Again And Again...

...Things connect...

Newlyn, Cornwall, April 2009

...Through space...

Nottingham, April 2014

...And Time.

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.

Dale vN Marshall: 'Walls With Wounds' At Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry

Dale vN Marshall, 'Beauty Is Always With You No. 2', Mixed Media On Canvas, 2013

2014’s frenetic round of exhibition and gallery going continues apace.  I can’t remember a period in recent years when quite so much of interest came along at the same time and, to be honest, I’m struggling to assimilate it all, (not to mention responding on here).  It’s not such a bad problem to have really, and might give me some clues about how I want my own work to progress in the near future.  I just need to ensure I don’t get deflected each time I see something new.  The key, as always, is to enjoy the immediate thrill of encountering something I hadn’t thought of myself, but to digest it all properly over time; and to retain faith in my own creative concerns rather than constantly questioning them in the light each new thing I see.  It all comes out in the wash eventually, and it's all about evolution, - not a series of half-cocked revolutions.  Also, one shouldn’t overlook the aspect of simple pleasure in viewing artworks.

Anyway, working on the principle that you only regret the things you didn’t do, (or see), I zipped over to Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery & Museum the other day, to view ‘Walls With Wounds’, an exhibition of paintings by Dale vN Marshall.  A former graffiti artist, (as ‘Vermin’), Marshall is now making a name for himself as a studio-based painter, having graduated from Coventry University.  In the event, the show was a bit of an eye-opener, in more ways than one.

Marshall’s biography to date takes in a period of ‘at risk’ existence as a graffiti writer and hard drug user in the Bristol & Bath area, and a history of serious mental illness, culminating in a period spent as an in-patient in Cornwall’s StLawrence’s Hospital, Bodmin.  The paintings on show were mostly produced during 2013, (representing a fairly impressive turnover), and amount to a somewhat harrowing attempt by Marshall to externalise, and hopefully, to move beyond these traumatic episodes in his life.

Dale vN Marshall, 'Fire Burn Bright', Mixed Media On Canvas, 2013

Amidst all the strategies and theoretical underpinnings of contemporary painting, it’s easy to overlook the medium’s ability to simply express feeling, and Marshall’s pieces are certainly some of the most deeply felt and cathartic I’ve seen in a while.  If his take on Abstract Expressionism sometimes feels slightly naive, it’s also a perfect antidote for the cynicism or distancing that pervades so much contemporary art.  For all that, this far more than simple Art Therapy, (not necessarily ‘simple’ at all, I realise), and it’s sufficiently ‘thought through’ to indicate that Marshall is already a ‘serious’ painter above all else.  It feels like the processes of rebuilding his once-shattered identity, and of artistic ‘becoming’, are very much two sides of the same coin for him.

Whilst fitting into a primarily Expressionist tradition, Marshall makes reference to a variety of external sources, in addition to the obvious internal ones.  As often happens with this branch of painting, he might actually be said to be, at heart, a painter of landscapes or other inhabitable environments.  If one wishes to find formal antecedents, it’s easy enough to draw comparisons with the work of Mark Tobey, Pollock, Twombly or, even, Rothko.  At times, I also thought of the automatic mark making experiments of Henri Michaux.

Dale vN Marshall, 'Drown', Mixed Media On Canvas, 2013

In one particular mode, Marshall employs fields of, dashes, scribbles, drips, threads and text fragments to build fields and networks of varying degrees of intensity and abandon, that, despite Marshall’s allusions to walls, often appear to recede into ambiguous space.  Generally, these peices walk a tightrope between order and chaos.  Often, a relatively stable grid emerges within the apparently random mark marks.  In nearly every case, these also coalesce into horizontal bands of contrasting density, somewhere around the central region of the canvas, which, inevitably, can be read as a notional landscape, or the surface of water.  Reading them less literally however, there can be a sense of violence or turmoil viewed at a remove, or a sense of physical or psychic fracture, (but potentially, of juncture also).

This motif becomes psychologically powerful, and even disturbing, through repetition but it’s not easy to decide if all this activity represents a search for order out of chaos or the opposite process of psychic unraveling, (potentially both, I’m guessing).  In this context, I couldn’t help reading his use of threads, sometimes taught, - at others loose and meandering.  In fact, Marshall’s employment of mixed media, including anti-bacterial varnish, wood ash, and foil) throughout the work lends it a visceral quality and is one of the exciting things about the show.

Dale vN Marshall, 'We Need To Transfer You Home', Mixed Media On Canvas, 2013

Much of that particular group of paintings exhibits a vivid palette that, by turns, might evoke fiery intensity or a variety of pastoral exuberance.  The latter might seem at odds with the harrowing events to which they specifically relate, (detailed in accompanying captions), until one considers the sense of euphoria which can accompany serious psychotic episodes.  This is directly alluded to in ‘Beauty Is Always With You No.2’, - perhaps my favourite piece in the show, where caligraphic elements play an important role in evoking both Marshall’s graffiti writing past, and archaic fragments of writing by children he claims to have found on the walls of his current studio.  The sense of a surface plane seems stronger in this piece than in much of the other work.

Dale vN Marshall, 'Stitched Wound No.1', Mixed Media On Paper, 2012' 

Dale vN Marshall, 'Stitched Wound, No.2', Mixed Media On Paper, 2012

Another category of Marshall’s painting is one I can’t help thinking of as ‘medical paintings’.  They address his experiences within the mental health system and, in their predominantly white colouration and incorporation of bandage or gauze-like materials, obviously evoke the sensory aspects of a hospital or associated medical environment.  Most dramatic here, is the way the horizontal divisions transform them selves into livid wounds, and the threads into fragile surgical stitches. Should the inclusion of this overt element of gore prove too melodramatic, In the smaller paper based, ‘Stitched Wounds 1 & 2’, Marshall incorporates his wounds into a geometrical armature relating to the street plans around St Lawrence Hospital and of Falmouth, where he experienced a severe psychotic crisis, prior to hospitalisation.

Perhaps this impressive ability to let the paintings operate on several levels, and indeed, Marshall’s powerful evocation of a ‘landscape of the mind’, is most affectingly seen in ‘Tell Me Nurse Am I Dead?’.  Heavily textured, but terrifying in its white, monochrome nullity, this cardboard-based piece suggests an abstracted aerial view of the Cornish landscape through which his ambulance carried him.  Convinced he was dead, he imagined the ambulance ascending into the sky.  Having recently returned from a Cornish jaunt myself, I couldn’t help reflecting on the contrast between Marshall’s relationship with that landscape, and my own, less traumatic one.

Dale vN Marshall, 'Tell Me Nurse Am I  Dead', Mixed Media On Card, 2013

I think it would be a mistake to regard this, ultimately, as a feel-good show, or exit with the sense that ‘all’s well that end’s well’.  Nevertheless, by inhabiting the existential realities of his life in this way, Marshall seems to demonstrate that, through accepting them and assimilating them through his art, he stands some chance of moving forward and somehow reclaiming some of the time lost to him.  There is certainly no shortage of courage and unflinching honesty about the work and, if ever proof were needed that creative endeavour can provide a path through, (if not necessarily, an escape from), the vicissitudes of life, this show might be it.  I can only wish him continuing success in his future endeavours, and hope that this process of psychic and artistic reconstruction continues.

Dale vN Marshall, ‘Walls With Wounds’, Continues At Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, Until 18 May 2014

Down The Penninsula 3: Harbouring Illusions

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014

When I was a child, my family periodically gathered at the house of an Aunt and Uncle.  The ritual often involved an extensive slide show of photos from their most recent holiday and, whilst I enjoyed the sense of occasion, (carousel loaded, - remote control ready, - lights out…), I now suspect that the numerous similar images of my relatives aboard a canal barge, on various sections of Britain’s canal network, would have only limited appeal to anyone outside our immediate family.  Time, (and technology), move on, but I have the occasional suspicion I just might be involved in an online variant of the same process.

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014.  My Rented Cottage Is Part Of The Terrace
At Upper Centre.

So, I apologise in advance to anyone already tired of viewing images from my recent Cornish sojourn.  This post includes a miscellany of shots that could be said to fit into a number of categories, but mostly just seem to relate to my ramblings in one way or another.  Hopefully, those observations and meditations elevate all this a little beyond the level of simple holiday snaps.  I guess it’s in the nature of any blog to be slightly self-indulgent, and these posts have at least reflected some of my most recent trains of thought.  I do believe that any meaningful creative practice is a way of life rather than merely an occupation, and it all feeds back into my artwork eventually, however obliquely.  We’ll be back to urban road systems, peeling posters and Midlands grey before long, - I promise.

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014.  Anyone In Need Of A Pint Could Do Much
Worse Than 'The Ship Inn', (Centre Right).

It’s impossible to spend any time in a village like Mousehole without becoming keenly aware of the acutely mediated nature of the whole ‘Cornwall Experience’.  It is a classically characterful, ‘traditional’ fishing port, complete with a small harbor, a maze of narrow winding streets, and several quaint folk traditions.  It also contains numerous small commercial gallery/gift outlets, refreshment opportunities, rented cottages and second homes.  There is just one remaining shop where one might purchase anything resembling life’s essentials, but several smart restaurants and an over-priced specialist deli. (£3-plus for a pasty?!).  There’s a perpetual procession of contractor’s trucks negotiating the narrow streets on their way to refit/upgrade yet another cottage and, usually, a small cluster of window shoppers around the estate agency, (no longer a post office though, I note).  Don’t get me started on the numerous big Mercs. and Chelsea Tractors that often overwhelm the limited parking facilities.

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014

Of course, I realise this is all rank hypocrisy as I’m merely another occasional visitor in search of rest and respite from the routines of city life.  Despite all of the above, I didn’t choose less favoured accommodation in the workaday suburbs of St Austell or Redruth and can still happily claim a great affection for Mousehole as a place to idle away my down-time.  Could I live there? - I doubt it.  Could I afford to? - Definitely not.  Could a young local native on a low to average income, (assuming they could find paid employment)? - Silly question; the proportion of rentable accommodation and second homes, and resulting hike in property prices, long since passed any tipping point sustainable by an impoverished local economy.

Pendeen, Cornwall, February 2014

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014

What Mousehole is, in ‘reality’, is a microcosm of Cornwall’s essential dilemma.  With it’s traditional industries long dead or in serious decline, fragile infrastructure and remote(ish) location [1.], it is left with little on which to trade beyond miraculous scenery, a climate that alternates between the benign and the dramatic, history, and numerous opportunities for the comfortably-off to escape the humdrum.  Its identity becomes extruded through increasingly stylised filters of turquoise water, suspiciously clean fishing nets, Breton stripes and short crust pastry.  This is a situation in which most of the conventionally attractive or heritage-laden parts of Britain, (or indeed, the whole world?), increasingly find themselves.  Put a fence round the Lake District and you’d have a serviceable leisure/heritage compound for the Gore-Tex and poetry set.  The older quarters of most cathedral cities increasingly resemble a perpetual Renaissance Fayre.  Ever been to the ‘perfect’ Cotswolds town of Bourton On The Water? – It’s second only to Las Vegas in its hyperreality.

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014

Meanwhile, deprived of viable local employment opportunities, - the indigenous Cornish population find themselves relocating to Plymouth, Bristol and points beyond, in search of work, while their fictitious ancestors inhabit the atmospheric quaysides of memory in numerous gallery-window depictions.  Some may find piecemeal employment servicing the tourism, leisure and lifestyle industries that now proliferate, although I suspect the most enterprising expressions of that are often the brainchild of marketing-savvy incomers or regional outposts of some bigger chain.

And that’s before we really start on Art.  The idea of the artist heading South West, (however sincere their motives), just sounds like another cliché as soon as you say it, - doesn’t it?  And, however carefully one tries to distance oneself from tourist-friendly predictability, it’s incredibly difficult to escape the pull of that particular, distilled visual experience we see in generations of the Newlyn and St. Ives Schools.  You can’t escape that ever-changing light, that tendency of the rugged landscape to abstract itself into Hepworthian forms, or the sea and sky to rationalise themselves into parallel blocks of pure atmosphere.  The clouds part and Heron’s saturated colour vibrations emerge unbidden.  A squall blows in, and legions of visitors seek shelter in The Tate.

Peter Lanyon, 'Soaring Flight', Oil On Canvas, 1960

Some do manage to transcend the obvious.  Long after his early death [1.], Peter Lanyon still retains considerable immersive potential through his scrambling of the elements and aviator’s viewpoints, somehow.  Some of the artists mentioned in my post on St. Ives’ Millennium Gallery, and even more younger ones, attempt to filter the landscape through more contemporary contexts or technologies.  Karl Weschke brought a typically Germanic Expressionism to bear upon the matter, and I still remember him exclaiming, “They all come looking for their subtle light effects, but this landscape kills people!” [2.].  Despite of figures like that, I sometimes have to remind myself not to lump ‘Cornish Art’ together, mentally, as a regional style or some other category of marketable phenomenon.

Karl Weschke, 'Body On The Beach', Oil On Canvas, 1977-78

I wouldn’t want all this to sound like I’ve grown terminally cynical about Cornwall.  I’ve had plenty of good times there and will again, I’m sure.  Perhaps the habit of regarding any given location through Psychogeographical eyes has become too ingrained in me, or else, I just want to have my cake and eat it.  Should Mousehole one day become a complete ra-ra playground, like Padstow or Rock, I might need to find an alternative venue but, thankfully, we’re not quite there yet.

Levant Mine Ruins, Pendeen, Cornwall, February 2014

Also, of course, any quest for some imagined sense of ‘authenticity’ would be the most bogus thing of all.  As I now appreciate, (and I’m sure you worked out long ago), all these contexts and degrees of Post Modern remove ARE the reality of the situation.  When Mousehole’s harbour was crammed with working boats and fish guts ran down its gutters, the inhabitants were merely responding to prevailing economic opportunities, just as the purveyors of fishing smocks and fitters of designer kitchens do today.  The complex layers of meaning and overlapping frames of reference to be found there are different, but no less intriguing, than those I encounter wandering around Leicester or Birmingham, (just under better illumination).

Mousehole, Cornwall, February 2014

Newbridge, Cornwall, February 2014

Paradoxically, on reviewing my photos, I discover that, whatever philosophical agenda I imagine I’m pursuing, many of them still tend to default to carefully composed formalism or some other variety of delight in the pure appearance of things.  I start photographing telegraph polls and power lines on the pretext of commenting on the introduction of fragile modern infrastructure into a more archaic context, only to find it’s mostly just the network of silhouetted lines that really engage me.  Before I know it, this has opened out into a general exploration of the visual geometry of miscellaneous frameworks and linear structures and I’m thinking about how important such features always seem down there, for some reason.  Elsewhere, amused references to Mousehole’s famous Christmas lights, as they are stowed away for the year [3.], become mostly about their juxtaposition with sheets of reflected sunlight.  As I so often find at home, it’s the deliberate inclusion of text elements that offers the most interesting subtextual clues.  Ultimately though, perhaps the purely sensory really will always overwhelm everything else in Cornwall.

Christmas Lights, Mousehole Harbour, Cornwall, February 2014

I think it’s time to end all the philosophising now.  It was only ever supposed to be a little holiday, after all.

Functional Lights, Mousehole Harbour, February 2014

Postscript:

As I compiled the footnotes to this already lengthy post, I realised that, in one way or another, they all reflect the darker flipside of the Cornish idyll.  Is this a reflection of the true nature of things, or just another variety of Romantic mythology?

[1.]:  Very few places in the British Isles could be regarded as really remote.  Or so it seemed, until high seas washed away the main railway line into Cornwall recently.

[2.]:  Painter, Peter Lanyon was also an enthusiastic glider pilot who died after he crashed his plane in 1964.  His experiences in the air had a profound influence on his perception of topography, and the relationship between land, sea and sky.  

[3.]:  Or words to that effect.  I’m recalling a conversation I was lucky enough to have with Weschke as a student in 1982.  He was a Volunteer Coastguard on one of the most treacherous stretches of British coastline, at the time and, as such, was rather more in touch with existential implications of his chosen situation than most.

[4.]:  The illuminations provide a pleasingly cheesy boost to the town’s seasonal economy, attracting coach loads of visitors every year.  More poignantly, they are also a solemn reminder of the Penlee lifeboat disaster that rocked Mousehole on 19 December 1981.  The lights were initially left unlit after the tragedy, but reinstated three days later on the request of Lifeboatman, Charlie Greehhaugh’s widow, Mary.  On each anniversary, they are extinguished for one hour at 8.00 pm, in memory of the lives lost.