Let There Be More Light 2

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, February 2017

Stunning illumination, and temperatures tending more to bracing chill than dank cold, provoke the year's first serious expedition with bike and camera.  It's the first intimation that, whilst not quite here yet - spring's not too far away.

Thoughts, once again, of possibly resurrecting my dormant (and slightly misplaced) 'Belgrave Gate Project' - perhaps as a print - specific venture this time?  It's not like I haven't already several half-baked or unresolved ventures already on the go, is it?  Nonetheless - it feels like there might still be something there...

For now though, it's enough to rest in the radiation-blast of crystalline, winter sunlight.


Postscript:

Turns out, these photon-related, two-wheeled epiphanies are becoming something of a habit in February.

Belgrave Gate 15: Time To Rethink?

Here's a subject that has appeared on here more than once before.  After all though, one important function of this blog appears to be to chronicle the gradual (and not so gradual), processes of change within my urban surroundings.  I've always loved the juxtaposition of inherent blankness and surface nuance in this ad hoc facade, but this latest incarnation is particularly enjoyable.

I find it almost impossible not to read that newly revealed section as an implied window (onto what - exactly?), although it is, of course merely the result of a couple of panels having been removed. I love the process of entropy that suggests, whilst preferring not to think too hard about what might have happened if they actually fell.  That pavement below is a pretty busty pedestrian thoroughfare at most times of the day.  I am also struck by the way the edges of several of the upper boards are warping and curling with age.

Clearly, the Council's ongoing battle to negate the boards functioning as an informal bulletin board continues.  As you can see, the ragged edge between the grey and dismal brown sections, and the merest hints of past text re-emerging through the torn brown surface are currently in a rather pleasing state of balance.

Finding myself down on Belgrave Road to photograph the building yet again made me think again about my 'Belgrave Gate Project' and how it became stalled some time back as my attention turned to what eventually became the phase of work featured in the recent 'Mental Mapping' exhibition.  In fact, this boarded building is one of the first landmarks that caused me to pause for thought in that part of town in the first place.  I've not given up on the 'BGP' altogether though, and the original premise of a Psychogeographically informed investigation into different facets of a given district is as applicable to my work as it ever was.  I'm still just as much engaged with the idea of doing so through a variety of media as I was when I first engaged with the project.  In fact, some of those intentions actually percolated through the 'Mental Mapping' work in slightly less open-ended ways and perhaps that is the crux of the matter.

All Images:  Belgrave Road, North Leicester, June 2015

Taking some of what I learned from the work produced in the last year, it may be that there is scope to reassess some of the perimeters of the 'Belgrave Gate Project', and to redraw them in a slightly tighter, more focused manner for future consideration.  There are a lot of things up in the air just now, as I take a little time out from my own work to recharge my creative batteries.  As the various possibilities start to coalesce into something more definite, in the fullness of the time, it will be interesting to see if I find myself haunting that particular quarter of Leicester with my cameras on a regular basis, all over again.

Completed Painting. 'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 4'

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 4', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel. 60 cm X 60 cm, 2014

Here’s a newly completed painting, ‘Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 4’. Beyond announcing it’s arrival, I don’t really want to discuss it great length, particularly as much of the relevant background information required at this stage, can be found here, and here.

Suffice it to say, this is my latest attempt to resolve some of the issues inherent in a particular source image related to my ongoing ‘Belgrave Gate Project’.  I’m moderately happy with it as it stands, and I think it does take a small step forward.  I’m also cheered by the fact that it came together pretty briskly, despite being quite intensively worked upon.  Nevertheless, we’re still not really there yet, so the next in the series is already under way.

Two technical details worth noting here are the introduction of a little judicious sanding into my general process, and my decision to flat-off the completed panel with a coat of matt varnish, (recent paintings have tended towards a glossier, slightly jammy finish).

Both these moves were influenced by my visits to exhibitions by Simon Averill and StewartGeddes’ over recent weeks.  I’d sanded paint layers in the past and, when I saw it used to great effect by Stewart, was reminded how it provides an excellent way to finesse that distressed, nuanced feel I’m often striving for, and of getting separate pictorial elements ‘to sit down’ and integrate themselves with an overall image a bit more too.  I’ll confess that, having seen how both artists’ make beautiful matt surfaces integral to their paintings, I started to crave a little more refinement in my own current work, even at the risk of subduing the colours slightly.

I realise such details might seem superficially fetishistic in the grand scheme of a painting, but it’s funny how they can cause a significant buzzing in the bonnet.  Averill and Geddes are both experienced painters who, I hope, would recognise my co-opting of such techniques as merely the kind of (complimentary) creative theft that most artists indulge in regularly.

Belgrave Gate 14: Completed 'Cave Wall' Studies

'Cave Wall Study', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 45 cm X 45 cm, 2014

I’m well aware that, of late, this blog has featured plenty of posts about other artists’ work, and precious little about my own.  This is an attempt to redress the balance.  Many of the images here show fairly recent paper-based studies that, hopefully, point the way toward my next period of concerted painting activity.  Before I get to that, there’s a bit of back-story to fill in.  I hope it reads less like ‘excuses, excuses’ and more like an insight into the thought processes many artists might go through.  Some of it is purely to do with creative dilemmas, and some - with the simple practicalities of juggling amateur [1.] art practice with the need to keep paying the bills.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Study', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
20 cm X 20 cm, 2013

At the turn of the year, I wrote about how, creatively, 2013 had been a slightly frustrating year, and how I hoped to forge ahead with a bit more dynamism and, above all, focus, in 2014.  Although, I began the New Year with a completed painting, ‘BelgraveGate: Festival Of Lights 1’, any sense of self-congratulation was pretty misplaced.  The painting had been shaping up for a while and its completion in the first few hours of 2014 actually represented a missed deadline far more than it heralded a new surge of productivity.

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel,
100 cm X 100 cm, 2014

That painting is instructive in quite a useful way, however.  Its development reverted to a proven method, involving most of the important decisions, (colour, tonality, composition, etc.), being made in fairly complete sketchbook studies, - then transcribed, relatively verbatim, into the full-scale painting.  This method allowed me to feel more productive than ever before in 2011 and 2012, and is mostly a simplistic strategy for avoiding the problem of getting ‘bogged down’ that I’ve sometimes encountered when developing paintings in more organic ways.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel,
60 cm X 60 cm,  2013

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel,
60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 3', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel,
60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

That issue had been a feature of last year’s ‘ BelgraveGate: Cave Wall’ sub-series and felt like one of the reasons there was less finished work to show for the year.  Those paintings had evolved as a sort of test bed for themselves and each other.  Whilst there were plenty of things I like about them, there seemed to be just as many outstanding problems to be solved after their completion too.  Also, somehow, they just didn’t seem to represent sufficient return for a summer’s work.  Paradoxically, having lived with the more consciously pre-planned ‘Festival Of Lights 1’ for several weeks, I now see a number of defects in it, that may require revision if I can’t reconcile myself with its current state.  It seems that neither the pre-planning method or a more open-ended procedure is necessarily a proven recipe for success.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Studies', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
20 cm X 20 cm, 2014

Of course, ‘proven recipes for success’ don’t really come into it, and frankly, ought to be irrelevant within any fully creative practice.  Most artists, of whatever stripe, soon learn to be suspicious of comfort zones, and it’s important to accept that problem solving and sticky patches are just part of the deal.  The vital thing is to just keep going, at whatever pace you can, utilising whichever approach seems most appropriate, and not get hung up by inflated expectations or self-imposed deadlines.  A degree of discipline is essential, but earning from the mistakes and trusting instincts will always trump some set of artificial targets or parameters.  The only map worth following is the one you drew this morning, in the light of your latest discoveries.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Studies', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
20 cm X 20 cm, 2013

So. Where does this leave me?  Well, progress hasn’t been exactly rapid, but I think that’s for perfectly justifiable reasons, and it looks like things might be about to accelerate as spring arrives.  There’s no doubt that all my recent and ongoing gallery visits have eaten up potential working time, but they have also given me masses of food for thought.  The fact that so many interesting shows have all come along at once isn’t such a bad problem to have, especially if one allows the new stimuli to percolate naturally, over time, rather than feeling it all demands an immediate response.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Studies', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
20 cm X 20 cm, 2013

Likewise, my recent week away in Cornwall reminded me that it’s OK to have a holiday that is, - just that.  I’d mentally listed all sorts of work-related stuff to be getting on with whilst away, relatively little of which actually happened.  Instead, the images I collected, and trains of thought I indulged in, were all just part of being there in the moment.  They don’t directly apply to the work I have in hand but were all the more valuable for that, representing a valuable opportunity to recharge my batteries and just reflect on things without any pressure to achieve.  Free to take the days at my own pace, and revert back to my natural sleep patterns, I returned physically rested and mentally fresher, having cleared my lungs and replenished Vitamin D levels in the process.

Belgrave Circle Flyover Demolition, Leicester, March 2014

Beyond the obvious elephant in the room, (i.e. the day job), the other significant competitor for my time and attention recently, has been the current demolition work taking place at Leicester’s Belgrave Circle Flyover.  I’ll save the details of this for future posts.  Suffice it to say; having extended the territory covered by my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’ to include the roundabouts and flyovers at both ends of that road, it became impossible to ignore these dramatic one-time-and-for-all time developments.   Just as in the last weeks of 2013, early 2014 has seen numerous weekend and after-work trips ‘down The Gate’ with the cameras, in an attempt to beat the demolition company’s own schedules and deadlines.  Further time has been spent subsequently, thawing fingers, drying out and squeezing the resultant images onto various hard drives.  It’s fair to say that, mostly, the last few months have been spent collecting material, while it was still there to collect, or simply trying to assess my priorities.

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

I always intended 2014 should be mostly about consolidating the various projects started last year and, finally, that process can start in earnest.  My immediate intention is to revisit the imagery of the ‘Cave Wall’ paintings and push towards a more coherent distillation of the themes within them.  The main problem with the earlier versions was always that I tried to squeeze too many formal elements, layers of meaning and modes of depiction into each image.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Study', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
20 cm X 20 cm, 2014

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall Study', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper,
45 cm X 45 cm, 2014

My proposal is, thus, to push the same source material towards a more coherent, formal mode.  Hopefully, the basic idea of a quasi-Paleolithic anthropology implied by contemporary found clues, will acquire greater visual clarity and more room to breathe.  This will probably continue via a number of separate panels, with a different emphasis surfacing at different points, as in these studies.  There’s enough here to point the way, one painting already under way, and a couple more panels waiting.

Better crack on then…

[1.]:  ‘Amateur’, in so far as I have rarely earned much money directly from my own artwork, (but, in all honesty, haven’t tried that hard to do so either, to date).  Nevertheless, I hope I am as serious about this stuff, in essence, as any other artist.

Belgrave Gate 13: When Dinosaurs Walked The Earth

The serious work has just started down at Leicester's condemned Belgrave Flyover.  I'm away for a few days now, just as the interesting stuff is occurring, so found myself down there today, wiping cement dust from my lens and teeth whilst trying to capture as much action as I could.

Belgrave Flyover, Leicester, February 2014

I got lucky, both with the glorious illumination, and the fact that several large machines were all working simultaneously within reach of my lens.  Though It's hardly an original thought, it's impossible not to see these as mechanical monsters extending their necks to take bites from the concrete.  In fact, something about the fortuitously epic quality of these images reminds me of the dramatic book illustrations of dinosaurs that excited me, (and most people, I imagine), as a child.

Belgrave Flyover, Leicester, February 2014

Hopefully, there'll still be something left to record when I get back from a little jaunt down to Cornwall.  The timing's not great in several ways but, hopefully, my friend Dave will be able to get down a few times with his camera during my absence.

Belgrave Gate 12: Text-ure

Landscape...

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 01' (Detail), Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 2014

...Painting.

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 01' (Detail), Acrylics &
Paper Collage On Panel, 2014

Belgrave Gate Project 11: Revealing Memories

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, January 2014

All those lost weekends...

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, January 2014

...all those great nights out.

Belgrave Gate Project 10: Notice

Any Day Now...

Belgrave Gate, Leicester, January 2014

Belgrave Gate Project 9: Completed Painting - 'Festival Of Lights 1'

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2014

This recently completed painting, ‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’, is the latest component of my ‘Belgrave Gate Project’.  I had hoped it would be the last significant piece of 2013 but found myself still working on it, (with a wee dram at my elbow), as the fireworks were launched at the turn of the year.  A few hours later it was finished and so is, technically, the first significant piece of 2014.  Either way, it was pleasing to complete a painting that, whilst involving plenty of work, had come together reasonably quickly by my standards.  It is essentially a fairly straight full-scale translation of a well-developed sketchbook study; a procedure that has worked well enough for me in recent times.

'Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1', Sketchbook Study,
Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 2013

If I’m honest, I find the most enjoyable stage in any painting usually comes around three quarters of the way through.  At that stage, the major components will usually be well established, (I tend to ‘build’ my paintings in a fairly methodical fashion), many significant pictorial problems will have been resolved, and I can usually get a reasonable sense of how successful, (or otherwise), it will be.  There also tends to be a certain provisional freshness that is nearly always diminished as the final nuts and bolts are tightened.  I’ve often thought the best painters are the ones who let their paint do just enough and no more, or are unafraid to leave passages of a painting unresolved, providing an overall conclusion has been reached.  It’s never really been my own M.O. but maybe it takes thousands of hours of doing too much before one can learn to do just enough.

For now though, I can take considerable satisfaction from seeing a painting through to completion after so many earlier years of false starts and projects abandoned through lack of perseverance or belief.  I no longer get too bogged down in ‘the struggle’, as I once did, instead taking the view that, if a particular painting isn’t wholly successful, - perhaps the next one will be better.

‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’ picks up where the previous ‘BelgraveGate’ paintings left off.  It’s becoming clear that part of the agenda for these pieces is the attempt to integrate representational passages with more abstracted or textual elements.  At root, I think this is a reflection of their origins within a specific physical location, and the fact that the photographic sources on which they rely include recessional space, rather than the surface-emphasis that has usually informed much of my work.  Put simply, they are based on observed 'scenes'.

'Belgrave Gate: Yours 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2013

On a slightly more abstruse level, I’ve also become increasingly engaged with the potential of a painting to employ contrasting modes of depiction self-reflexively, within the same image.  Authenticity is of relatively little interest right now and these paintings represent, as ever, a search for subjective synthesis.  However, it is my belief that this approach does reflect my actual experience of specific environments such as my chosen tract of inner Leicester.  If my initial apprehension of such a place is a general visual impression, immersion within it, (often focusing on specific details), reveals multiple strands of meaning and association.  I find the act of ‘being’ on site for any length of time, (or on repeated occasions), releases numerous sensations and as a result, a complex web of thoughts and feelings that radiate out in different directions.  It’s the opposite of finding the singular ‘essence’ of a subject but, rather, a desire to account for the complexity, dynamism and transitions prevailing within a modern city.

'Belgrave Gate: Cave Wall 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2013

Where this painting does differ from the small ‘Belgrave Gate:Cave Wall’ paintings that preceded it, is in being something of a simplification, formally.  If they ultimately felt visually over-cluttered by too many layers of meaning, this one relies more simply on a single subject image featuring the conjunction of Belgrave Gate, Burleys Flyover and the roundabout junction beneath it.  The entire composition, including the strong central traffic lights in the foreground, is based directly upon this original source which plays a more important role than ever before.  The main textual and semiotic components, while relatively bold, are pushed back into the background, (where they are incorporated by colour and tone into an implied sky), or float insubstantially over a middle ground that feels like it could be receding behind the traffic lights.  The inclusion of words in my images remains as important as ever, despite playing second fiddle to an overall illusion here.  

Burleys Flyover, Belgrave Gate, Leicester, 2013

Divali Lights, Belgrave Road (Looking Towards 
Belgrave Gate), Leicester, 2013

The subject of ‘Festival Of Lights’ is a pretty clear reference to the traffic signals that chop and dice the flow of traffic on both of the Belgrave Gate roundabouts, and, even more famously, along the stretch of Belgrave Road extending in the direction of the painting’s direction arrow in its blue roundel.  That ‘Golden Mile’ might be so-named for the numerous Asian-owned jewelers or the endless parade of lights that seem to be perpetually turning amber, (in the folklore of local drivers).  It's also the site of Leicester’s famous Divali celebrations, (the Hindu Festival of Lights), and during the painting’s preparatory stages my daily commutes were illuminated by the elaborate decorative lights that festoon the route each year.  Belgrave Road itself is beyond the scope of my current project but the intermediate nature of Belgrave Gate makes it feels like a bridge to both that main artery and the South Asian cultural zone surrounding it.

Despite all this, the painting itself appears to be bathed in daylight.  This is actually a legacy of the original image, taken on a brilliant, windy day in early 2013 when the whole world seemed to flicker in a rather different kind of light-fest.  It’s also worth noting the red linear elements in the extreme lower foreground.  Whilst initially deriving from the pattern of white line road markings, their red colour now also implies the brake light trails of vehicles that habitually decelerate towards the junction.  They also supply a much-needed element of artificiality to a colour palette that was in danger of becoming just a little too naturalistic.

It’s too early to really judge the success of this painting but I’m happy enough with it for now overall.  Whilst it employs the kind of half-painting/half-collage techniques with which I’ve become pretty comfortable, the real issues it raises are around the efficacy of the representational modes employed.  I’m not unhappy with the decision to combine a variety of muted impressionism, (in the background architecture), with a looser brand of ‘painterly collage’ to depict passages of foliage.  I’m slightly less content with my handling of a kind of ‘straight’ illustrative style in the traffic lights and advancing flyover, (although, again, not actually with the decision to employ it).  If anything, this is just a reminder of how long it is since I seriously tried to engage with representational painting.  I can’t pretend that this painting wasn’t influenced to some extent by the work of Hurvin Anderson that impressed me so much at Birmingham’s Ikon last year.  A look back at that exhibition's catalogue reveals just how much work remains to be done.

Hurvin Anderson, 'Country Club: Chicken Wire', Oil On Canvas, 2008

Still, - no one ever promised me this stuff was easy…