Completed Painting: 'Vestige 8'

'Vestige 8', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Misc. Solvents
& Decorator's Caulk on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

Here is ‘Vestige 8’.  As mentioned in my previous post, there has been time amidst the preparations for the rapidly approaching ‘A Minor Place’, exhibition, for a couple more of these ‘Vestige’ paintings, which means there are eight from which to select for the final hang.  I suspect this will be the last of these, (certainly for the foreseeable future), and it does feel like there’s a danger I could start to repeat myself just a little too comfortably with them now.  If there were to be any more in the future, it would be necessary to find new ways of mixing things up a bit within the same basic format, I suspect.

Anyway, as also mentioned, I wanted to ensure there were at least a couple of the current set which dealt with the idea of those vestigial serpents of mastic adhesive which so often testify to the loss or removal of an item of signage of some kind, when encountered on urban walls.  One of my main themes of late has been that idea that something was once said, meant, or performed within a certain environment - without any specification of what exactly.  The ‘Vestige’ pieces are one of the more abstract expressions of that.

Much is made of the significance of meta-data, these days – information about information, in essence.  This series is perhaps an attempt to provide the most tenuous clues merely to the fact that information was given at all - rather than to the content itself.  Not only is the meaning lost in these ‘Vestiges’, but the carrier reduced to a mere residual ghost too.  I’ve bandied the term ‘Lost Voices’ around a fair bit this year.  In fact, that may be ultimately the most apposite banner under which to group all of my output from late 2015 to the present.

The technically minded will spot that I’ve already refined my mastic-application skills, even since ‘Vestige 7’.  I used the same basic technique of pressing Decorator’s Caulk - having applied it from a mastic gun (as intended by the manufacturer).  This time though, I applied it onto a still-tacky coat of PVA, and pressed it beneath a board coated with plastic parcel tape.  This provided sufficient grab/release (on the right surfaces), for the entire squiggle to remain in place once the caulk had set and the board was removed.

The other rather obvious point worth highlighting is that ‘8’ is (predominantly) orange.  One of the features of last year’s ‘Map’ paintings was their generally heightened colour.  As my post ‘Mental Mapping’ work started to coalesce around the turn of the year - it became obvious that a monochrome, or very limited palette was going to predominate instead.  That has continued to be the case.  However, it also became true that, when I tried to visualise how this body of work might look in an exhibition context - what my mind’s eye actually saw was a largely monochrome collection of pieces, punctuated by occasional moments of almost arbitrary, heightened colour.

'Extracted Fragment 4', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,
Misc. Solvents & Screen-Print on Panel, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2016 

'Extracted Fragment 8', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,
Misc. Solvents, Pencil, Coloured Pencil, Ballpoint Pen & Screen-Print on Panel,
30 cm X 30 cm, 2016

Thus, key components of the (also eight-part) ‘Extracted Fragments’ series of mini panels, and certain pieces in my print-orientated ‘Change Of Use’ series too, are distinguished by instances of heightened orange or Cerulean Blue.  My original intention was that ‘Vestige 8’ would be an altogether more garish, synthetic affair, but ultimately, my heavily-modulated, layered approach to its production, means it’s rather more subdued (or just grimy), than envisaged.  For all that, I’m by no means displeased with it, and already relish its status as the wild card within the pack.  It is, I hope, just impudent enough to stand distinct from its peers, whilst still belonging within the overall series.  (Any amateur psychologists can get to work now…)

Design: Chris Cowdrill

‘A Minor Place’, featuring work by myself, Andrew Smith and Shaun Morris, will take place between Saturday, 3 – Sunday, 11 September, at: Artists Workhouse, Victoria Works, Off Redditch Road, Studley, Warwickshire, B80 7AU.

Completed Painting: 'Vestige 7'

'Vestige 7', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil, Misc. Solvents &
 Decorator's Caulk on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

I’d be lying if I said I actually needed any more work for the upcoming ‘A Minor Place’ exhibition, in which I’ll be exhibiting soon, alongside Andrew Smith and Shaun Morris.  There might actually be enough to fill my third of the show twice over, and the biggest issue feels like it’s around which pieces to actually hang.  Thus, I didn’t actually need to make any more ‘Vestige’ paintings in this little period of calm before the comparative storm of realising the show.  That’s not really the point though, is it?  A properly creative process shouldn’t be about merely meeting deadlines, or fulfilling commitments, even if they are self-generated.  In my view, it should never involve the thought, “that’ll do, then”, either.

The fact is, there are a couple of other pictorial issues I always wanted to address within the ‘Always The Same – Always Different’ model of the ‘Vestiges’ series.  With a few days of blessed School Summer break remaining, and the exhibition arrangements progressing, it felt only natural I should address them.  My hunch is that completing numbers ‘7’ and ‘8’ should allow me to assess the series properly, and whether it really achieved what I hoped it would.  Only then, will I decide if it’s time to draw some kind of line under the project.

Anyway, here’s ‘Vestige 7’ in it’s completed state, (‘8’ is still in progress, but hopefully nearing completion).  At first glance, it may break relatively little new ground.  It majors on the same ‘revealed rectangle’ motif within a square format, of all the others, and is just another take on the near-monochrome palette of the overall series, (predominantly dark again, here).  The recurring fragments of text (or at least, of individual characters), are there too, albeit pretty well buried, this time.  The real progression is in that partial squiggle within the central rectangle.

'Vestige 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Ink, Spray Enamel,  French
Polish, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

'Vestige 6', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Adhesive Tape, Spray Enamel,
French Polish, Pencil, Coloured Pencil & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 60 cm X
60 cm, 2016

The origin of these pieces was in the revealed ghost-spaces, or residual frames that one regularly encounters in the urban environment - and which represent the loss, or removal of some piece of signage or posted information.  They are, a form of palimpsest symbolising the notion of lost voices or forgotten meanings, as well as the passage of time and the accompanying entropic processes acting on the material of the city.  When I started to pursue that idea, I identified three main categories of the motif.  The first two are, the simple clean or differently coloured patch, and the open frame of grimy adhesive tape residue.  ‘7’ represents the third category – namely, the flattened squiggle of failed mastic adhesive.  I see these squashed serpents and blotted blobs wherever I go.  They do of course, represent relatively recent advances in adhesives chemistry, being, literally, ‘a quick fix’ - if you like.

North Leicester, May 2014

Gravelly Hill, Birmingham, July 2016

Without the time to undertake an extensive process of R&D, I toyed with a couple of possible methods of achieving my squiggle, before simply resorting to the obvious solution of Decorator’s Caulk, squirted through a mastic gun and squashed under a sheet of plastic (not exactly rocket science, is it?).  In the event, this was partially successful, with much of the upper portion failing to release properly, but a sufficiently extensive lower portion remaining to tell the story.  I’m employing a refinement of this method for ‘8’, in the hope that a little more mastic survives next time.  However, in reality, I like the somewhat hit and miss nature of all this, and the fact I was left with what I was left with.  The injection of an element of proper random accident feels very appropriate.  If nothing else, it allows me to add yet another ingredient to the ever lengthening list of media used in these pieces.  It may be time to just start labeling everything ‘Mixed Media’, I suspect.

Design: Chris Cowdrill

'A Minor Place' will take place between Saturday, 3 - Sunday 11 September at: Artists Workhouse, Studley, Warwickshire, B80 7AU.

Completed Painting: 'Vestige 6'

Here’s ‘Vestige 6’, the latest in my on-going series of closely-related paintings under that banner.

'Vestige 6', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Adhesive Tape, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil,
Coloured Pencil, Ballpoint Pen On Panel. 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

On first impressions, this one may appear quite similar in overall tonality and contrast to its immediate predecessor.  However, it also highlights the mistaken belief that one can, (or should), repeat a successful formula, ‘just like that’, as far as painting goes.

'Vestige 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Ink, Spray Enamel,  French
Polish, Pencil & Ballpoint Pen On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

I embarked on this one with the intention of redeploying some of the things I found enjoyable in the general approach of ‘Vestige 5’, whilst applying them to the motif of a framed but open internal space - rather than an implied rectangular ‘window’.  Of course, I should have known better.  If these paintings succeed at all, it is because each one finds some kind of organic accommodation with the accretion of accidents and random marks that play out within their static compositional format.  In fact, the only meaningful given should be that fixed idea of the rectangle within the square, (the ‘always the same’ bit).  Any attempt to nail down the more painterly, chance-dependent elements (the ‘always different’ part) can only undermine the basic premise of the work.

That probably explains why this one fought back a bit, until I realised the error of my ways and just allowed it to unfold in its own manner.  Part of this was the acceptance that ‘6’ was never going to achieve quite the same (relatively) fresh crispness of ‘5’, and that it just wanted to betray a slightly grubbier, more ‘fatigued’ aspect.  Ultimately, I can live with that; sometimes it’s just the way things go, and is itself an understandable consequence of the greater degree of dogged struggle involved in its gestation [1.].  I now realise it also results from a couple of technical issues.

One is the use of that much finer filter of dots fading in and out of focus across the picture.  Repeat dot patterns are a staple of many of my current paintings, (literally a repeat pattern, in fact), but this is the first time I’ve used them at this scale in a finished painting-sized piece.  They came and went as the painting evolved, but once I’d decided I definitely wanted them there, it was inevitable their relative density would influence profoundly the tonality of any ground they floated across.

The other contributor to a certain grimy patina is a different‘all over’ motif - namely the grid that intrudes over much of the composition.  Being partly drawn in with water-soluble coloured pencils, there was always going to be an element of colour tinting involved as they were re-wetted.  In fact, this is idea of ‘Monochrome - but not really’ - of tinted tonality, as it were, is just another satisfying aspect of these deliberately paradoxical paintings, (to me, at least).

I thought about the whole idea of intentionality while looking at some recent paintings by a local artist, during a local Open Studio event, the other day.  There doesn’t seem much point naming him here, - he’s an ambitious, young painter, with an increasing profile, (locally, at least), and I’d rather not draw attention to any shortcoming before more fully discussing the appealing things also at play in his work.  Suffice it to say, I was struck by how, for all the freshness and immediate, Pop impact of his work, there was also a disquieting tendency to simply paint to a successful formula or seductive style.  It meant there was a certain glib superficiality undermining much of the other good stuff going on.  Perhaps this an increasing danger for younger artists, shaped to a much higher degree by the imperatives of public profile, marketability, and a quantifiable ‘career’, than older drifters of my vintage/temperament.  Could it also be characteristic of a generation for whom the flat, flickering screen has always been the primary portal of instant gratification?  Alternatively, who is to say that ‘the struggle’ isn’t just another tired artistic affectation, anyway? [2.].

I really don’t know, - but either way, I was pleased to see one painting in his show that bore more marks of having been resolved out of at least a few quandaries, corrections and changes of mind.  It suggested he was perhaps diving further beneath the surface of an easily acquired style, to incorporate more nuance, and to engage with some of what still makes paint-wrangling a distinct and special activity.

Of course, those observations might just be stimulated by my own recent difficulties with ‘Vestige 6’.  At this stage, it’s far too early to judge this painting’s degree of success or otherwise, within the overall series.  In fact, I suspect that will be nigh impossible for any of them until I can put a load up together on a wall, stand well back, and let them take their chances out there in the world.  However, it does make me reflect that, often, you learn more from the difficult ones.

[1.]:  If nothing else, this does seem to keep faith with the layers of grime, urban grunge, and general entropy that inflect so many of my own back street reveries.

[2.]:  Certainly, it’s one that has stifled me often enough in the past.  In fact, a large part of me envies those artists more suited to painting with immediacy ‘on the surface’, with vivid, confident statements.  Somewhat predictably, my own periodic forays into a more Pop sensibility usually end up looking like something that’s been left out in the wind and rain too long.

Completed Painting: 'Vestige 4'

'Vestige 4', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil & Coloured Pencil
On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

We’re already into March, - which I find a bit scary; but at least it feels like I’ve made a reasonably energetic start to the year, artistically speaking.  There are a variety of creative strands I hope to follow this year, including more printing activity, (fairly soon, hopefully), and a proposed new collaborative project with fellow artist Andrew Smith, (into which we’re just starting to feel our way, at the moment).  However, so far, 2016’s most tangible results are in the form of painting, - a reminder that it remains at the core of my activities.

So, it’s pleasing to be able to reveal the fourth in my series of ‘Vestige’ pieces, entitled, (predictably enough), ‘Vestige 4’.  There’s little point in my alienating regular readers by repeating the same old stuff, each time I post one of these, - as the basic premise of the series remains essentially the same, from painting to painting.  If you’re a new visitor, you can catch up here, here, here, or here.

Just as with the previous three ‘Vestiges’, I embarked on ‘4’ with the intention of pulling the series in a new direction visually, only to discover that the finished painting actually resembles a gradual evolution more than a dramatic departure.  In fact, I’m now starting to realise how that ‘reach-exceeding-one's-grasp’ feeling is actually a key feature of the whole process I’ve embarked upon.  Nevertheless, I did at least manage to avoid just slipping back, by default, into yet another world of mid-grey.  This one deliberately introduces a slightly (and I do mean slightly) stronger element of actual colour, and much more dramatic   dark-light contrast.

Southwark, South London, 2011

It’s worth mentioning that the starting point for this one was a group of photographs I took on London’s South Bank, a few years ago, although I resisted the temptation to reproduce any single image too slavishly.  In fact, of the four ‘Vestiges’ so far produced, this might be the one I currently feel most favourably disposed towards.  Although it proved a bit intransigent during its slightly stop-start, early stages, - it actually came together rapidly and rather pleasingly, in the end.  I think I also managed to strike a reasonable balance between putting in the necessary labour to find a solution that was in there somewhere, - and keeping things just fresh and open enough in terms of the marks I was making.  If there was a danger of things getting a bit stodgy early on, - this time, the solution really was to just keep going.