Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 9'

All Images: 'Untitled (From The New School)', Acrylic & Paper Collage on Panel,
30 cm X 30 cm X 10.6 cm, 2018

Here is No. 9 in the 'From The New School' series.  These seem to be arriving thick and fast, right now - and without too much strife.  That's definitely one of the advantages of deliberately versioning the same simple composition, again and again.  Essentially, it just frees one to concentrate on content (and what happens between the lines).  The initial premise  was that they should reflect numerous different philosophical or ideological interpretations of education, or of school life.  Perhaps, then - the previous observation just emphasises how any institutionalised education system inevitably risks promoting a degree of 'thinking inside the box?' (whichever box that might actually be). 

At some point, I suppose I'll start repeating myself with these, but I hope that's some way off yet.  Certainly, I already have ideas for the next few - and do find that my days spent at work, in a large secondary school, stimulate an endless stream of direct experience - and reflections on education generally, as possible inspiration.  However much milage there may, or may not be in this series - it's already shaping up to be my most extensive to date.

This one should be pretty easy to interpret, I suspect - imagining, as it does, a school as an institution constructed largely of rules and regulations.  There are days (most days, to be honest), when it seems as much energy is spent navigating behavioural expectations, rules of conduct, Health & Safety regulations, national legislation, and government directives - as it is upon teaching and learning.

Luckily, that all also generates a range of pleasing, strongly-coloured information graphics, symbols, hazard stripes and hatched exclusion zones - a gift for those of us with a tendency toward formal or geometric abstraction.