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| 'Untitled (From The New School) 8', Acrylic On Panel, 30 cm X 30 cm X 10.6 cm, 2018 |
Here's the second of my recently completed 'From The New School' paintings. It's fair to say that Number Eight is rather less emotionally charged than it's immediate predecessor in the series - being very consciously a style exercise, above all else. Reference to my previous post will reveal that the distinctly graphic aesthetic of this one - with its tight, geometry, austere palette, and tendency towards synthetic abstraction, is lifted directly from one of the panels I recently completed for my school workplace. In that respect, it still refers mostly to my own specific experience of school life, rather than being a more generalised or theoretical meditation on Education per se.
It is also the case, of course, that this piece's stylistic mode also originates with a specific school student's work. That further bolsters the idea that this series of 'FTNS' paintings as a deliberate deliberate engagement with ideas about appropriation (or even plagiarism), as much as with the ideological or theoretical underpinnings of Education. But then, plagiarism is also a very live issue in contemporary education - be it a function of our digitally supercharged, post - Benjamin culture, or just a timeless teenage reluctance to always put in the requisite effort expected by their teachers. Perhaps that's a bit cynical - as my previous post demonstrates that the latter is most definitely not always the case. More to the point - am I in real danger of disappearing up my own self-referential fundament, in my habitual attempts to make all these connections and call-backs (or even, to ask this very question)?
Alternatively (and less pretentiously), could it be that this particular panel mostly represents a bit more art therapy for me? It is, after all - an undeniably enjoyable exercise in painting-by-numbers and discovering just how crisply I could paint all those masked edges. Maybe that's enough for now.
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