Signs And Whispers

All Images: Central Leicester, April 2020

Here are a few more images, taken on the same excursion as those in my last post.  They feel closely related, visually - but these are of slightly less direct relevance to our current pestilence-ridden situation, perhaps.  They certainly do seem to belong to that whole 'Lost Voices, Forgotten Meanings' vibe of four years ago though, in pretty obvious ways.  Breakdowns in communication, and the erosion of narratives were as much a theme of that work, as all the focus on vacancy and physical absence, evoked in the previous window images.

In recent years, I've tended to think of my work as progressing (if indeed, it does) via a series of relatively self-contained projects.  The fact that several of these appeared to culminate in exhibition ventures, can suggest each has reached some form of conclusion, and that a line is consequently drawn beneath it. It's a useful enough way of imposing some degree of organisation on my practice, I suppose - and hopefully avoids a situation in which I might try to cram to many themes and strategies into my work, all at once.  But, in reality - the events and moments of visual recognition the world offers, and the thoughts and feelings they release, come along in a far more organic, randomised manner.  The various currents of thought represented in these seemingly discrete packets of work aren't shut off, just because some work gets arbitrarily hung on a wall at a certain date, or because my  responses to them feel a bit worked out, for a time.

It's all a continuum really.  The currents intertwine and different ones rise to the surface at certain times.  Serendipity and coincidence are major factors in any creative process, and time can double-back on itself, to refresh familiar tropes, at any point.  It's important to recognise all that, and not to become a slave to organisational compartmentalising.  When all's said and done - if the world offers you something as glorious as this palimpsest of eroded text and nuanced paint, it would be criminal not to accept it with gratitude, even if it doesn't quite square with some imagined schedule. 

        

Pretty, Vacant 1

West Leicester, April 2020

Like most folks just now, I really value my occasional little trips out of the house under the guise of 'statuary exercise hours'.  Of course, regular circuits around my local environment, with bike and camera, have long been a part of my creative process - so little has changed there, really.  The bike is, by it's very nature, a kind of social-distancing device, and also allows me the opportunity to accelerate rapidly away from any potentially viral congregations I may encounter.  There also seems little harm in pausing for the occasional mini photo-shoot - providing I'm not impeding anyone else's isolated progress.  In certain situations, there's even some benefit in no longer having to wait for traffic or a crowd to disperse, before I can get my shot.  Whilst clearly unsustainable, and hardly a situation to be celebrated - some days it can almost feel like this crisis was designed for us slightly introspective flaneur types.

One (admittedly selfish) downside, is that the large construction sites I've been regularly visiting, in recent months, are largely at rest now.  On most sites, work has markedly slowed - if not ceased altogether, and there's a limit to how often even I can photograph the same unchanging chunk of steelwork, or expanse of unpopulated scaffolding.  The same old circuits can start to pale a bit too, when one is trying to combine a bit of much-needed exercise with equally vital mental/visual stimulation.

As a result, my latest excursions have seen me increasingly varying my routes, and the photographic subject matter has inevitably started to re-diversify as a result.  Except that, of course, the latest crop of images you see here, is still very representative of the kind of thing I've been drawn to all along - when not staring at building sites.  If anything, these blank windows and vacated commercial premises hark back to the stuff I was fixating on around 2016 - and which culminated in my contributions that year's 'A Minor Place' exhibition, with Andrew Smith and Shaun Morris.  My concerns at that time focussed on ideas of absence, vacancy, lost voices and forgotten meanings, and it all gave me massive scope to indulge my love of vestigal marks and emptied-out imagery.  The largely neutral palette of these shots seems to chime with that too.

'Untitled (Change of Use)', Mixed Media on Paper, 30 cm x 30 cm, 2016

'Vestige 5', Acrylics & Mixed Media on Panel, 60 cm x 60 cm, 2016

Central Leicester, April 2020

Back then, the regular evidence of such subject matter which I found in the field, seemed to represent the seemingly perpetual backwash of 2008's economic crash, and the ideology of Austerity that persisted in its wake.  In the context of this latest catastrophe (Capitalist, or otherwise), such motifs seem to acquire a renewed relevance.  It's always tempting to think one should be working with great urgency, on some definitive new response to any major societal event - but it occurs to me, there is a danger such actions can end up feeling hastily conceived or insufficiently digested.  Perhaps then, it's just as valid to dig out existing work, to check whether some new relevance may have accrued, whilst reflecting on events as they unfold.  If nothing else, it might be instructive to shift a few boxes, and have another look... 

Working Methods: Shaping Up

All Images: 'Constructed City' Painting Panels (Work in Progress), April 2020

Needs must, when the virus drives - and so it seems that my 'Constructed City' project must adapt to changing conditions.  Until recently, I had imagined it as a largely print and collage-based enterprise.  However, for obvious reasons, I'm unable to continue my printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop.  I also find myself embarrassingly short, at home at least, of the proper kind of table space needed to lay my existing prints out, in order to start reassembling them on the scale I envisage.

But, as a million fatuous training workshops have taught us, there are no real problems - only opportunities.  Such a challenge really just represents a series of paintings I haven't executed yet - so I've decided to expand the scope of the project to include exactly that.  Consequently, I've spent much of the locked-down Easter period constructing panels, in preparation.  The nature of the proposed imagery suggests shaped formats - which is something I've not worked on for many years, and should make for a stimulating change.  It also gives me a chance to recycle and join-together some old panels I've had cluttering- up the place for quite a while.

The glorious weather made the whole process of glueing, nailing, screwing, sanding and priming, thoroughly enjoyable for a few days, in my sunny little back yard.  The only real problem is that (in classic bumbling idiot style) I now find that large one is too big to go up the narrow stairs to my newly reorganised painting 'studio'.  Secretly, I suspected it would be the case - but the thing just feels right at that scale anyway.  So, for once, I stubbornly put practicality (and the tape measure) to one side.  Anyway, as I say,  there are no problems - just opportunities.  Perhaps, if the favourable weather persists -  that big panel will offer the opportunity to do some outdoor painting.  In the meantime, there are a couple of smaller ones to get on with indoors, and the wherewithal to make yet more, as required.

There's nothing for it - I'd better get the brushes out, then...

           

Out Of The Frying Pan: Remembering William Scott

William Scott, 'Figure And Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1219 mm x 1530 mm, 1956

We're officially amidst what would normally be the academic Easter break - although that's clearly pretty meaningless, given the current situation.  Many teaching staff have continued to work from home, preparing online teaching materials and attending to the myriad paper/screen/data-based tasks they would normally have to squeeze into the gaps between actual teaching.  Some may be consequently wondering a bit about the exact nature of their vocations/careers.  What exactly, is implied - if so much of the job can be performed without any children in the room?

William Scott, 'Table Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1433 mm x 1838 mm, 1951

Whatever the ins and outs of all that, I've always been thankful that my own support role as a Technician, mostly involves the everyday practicalities of what happens in actual rooms.  Most of my time is spent engaging with tangible things I can count on shelves, mix up in pots, or clean under a running tap.  Even in Photography lessons, much of my time is spent charging batteries, changing lenses, and setting up lights.  That's all fine and dandy with me - but it does, of course, make it harder to envisage how I might do my job from home.  Given that I am much luckier than many, in still being paid (for now, at least - and something I'm very grateful for), it seemed only reasonable to seek out something significant that might be of use to students and staff, once/if things return to a situation resembling 'normality'.

William Scott, 'The Harbour', Oil on Canvas, 613 mm x 917 mm, 1952

Something that has happened on a fairly regular basis, over the years, is that teachers (and sometimes students) have turned to me, uttering words to the effect of, "Quick! - can you think of an artist/artwork that exemplify (fill in style/approach/theme of choice)?"  An ability to throw up an appropriate name, at least some of the time, has gained me the reputation of being a bit of a walking Art encyclopaedia, although I'm generally at pains to point out that  it's really only because I've been around longer than most other folk in the faculty.  I've been visiting exhibitions and reading books on the subject for most of that time - and for no other reason than I was interested.  If nothing else, I guess I should be grateful my visual memory still works reasonably well - even if I often have to grope a bit harder for the names, these days.

William Scott, 'Yellow And Black Composition', Oil on Canvas,  1524 mm x 1016 mm, 1953

Anyway, I've long thought  I should get this potential archive out of my head, and into a form that others could access a little more readily.  There's no shortage of books and online resources already out there, obviously - but it did seem to me that it might be useful to compile something focussed around some of our more consistent schemes of work, or around examples that might prove refreshing alternatives to the same old - same old.  Let's hope that proves to be the case.  If nothing else, it's keeping me mentally engaged - and has certainly allowed me to delve a little deeper than I might habitually do when challenged at short notice.  I've already had a lot of fun researching partially remembered artists and artworks, and making the kind of connections that transcend my habitual thought patterns.  I've reacquainted myself with a few slightly unexpected names in the process too.  One such is William Scott, and what better excuse could there be to have a look at some of his paintings here?

William Scott, 'Green Pears And Blue Pot', Oil on Canvas, 304 mm x 384 mm, 1955

There doesn't appear to be too much drama in Scott's biography, and I suppose some might also argue there's nothing especially edgy about his work generally.  Mostly, it seems to epitomise an aesthetic often reduced these days (in the shorthand of designers and interior decorators), to 'Mid-Century Modern'.  It's certainly not too difficult to bracket him with other British artists like Nicholson, Hepworth, etc., who sought to extend the modernist tradition of formal abstraction, originated by such pioneers as Cezanne, Braque or Mondrian.  There always remains some connection with observed appearance, and a degree of step-by-step logic in his progressive distillation of subject matter into increasingly stripped-down compositions of  essential shapes.  In Scott's case, there's also a typically British fixation on modestly domestic subject matter (he most readily identifies as a still life painter), and to a largely tonal, slightly chalky, approach to colour.  Both feel typical of the paintings of these islands, and the period in which he rose to prominence.  It's also perhaps worth noting that his work might typify the kind of soft utopianism that prevailed, to some extent, in the post-war period.

William Scott, 'Egyptian Memory', Oil on Canvas, 1118 mm x 1829 mm, 1958

All that Modernist urge to abstract and to purify is, of course, a pretty familiar story by now -  and one which is rapidly diminishing in the rearview mirror of art history.  But, the point of this post isn't about just regurgitating what one lazily thinks one knows about a particular artist's work, but rather - the frisson one gains from viewing afresh something half forgotten, and discovering it still has the power to excite on purely visual grounds.  There may be little that's grand or unduly extrovert in Scott's painting, but, like Braque, Morandi, or even Chardin - he consistently found an impressive degree of poetry in a few domestic items on a table top.  In a typical Scott painting, it seems to be all about the considerable visual tension that might exist between those skillets, cups and bottles, once they are reduced to emblematic essentials, and distributed across a modest arena.

William Scott, 'Painting', Oil on Canvas, 2120 mm x 1350 mm, 1959

As I say, that whole formal thing may hold less currency, nowadays. But when its ideological or philosophical underpinnings are set to one side, there's still something about it that chimes with many of my own aesthetic defaults - however many subsequent layers of implied meaning or theoretical justification I may seek to erect on top.  The disposition of shapes on a picture plane, the acceptance of the inherent flatness of that plane, some attempt to impose a degree of geometric organisation on the visual world, as well as an overall urge to simplify, are all instincts I've long come to acknowledge in myself.  They're also things William Scott exemplified with both verve and elegance - and mostly without moving very far from his own kitchen table.

William Scott, 'White Floating Forms', Oil on Canvas, 1016 mm x 1276 mm, 1960

William Scott, 'Blue And Black Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 864 mm x 1118 mm, 1962

My own acquaintance with Scott came, via a fellow degree student, sometime around 1981.  Scott himself was still active then, although it's probably fair to say his work had settled into a fairly undemanding reiteration of familiar tropes.  As I've mentioned previously, prevailing art trends were definitely moving in a contrary direction, but in Bristol Polytechnic's slightly cosy Fine Art bubble, it was pretty easy to overlook that fact.  The tendency to look further south-west, to that whole mid-century St Ives scene (with which many of our tutors, and indeed, Scott, himself) had been attached, was still pretty powerful, even in the early 1980s.  It became all the more so, once one took the trip down the peninsula (and back in time), to experience all that seductive, self-abstracting landscape at first hand.

William Scott, 'Blue Still Life', Oil on Canvas, 1218 mm x 1831 mm, 1969

William Scott, 'Still Life With Orange Note', Oil on Canvas, 1680 mm x 1720 mm, 1970

Of course, nowadays, you can't move in Cornwall for tourist-facing galleries of all shapes and sizes, and many are stacked with mass-produced, sub-sub Herons, Lanyons, Nicholsons - and, indeed Scotts.  Such stuff also lines the walls of every other second home and holiday rental throughout the region.  And my own inspirations and enthusiasms long since turned away from both the landscape and the still-life table - towards something far more urban and potentially hard-edged.  But, just as one should avoid the tendency to pigeonhole or write-off an artist for superficial reasons - one should also resist denying one's own back story.  We all get wherever we're going by a variety of circuitous routes, after all.  Above all, I should always remember to keep looking at stuff afresh, and to never deny myself the pleasure of re-engaging, on its own terms, with work I'd half-forgotten.  Mostly, I'm just glad to have remembered that some of those Scott's really are very good.  Who knows? - they might even get some of our students to think a bit more clearly about shape and composition, one day.

      

William Scott, 'Permutation 4 - Ochre', Oil on Canvas, 1676 mm x 1726 mm, 1978