Completed Mixed-Media Piece: 'Fridge 3'

'Fridge 3', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Screen-Print, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,
Misc. Solvents & Magnetic Letters On Fridge Door, 81 cm X 49 cm, 2017

I seem to be on an increasing roll, as 2017 draws to its disillusioned conclusion.  That’s only as it should be really.  It’s been a year of dismay on a global scale, during which it often felt like the species has finally lost the plot altogether - plus one in which my own individual progress also felt distinctly sluggish at times.  If you chuck in the various episodes of illness and bereavement afflicting those close to me, then 2017 can just go and ‘do one’, as far as I’m concerned.

So, if more seems to be reaching a conclusion creatively, as the turn of the calendar year approaches – that must surely provide a glimmer of hope for better things in 2018.  Of course, I know that reality doesn’t really order itself thus, and that life, if not completely random - plays out in far less orderly cycles.  Nevertheless, having always been somewhat seasonally affected, the darkest, shortest days often feel like a natural time to evaluate and regroup to me.  The post-Christmas hangover is often a period in which I take a deep breath, and the New Year – one in which, like many others, I try to put my best foot forward once more.

Either way, it’s pleasing to draw a line under the third in my ‘Fridge’ pieces (shown here), and doubly so - to keep tripping over the numerous freshly prepared fridge doors currently littering my living space, and awaiting yet more imagery.  I always love that feeling of having done all the preparatory donkeywork, and of there being nothing left but to just get on with it.  With the meat of the educational break still ahead of me, the timing feels particularly apposite just now.  There’s just no reason not to hit 2018 running.

In terms of specifics, ‘Fridge 3’ follows the same basic blueprint laid down in ‘1’ & ‘2’.  It brings together onto its salvaged substrate, my by-now customary mélange of paint and collaged multi-media coupled with screen-printed elements - and focuses primarily on the motif of discarded laughing gas capsules, alluded to in ‘2’.  The text – picked out in magnetic letters once more, is another excerpt from my ‘Below the Line / Beneath Contempt’ text [1.].  If this one seems a little more cynical or brusque – well perhaps that just reflects the (in)toxic(ated) nature of much of the online debate which seeded that piece [2.].

[1.]:  Actually in 'Act 5' - to be posted shortly.

[2.]:  A cursory dip into that text ought to assure my employer that the phrase is unrelated in context to my day job, and has no bearing on my attitude towards our own young ‘customers’.