even cheerful act.  I don’t see my art as therapeutic exactly, - but, you know.

• If that sounds somewhat psycho-personal, more theoretically, it's probably the case that the impulse behind this new phase is a little more more 'Hauntological' than 'Psychogeographic' [1], (as before).   These motifs (and emotions) feel more generalised and less tied to specific locations.  These oft-used but inexactly defined terms are open to interpretation, (this isn't really the place), and there is a considerable overlap between them.  If both deal to some extent with the relationship between situations and past events, there is an important element of Hauntology that seems to dwell on the loss of potential; of futures or utopian aspirations snuffed-out.  It would be foolish to ignore it's Marxist origins, but more generally, it can be seen as an attempt to rationalise disappointment, on various levels, I believe [2].

Central Leicester, October 2015

Central Leicester, October 2015

• Something else that becomes evident within the small studies is a slight increase of gestural painterliness.  We’re possibly talking fine margins, (and an element of hybridised collage remains within my M.O.), but there is an increased reliance on various, sometimes incompatible, fluid media.  Deliberately, even willfully, careless application methods come somewhat to the fore too, along with a prioritizing of accumulated accidents over more methodical, layered construction of a composition.  We’re probably some distance from ‘your actual’ Expressionism, but this slight freeing-up feels refreshing.

North Leicester, October 2015

• It's always been my intention that these studies might stand alone as resolved pieces, but could also be recycled as raw material for works in other media.  It’s certainly my intention to scan or photograph them for further digital processing, physical reconfiguration or, ultimately, as the basis for larger-scale paintings or a move into various print media.  It’s hard to predict exactly how this might go, but a process of open-ended exploration, through both new and old media, feels like a definite ambition. This is clearly inspired by the example of Christopher Wool, Jacqueline Humphries, et al, which I absorbed in Tate Modern’s thought-provoking 'Painting After Technology’ display, in May.

Central Leicester, October 2015

• Oh, - and I aspire to doing some more work with video in the not too distant future too.  There’s always to option to make self-contained video work, but would it be feasible to combine paintings with moving imagery also, I wonder?  I was intrigued by Fiona Banner’s use of projected over printed imagery at her ‘Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling’ exhibition in Birmingham and wonder if it might be possible to project fleeting, sporadic moving elements onto static paintings.  Hmmm…

Central Birmingham, January 2013

If I’m honest, this whole agenda may be as much for my benefit as yours.  It’s essentially a case of me thinking aloud, and could possibly have just remained in a sketchbook, I suppose.  Hopefully, it does more than merely ‘let light in on magic’, and also gives some useful insight into creative thought processes though.  Perhaps there’s also an element of making a public statement I can try to live up to.  Of course, it’s probably all far too ambitious to be wholly achievable, and you wouldn’t want things to be too predictably nailed down or rigidly planned in reality. I’ve tried this before too, with my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’, only to fail to really follow through.  Nevertheless, regardless of how many of these proposals actually see the light of day, or become replaced by completely different ones, it doesn’t hurt to set a few goals and working parameters to be going on with.

Central Leicester, May 2010

As I write, the year is pivoting around the shortest day and we’ll soon be celebrating the New Year.  It feels like the perfect time to be laying plans and (hopefully), gearing up for a renewed surge of creative activity.



[1.]:  Although I've referred to it before, (more than once), for a useful overview of the traditions and conceptual framework of Psychogeography, I still recommend:
Merlin Coverley, 'Psychogeography', Harpenden, Pocket Essentials, 2010

[2.]:  Those keen to know more about the ideas behind Hauntology, specifically within a Pop-cultural and Socio-political context, could do worse than dipping into:
Mark Fisher, 'Ghosts Of My Life: Writings On Depression, Hauntology And Lost Futures', Arlesford, Hants, Zero Books, 2014