Completed Painting: 'Vestige 2'

'Vestige 2', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, Ink, Spray Enamel & Misc. Solvents On Panel,
60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

By the standards of my own habitually slow-but-steady work rate, and the necessary hours and energy spent earning a living, two paintings a month is pretty good going for me.  Thus, it is with some satisfaction that I can reveal the second ‘proper’ painting I managed to complete in January.  It does feel like my stated desire to push on with a little more urgency again is starting to bear fruit.  After a relatively placid few months, and an ongoing period of making mental connections, sifting ideas, and laying putative plans, I seem to be getting my creative ducks into some kind of orderly row.  The appearance of the first tangible artifacts is always an exciting stage in a new phase of work, and one that signifies that the boulder is at least now rolling - hopefully to pick up further momentum in the coming months.

'Vestige 2', (Detail)

'Vestige 2', (Detail)

Anyway, ‘Vestige 2’ is, predictably enough, the second in what I hope will become a substantial series of related paintings - all utilising the same, basic, empty-rectangle-motif-within-a-square format.  I’ve already discussed the origins and possible associations of these clean patches or ‘ghost spaces’ as I’m already, rather portentously starting to think of them, - and there’s little more to add to my initial thoughts at this stage.

 

'Vestige 1', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish &
Misc. Solvents On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

In terms of general appearance, - ‘2’, clearly picks up where ‘1’ left off, although it did actually resemble a rather different painting in the earlier stages of its slightly uncooperative gestation.  Whilst it’s pleasing to have wrestled this one into some form of submission, it does feel important that the series should display slightly more variation as it progresses - if only to avoid mindlessly producing fifty shades of mid grey.  ‘The same - but different’ is a key concept with these - as already outlined, providing ‘but different’ is given equal weight across the whole piece.  With future paintings, it may be necessary to deliberately hold back a little, to allow certain paintings' awkward earlier stages to stand, or to resist my habit of tightening all the nuts and bolts - to enable this.

North Leicester, November 2015

Sneinton Market, Nottingham, April 2014

For now, there is at least some subtle evolution in the final appearance of ‘2’, and, if nothing else – a recognition that, when observed on the street, these ghostly rectangles, signifying obsolete missives and lost meanings, are marked by frames of tape residue, as often as by closed fields. Whilst the general range of techniques employed is pretty much as before, I think it’s fair to say there’s slightly more variation in the nature of marks made here, and that whispers of vestigial text are rather more in evidence. 

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

It's also fairly obvious that the final painting is pretty closely related to another of the small, paper-based studies that I made before the turn of the year.  Those have proved a pretty useful tool in kicking things off in 2016, although I imagine future steps in this particular series may take their inspiration as much from certain photographic references, or simply evolve out of each other, as things unfold.   

'Vestige 2', (Detail)

Mostly, I just want to just crack on with the next one as soon as possible.  Indeed, there’s a panel, all assembled and sanded, in the back bedroom - as I write.  There are also various other related project strands I want to get moving in the coming weeks, so it’s possible that two more of these in February may be a little ambitious.  However, if ‘two’s a couple’, three is definitely a series - and one which hopefully will have become self-perpetuating by the end of February.

'Vestige 2', (Detail)