Completed Studies: 'Techno 001 - 004'

 

'Techno Study 001' Mixed Media on Paper, £00 mm X 300 mm, April 2021

These recently completed, paper-based studies form a kind of aside to my on-going 'Constructed City' paintings.  They were made fairy rapidly, as my latest, more ambitious, 'CC' piece unfolds at a somewhat steadier pace.

Anyone following my progress on here, will be familiar with my tendency to compartmentalise work into discrete projects, and with the convulsions I regularly perform to make distinctions between them.  I recognise that probably all means far more to me, than to many others.  However, it does serve to rationalise the multiple strands of thought running through my head, without my becoming totally overwhelmed.  Inevitably, there's never enough time (or energy) to make everything I'd like to, or to properly process the steady drip of new ideas.  A degree of conscious organisation thus feels essential to whatever workflow I do achieve - however anal it might sometimes appear.

'Techno Study 002', Mixed Media on Paper, 200 mm x 200 mm, April 2021

Consequently, whilst the visual language on display in these studies is clearly related to that of recent 'Constructed City' pieces, they do feel like a separate in a certain key respects.  Perhaps most importantly, there is no source subject here.  Each of my 'CC' pieces relates  to a specific subject source (and possible associations) - however convoluted the processes of translation and media-switching involved in their development may be.  In truth, all that process may be as important a theme, as the actual construction sites that seed them.  Nevertheless, retaining some vestige of specific subject within each one still feels very important.  In the 'Techno" studies however, there is genuinely no actual subject.  Each evolved intuitively (and relatively rapidly), as a purely formal exercise - and with little sense of exactly how they might end up.  In essence, they are improvisations on a general theme.

'Techno Study 003', Mixed Media on Paper, 300 mm x 300 mm, April 2021

As far as any external stimulus does go - the clue is in the title.  These are mostly interpretations of, or responses to Techno music.  Doubtless, there is some relation to all the complex geometry of the 'CC' work, but definitely more relevant here are the structures to be found within the roster of fairly regimented electronic music that dominated much of my current listening.  In one way or another, each of the studies reflects the particular discs that have been on heaviest rotation during its production.  My last playlist  outlines my most recent enthusiasms - many of them tending towards the more aggressive or spartan end of industrial Techno.  However, the truth is - I've been enjoying electronic music of many stripes for decades.  The influences feeding into the next batch are as just as likely to turn to early Detroit or Sheffield, or to the IDM, Dub Techno, Glitch or Minimalism that still fascinate me - as to the more punishing, so-called 'Birmingham Sound', that fed these four.

'Techno Study 004', Mixed Media on Paper, 200 mm x 200 mm, April 2021

What I am telling myself, is that the rigorous, four-square frontality of these images is an obvious response to the relentless 4-4 rhythm of much Techno.  Certainly, there are no  diagonals or curves to be seen here (unlike the 'CC's) - for now, at least.  The juxtaposition of crisp edges, meshes and intersecting lines, with more nuanced veils and fields also seems to chime pretty well with the sequenced beats, melodic pads and aural textures of the music in question.

I've no idea if these small studies will lead to anything more significant.  I do know there'll be some more, and that, if nothing else - they already provide a refreshing punctuation to the methodical labour of my other work.  It's probably also true that they serve as a useful (and fun) test-bed for application methods and potential marks, at the same time. 

 

Playlist 16: Music To Make Contemporary Abstract Paintings To.

 

The current soundtrack...

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 13 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 13 (Constructed City)', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape, French Polish,
Aerosol Paint & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2021

I'm not generally in the habit of obliterating finished paintings.  That's certainly not to claim everything is deemed 100% successful (far from it).  However, I'll normally take a piece through as many iterations as seem necessary to resolve it - often setting something aside for a while pending subsequent revisions, or completely abandoning those pieces that just won't work out.  But occasionally, something gets 'released' in a state I subsequently decide I just can't live with.  So it has proved to be with 'Untitled 6 (Constructed City)' - a painting that hung on my wall (somewhat reproachfully) for around three months, but is now effectively deleted.  I wanted to believe I was satisfied with it, but ultimately had to recognise it just wouldn't do.  Actually, I suspect the desire to call something 'finished' simply overtook my better judgement over something that didn't really work.

'Untitled 5 (Constructed City)': No Longer Extant

As a result, I recently decided to revise the painting.  However, my tinkering still failed to deliver the resolution I was seeking.  Instead, a completely new painting on the same panel became the only viable course of action - the result being 'Untitled13' (Constructed City)'.  I'll admit I toyed with the idea of titling this one '6.1' , but as there really is nothing of the original image left, the idea of a new 'remix' doesn't really apply.  Instead, this new image is so obviously the sibling of '11' and '12', that it seems preferable to capitalise on the sense of forward motion, and to simply let '6'  slide as a gap in the sequence.  Which is the least healthy impulse, I wonder - a neurotic desire to tie-up every loose end, or this constant need to show my working?

Of course (current technology being what it is), our footprints are no longer fully erased.  Having once entered the public arena (however obscurely), '6' can continue to haunt this body of work as a digital memory - and to possibly provoke the occasional self indulgent meditation on the tension between the virtual and the 'real'.  I won't pretend I don't enjoy these attempts to apply a kind of digitally-informed sensibility to something as archaic and material as the tradition of painting.

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 12 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 12 (Constructed City)', Acrylics, Screen Print, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape,
Spray Paint, French Polish & Pencil on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2021

Here's my twelfth 'Untitled (Constructed City)' painting.  The deep involvement with all things yellow continues, whilst the greater layered complexity and overlapping meshes of '11', is pushed further still.  Whilst this is largely the result of a more improvisational approach, the digitally pre-determined (and serially recycled) motifs of earlier iterations, still float across the surface.

To my mind, much of the satisfying tension in these images stems from these nominally foreground elements being derived from shards of negative space in the source construction site images.  This feels magnified as the illusion of pictorial space deepens behind them.

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 11 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 11 (Constructed City)', Acrylics, Screen Print, Paper Collage, Adhesive Tape,
French Polish, Ink, Spray Paint  & Pencil on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2021

Here's the eleventh 'Constructed City' painting, and the first to be completed in 2021.  Like a lot of other things on here just recently, it's self consciously yellow - with chromatic reference to the saturated and hi-vis primaries often seen on the construction sites that inspire these pieces.

The photographically and digitally-derived motifs floating across the surface are a little sparser this time, whilst the collaged layers of information behind them are far denser and more nuanced than previously.  The balancing of those two tendencies feels like something of a step forward - as does the greater intrusion of overlapping meshes that provide a systematic form of compositional scaffolding.

In keeping with my current habit of having several in progress at once - there's another one, following close behind.  It looks like that will be significantly yellow too.  We'll see...

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 10 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 10 (Constructed City)', Acrylics & French Polish on Panel, 
300 mm x 300 mm, 2020

Here's the second of the small study-paintings, referred to in my previous post.  As I mentioned there, the numbering of these most recent 'Constructed City' paintings is a little out of kilter.  However, it's enough to know that 'Untitled 8, 9 & 10' were all produced pretty much concurrently - with '9' and '10' being initially envisaged as experimental studies - before becoming fully realised little paintings (and ultimately - Christmas presents), in their own right.

There's not much else to relate, really.  You can get the most coherent sense of development of the shared imagery, by back-tracking through my two previous posts, and viewing them in the order: '9', '10', '8'.  That way, you can see how the progressive injection of heightened colour and layered complexity operated upon a simple, largely monochrome prototype.

One last point of possible interest, is that the diagonally inclined geometric motif at the heart of all three of these paintings, was itself recycled, in enlarged form, from the earlier 'Untitled 5' & '6'.  Its translation across multiple platforms (photograph - digital manipulation - painting), and subsequent use, and re-use, are particularly characteristic of my working methods, in recent years.  My fascination with such processes continues unabated, and I suspect they will prevail in my work - for the foreseeable future, at least.

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 9 (Constructed City'

 

'Untitled 9 (Constructed City)', Acrylics & Coloured Pencil on Panel,
300 mm x 300 mm, 2020

It's no accident this little painting bears a striking resemblance to 'Untitled 8'.  It essentially functions as a study  for that, larger painting - along with one other very similar small companion piece.  Indeed, I wasn't necessarily certain this would make it as a finished painting at all, when I started work on it. 

My numbering system becomes somewhat arbitrary here, for whilst all three paintings emerged pretty much concurrently, the two smaller studies were technically completed first.  Nevertheless, they do feel like subsidiaries, and certainly acted as a test-bed for the various techniques and overall approach they all share.  Once certain questions had been answered, and '8' was well under way, it seemed only natural to bring the two studies quickly to some kind of resolution too, as pieces in their own right.

During that process, and given their modest scale, it also occurred to me that the two 'studies' might make suitable Christmas presents for two close friends.  Thus, they were rapidly completed, wrapped, and delivered, as '8' was being completed.  So now it only remains for me to reveal '10'...

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 8 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 8 (Constructed City)', Acrylics on Panel, 600 mm x 600 mm, 2020

'Untitled 8' is the next in my current run of 'Constructed City' paintings, having just sneaked in, under the wire as the last piece to be completed in 2020.  It's pleasing to what degree my productivity accelerated towards the end of what was, in so many other aspects of life, such a frustrating year.  

As the unimaginative titles, and common formats suggest, these recent paintings represent yet another of my customary series, at least nominally.  However, it does occur to me that there is perhaps a little more variance between individual pieces, in the manner of execution and general approach - at least, this time round.  That's okay, though.  I'm going to resist the usual temptation to over-analyse about such matters, and to just allow each new piece to unfold in whichever way feels most natural - for the time being at least.

In this case, the painting began with the deliberate recycling (at a larger scale) of one of the digitally-derived motifs from '5' and '6'.  However, whilst that is still just about discernible in the final image, the relative clarity of those earlier images was soon lost within a situation of increasingly layered complexity.  It seems that some kind of oscillation between a search for  distilled simplification, and an opposing tendency towards a degree of baffling intricacy, might be a general trend in these pieces.  And - if nothing else, that does feel like a valid analogy for the way in which unified architectural forms gradually emerge from a visual chaos of scaffolding, steelwork and interlocking planes, in the construction sites that trigger this body of work.  It's also worth noting that I'm pretty pleased with the way that any sense of figure and ground are pretty much subsumed within each other, here.

I suppose the renewed complexity here might feel like a slightly retrograde lurch back in the direction of 'Untitled 3', or even of some wholly abstract paintings composed of layered horizontal bands, from many years back.  However, it also feels like this is a much stronger painting than either of those examples.  A bit of progress is all I ask for, really.

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 7 (Constructed City)'

'Untitled 7 (Constructed City)', Acrylics on Panel, 60 cm x 60 cm, 2020

Here's the latest of my 'Untitled (Constructed City)' paintings.  It's the seventh in the current run - and the third to be developed from purely digital origins.  One can always see things one might have done differently, but I think I'm reasonably satisfied with it - for now, at least.  As ever, it will take a while to make any kind of meaningful judgement about that.  Luckily, there are two more currently in progress.  Attention can shift immediately to them, while this one settles for a while.  

There are a few technicalities possibly worth noting. The image is distilled from two superimposed photos of emerging buildings in the skeletal, steelwork phase of their construction.  As with the two preceding paintings, the main formal concern is to achieve some kind of dialogue between negative and positive shapes/spaces.  The degree of abstraction is pretty far advanced here, but with just enough specific detail to tentatively recall the original subject.  I'm pretty happy with the largely monochromatic palette - and with the fact that those fleeting accents of red and yellow relate to the primaries often found on construction sites (being actually fluorescent colours, in this case.  I think the inclusion of silver possibly works better here, than in '6', although - as ever, one can only really judge that by observing the play of light on the actual piece.  Pretty obviously, it makes some reference to the metallic sheen of various materials found on any construction site (although the steels themselves are generally painted). 

One last point worth making, is that this image appears to move a little closer to a state in which it could be read in either the vertical or horizontal plane.  That seems important, given some of my previous observations about how many of these major new buildings fill in both sections of the visual skyline, and sections of terrain, as plotted on a map.