Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 7'

'Untitled (From The New School) 7', Acrylics On Panel, 30 cm X 30 cm X 10.6 cm, 2018

I've seemingly entered a phase of creative 'bitting and bobbing' since the conclusion of the 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island' exhibition, in Nottingham, at the end of September.  It's perhaps to be expected - given that the show represented the culmination of an extended and concerted period of concentration on one specific body of my work, under the banner of 'This S(c)eptic Isle'.  The processing of implications in the aftermath of that is ongoing - and as is concerned with how my practice might situate itself within the world, as it is with the specific work itself.  The former boils down to questions about what I actually want from all this (or even from the next few years of my life), but I'm disinclined to rehearse yet more self-indulgent internal debate just now.  Here's some new work, instead.

While I catch my breath - I'm also resting my eyes and brain from cardboard boxes, flags and fridges, for a short while at least.  It's nice to just freewheel for a spell, and to drop back onto one or two other pre-existing projects, free of deadlines and organisational admin.  One such project is my ongoing series of 'From The New School' paintings, to which I've added two new pieces in the last month.  This is the first.

Andrew Smith, 'The New School', Acrylic & Digital Print On Canvas, 2016

Regular visitors with long memories may remember that these small panels - each constructed around a common compositional motif, derive from a painting, 'The New School' - made by my friend and co-conspirator, Andrew Smith, in 2016.  We had actually been discussing a potential project in which each might reinterpret or actively disrupt the work of the other, prior to first encountering his small canvas at that year’s ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition (another three-hander, with Shaun Morris – as was ‘VOAFFI’).  I fell in love with it immediately, both for its spare Modernist geometry, and for the numerous associations it (and its delightfully allusive title) triggered with my own employment in the field of secondary education.

My role, as a member of school Support Staff, affords me the partial luxury of being an observer of the educational scene - at least more than were I an actual teacher.  Nevertheless, it's still impossible not to be aware of, or affected by, the continual upheavals, both structural and ideological, impacting on education, in recent years.  The reality is probably that it's always been the case, and that the interminable wrangle over what is actually taught - as well as how, and why, may be one of the only true constants within education.  That's before getting to grips with how it might be organised, overseen, and funded.

Whatever the truth, my response to Andrew's image quickly coalesced in my mind as an indefinite series of re-imaginings of the same standardised motif, with each change in mood, style or handling reflecting a different interpretation of at least some of the above.  That fits neatly into my customary practice of working in series, whilst also being perhaps my most overt example of painting in a quasi-conceptual kind of mode.  This notion of painting as a somewhat meta activity - in which different approaches or methods of handling are applied in a deliberate and knowing manner, continues to intrigue me - even if recent fashions may have tended away from the ironic, to some degree.  However, whilst it may privilege concept over expression,  this approach doesn't preclude the delicious paradox of applying a degree of Expressionism, as a conscious tool.  'Untitled (From The New School) 7', is starting off in that direction, I feel. 

For the reality is, this one's as much about the stress-related emotional crisis experienced of late, by a close work colleague, and friend - as it is about the institutional factors which may have contributed to it.  Witnessing his struggle to preserve a professional front, whilst seemingly assailed by inner conflicts, has been tough at times, and this painting feels like my attempt to communicate a degree of empathy regarding his travails.  That also explains the dedication applied to the painting's edge.

Shaun Morris, 'The Street (The Garage)', Oil On Canvas, 2017-18

 

My idea this time was that the ‘New School’ architecture should, suggest a pressurised edifice, in which something possibly infernal is being suppressed.  It’s worth mentioning two specific visual memories that directly shaped this iteration of the motif.  One is a fairly recent painting by Shaun Morris, entitled ‘The Street (The Garage)’, from which, I now realise - I’ve pretty blatantly nicked the idea of fiery illumination emerging through gaps in a darkened building.  For that, I should acknowledge Shaun’s original authorship, whilst perhaps reflecting wryly on how one strategic act of appropriation has now triggered yet another.  The second visual influence is the amazing desert-cabin-exploding-in-reverse sequence from David Lynch’s film, ‘Lost Highway’ [1.].  That movie is often overlooked in favour of his subsequent ‘Mullholland Drive’, but is a stunning piece of work in its own right.  Either way, its themes of psychological turmoil, and deployment of specific architectural locations as analogues for the disrupted mind, seem pretty apposite.  I actually find the particular sequence under discussion to be one of the most memorable in all of cinema, so I guess it was bound to come out in something, sooner or later.

[1.]:  David Lynch (Dir.), 'Lost Highway', US/France, Ciby 2000/Asymmetrical Productions, 1997