Pop Classics: Robert Indiana & Roy Lichtenstein At Tate Modern

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

A slightly concerning slump in my general energy levels, and an attendant apathy regarding social media upkeep (remember when we didn't have to bother with all this striving for attention?), make this my first post of the month.  Only a Doctor might ultimately reveal if my physical lethargy represents anything more sinister than the creeping passage of middle age, and I guess it's ultimately up to me to decide about what I can and can't really be bothered with, digitally.  But, for now, let's persevere, and keep the pot at least simmering with a slight return to my last trip to London, in July.  In particular, this post relates to the pleasurable hour I spent with Tate Modern's current Pop Art display.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

I definitely enjoy the way the Tate constantly reshuffles and recontextualises its permanent or loaned collections - not least because it makes each repeat visit a potentially stimulating new experience.  Sometimes this leads one to discover something completely new, but this time it was also an opportunity to revisit some perennial favourites in a new configuration.  I remain a sucker for a bit of Pop, and am often surprised to discover how, in the case of the best examples at least, the genre's self-proclaimed superficialities haven't faded, anywhere near as rapidly as one might expect, over the years.  Some of this stuff is certainly very familiar, and has been rendered pretty ubiquitous through repeated mass-media regurgitation, but there is something quite appropriate about that, after all.  In reality,  I still find much of it can still raise a smile, when encountered at first hand.  

Robert Indiana, Sculptures, Tate Modern, London, July 2019

This time round, it was intriguing to witness how the Tate had juxtaposed certain American 'classics' with much less well-known, stylistically sympathetic examples from the other side of the Iron Curtain.  There's clearly plenty to consider regarding the apparent critique of Pop's embrace of Capitalist aesthetics, from opposing sides of the Twentieth Century's ideological divide, and perhaps that's something this post might have been about.  Instead, it's really about how I was more self-indulgently distracted by two of my old Pop favourites - and by certain correspondences between their work, and my own.

I've long been a fan of Robert Indiana - not least for the elegant, emblematic qualities of his work, and the elegance with which he incorporated textual elements into his visual statements.  This is all very familiar from his crisp two-dimensional works, but it's also there in his frequent forays into sculpture.  Best known of those are the welded steel 'Love' monuments which still crop up in various international cities, and have continued to proliferate in a variety of media and formats, over the decades.  But, here at Tate, I was delighted to discover a cluster of his slightly less familiar, herm-like totems, occupying the centre of a large room. 

'Sentinel' Sculptures, 'Visions Of A Free-Floating Island', Surface Gallery, Nottingham,
September 2018

I've always loved these, not least for their formal clarity, but perhaps most of all - for their distinctly human qualities.  It's difficult not to regard them as standing figures, I feel - and also not to notice their formal similarity to certain, far more ancient statues.  I'm also prompted to marvel at how Indiana was able to adapt the glib, monosyllabic invocations of commercial signage or labelling, to further suggest, something intrinsically human (either physically or emotionally).  Like all the best Pop Art, they allow scope for philosophical meditation, whilst retaining a formal accessibility.  Most importantly - they are distinctly witty.

And, of course, it's now impossible not to admit that they were clearly in my mind (either consciously or otherwise) as I was constructing my 'Sentinel' sculptures last year.  The scale, format, and resulting figurative characteristics of those, make the connection pretty obvious - as do my similar attempts to apply apposite textual excerpts to a sculptural format.  Also, they seem to be equally 'of the street' in their use of low grade, found materials.  There's even a submission to the somewhat corny, in at least one or two of the 'Sentinels' - although I certainly don't claim to have got away with that, with anything like the knowing cool of Robert Indiana.

'Sentinel 5', Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape & Paper Collage & Acrylics,
 2018

'Sentinel 2' Salvaged Cardboard Boxes, MDF, Adhesive Tape, Paper Collage & Acrylics,
2018

Anyway, when not revelling in Indiana's statues, or struggling to find clear camera angles in what was a very popular gallery space - I was equally pleased to revisit two works by Roy Lichtenstein, hanging on the wall beyond.  As icons of Pop go, they don't get much more archetypal or over-familiar than Lichtenstein's 'Whaam!'.  In many respects, it could be said to encapsulate everything that's most resonant about American Pop Art.  Relish for the immediacy and mass-appeal of commercially motivated imagery - tick.  Exploration of the visual and formal tropes of mechanically reproduction - tick.  Dialogue between 'high' and 'low' art and the translation of imagery between certain media typical of them - tick.  Juxtaposition of the candy-coated blandishments of consumption-driven affluence, and the darker aspects of actual history - tick.  Exploitation of the potential of key imagery to both insulate the viewer from uncomfortable reality, and simultaneously open-up avenues of internal philosophical debate - tick.  Perhaps never were existential inconveniences (i.e: war and human slaughter), rendered quite so superficially cheery in a piece of gallery art.  And, perhaps most impressively, given its perennial recycling and possible slight fading of pigments - it still feels almost as crisp, fresh and provoking, as it must have in 1963.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Whaam!', Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, 1963

Three years later, Lichtenstein made his own excursion into the third dimension, in the adjacent wall-mounted relief, 'Wall Explosion II'.  By extracting the already frozen and formalised emblem of the explosion, from 'Whaam!', and then rendering it in welded steel, he further pursued the idea of the instantaneous moment made tangible (or consumable - even).  Again, there's something both eloquent and undeniably 'Pop' (almost literally so) about the translation of a moment of destruction into a reproducible, and thus - marketable, commodity.  And his use of perforated mesh to allude to the ben-day dots of halftone reproduction, or even the stencils he might himself use to emulate them in paint, is just too damn clever for words.  Those are the same halftone dots I've tried to suggest or even collage into more than one of my own works, in recent years - but never in quite such a sophisticatedly oblique manner as Lichtenstein did here - sadly.

Roy Lichtenstein, 'Wall Explosion II', Enamel on Steel, 1965

R.I.P. Robert Indiana, 1929 - 2018

Robert Indiana

I was saddened to read of the recent death, aged 89, of the American Artist, Robert Indiana.  Pop Art continues to hold a significant influential sway over my own creative thinking, and (setting the two monuments of Johns and Rauschenberg aside - who I think of more as ‘proto-Pop’) Indiana is one of my favourite of the genre’s exponents.  In reality, Indiana himself (real name – Robert Clark) was ambivalent about the label.  However, I think it’s impossible to disassociate his work, with it’s emblematic graphic qualities, and relentless exploration of the links between text and image, with many of the defining characteristics of Pop.

Robert Indiana, 'Beware-Danger American Dream No.4', Oil On Four Canvases,  1963

Perhaps where he differed from the high celebrants of consumer culture, or the deadpan hipsters, was in the strand of sincere social conscience running through his imagery – for all its stylistic verve.  He may have adopted the quasi-commercial aesthetic language of the American Dream, but his real impulse seems to have been to question it, rather than to simplistically promote it.

Robert Indiana, 'The Figure Five', Oil On Canvas, 1963

An adoptee, with an apparently disturbed early life, Indiana appears to have presented as a somewhat disillusioned figure throughout his life - indeed, becoming increasingly reclusive and withdrawn in later life.  Perhaps it was this that led him to explore the disjuncture between societal fantasy and the underlying realities - as in, for example, in the mid 60s ‘Confederacy’ series, with its clear critical stance towards the racism of America’s southern states.

Robert Indiana, 'The Confederacy: Alabama', Oil On Canvas, 1965

Indiana’s most famous image is also one of the most over-familiar in 20^th Century Art – namely, the four-square ‘Love’ logo, which first came to prominence as a MOMA Christmas card in 1964.  It’s been co-opted and reproduced to the point of tired cliché over the years, (largely due to Indiana’s initial failure to copyright it) - and is often reduced to little more than a lazy shorthand for 60s Hippy culture.  And yet, when one wipes a way the cheese, it remains, I think – a properly resonant icon.

Robert Indiana, 'Love', Painted Aluminium, (New York City), 1966 - 1999

This is particularly true when rendered in its oft-replicated sculptural form.  There’s something just ‘right’ about the choice of Times-like font, and the formal stacking of the characters - whilst the jaunty angling of the ‘O’ was an inspired strategy, in terms of graphic communication.  Most of all, I enjoy its semiotic potential in making a simple, but incredibly resonant term solid, and thus exposing the tricky relationships between a word as object, as symbol, and as meaning.  I don’t know if Indiana was trying to make love solid in the world, after a start in life in which it may have seemed somewhat allusive – but he actually created one of the most popular (and, in my view - one of the few properly successful) examples of public art.

Robert Indiana, 'Four', Oil On Gesso, On Wood With Wire & Metal Wheels, 1962

Ultimately, there's far more to Indiana's work than just 'Love', and no shortage of more complex and sophisticated images in his oeuvre.  Indeed, my own current concerns remind me that I should really reinvestigate his totemic columnar sculptures with some urgency.  Nevertheless, if spreading 'Love' around the world were to be chiefly what he was remembered for - it's not such a bad legacy, I suppose.

'Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth' At Royal Academy Of Arts, London

Jasper Johns, 'Target', Encaustic & Collage On Canvas, 1961

Over the recent Half Term holidays, I went to view The Royal Academy’s current 'Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth' retrospective exhibition, along with my friends, Tim and Andrew.  It’s a show I’ve been anticipating all year.  Here are some of the things I learned:

• The early pieces with which Johns made such an impact, still feel strangely – almost hermetically, unassailable.  We’ve lived with copious reproductions of those targets, Stars & Stripes flags, US maps and numerals for over half a century, and yet the effect of the originals remains urgent and immediate.  And, despite such familiarity, the chances to see the real things, here in Europe - have been few and far between.  My initial reaction, on approaching these pieces for the first time, was a surprisingly emotional one of real joy.

Jasper Johns, 'Flag', Encaustic & Collage On Canvas, 1967

• There’s a crisp freshness about many of these pieces.  The target and flags that greet the visitor at the start of the exhibition show little of the aging or loss of vibrancy one might expect from paintings of their vintage.  Does the wax involved in Johns’ encaustic technique help to somehow fix the pigments – or were they just always particularly well cared-for as a result of their almost instant market value?

Jasper Johns, 'Map', Encaustic & Collage On Canvas, 1962 - 63

Jasper Johns, '0 Through 9', Charcoal & Pastel On Paper, 1961

• That initial celebratory rush gave way to a more reflective appreciation of just how much of an influence Johns’ characteristic aesthetic, and general demeanour have been on me over the years.  It emphasised the extent to which I have quoted him, both wittingly and unwittingly, on numerous occasions.  My ‘Vestige’ paintings from last year may - I now realise, be as much a subconcious paraphrasing of his ‘Canvas’, as they are a response to the actual street-based subject that triggered them.  My enthusiasm for a certain variety of battleship grey (Johns is a master of the greys), and deployment of text elements within my work - are as attributable to the influence of Johns as to that of any other artist possibly associated with them. 

Jasper Johns, 'Canvas', Encaustic & Collage On Canvas, 1956

• The established art historical significance of Johns’ breakthrough pieces is well rehearsed, and the passage of time has inevitably cemented them into the general canon of Modern Art.  It’s hard for us to fully appreciate now, the real disruptive effect their recourse to external ‘subject’ must have presented to the Abstract Expressionist certainties of mid-century New York painting.  Johns’ destruction of his very earliest work indicates his emergence wasn’t quite as fully formed and instantaneous as official history suggests, but does emphasise the degree to which it represented a significant step-change in everyone’s artistic priorities (including his own).  If Duchamp once pointed the way out of established European tropes, perhaps Johns (and Rauschenberg) did the same for American art.

• In fact, it actually feels like Johns’ agenda was often one of repurposing Duchamp’s pioneering promotion of the idea over the sensory appeal of the artifact - back in favour of the resonant art object.  There is a certain stripe of conservatism running through Johns, who remains, at his core - a maker of beautiful things.  He seems to epitomise my own trite personal mantra that Art is certainly a branch of Philosophy – but one in which you still get the joy of making stuff.

Jasper Johns, 'Fool's House', Oil, Sculpt-Metal & Charcoal On Canvas
With Objects, 1961-62

• Johns has naturally beautiful visual handwriting.  He is one of Art’s consistently elegant scribblers and possesses an enviable deftness with the nominally expressionistic brush stroke.

Jasper Johns, 'Periscope (Hart Crane)', Oil On Canvas, 1963

• For all that, his deployment of the gestural mark actually appears to serve a different purpose.  There’s a distancing effect in the early works, in which Johns appears to quote expressionism as a formal option, rather than an unconscious outpouring - and as a means to create nuance and a friction of new implications within his utilitarian, given subjects.  Put simply - to modulate and encrust formal elements that we expect to be functional signs, is to invest them with new layers of potential meaning.

• …And, I’ve always loved the pictorial tension between a loose, painterly fields and a crisp, precise edge – of which Johns is a consummate master.

Jasper Johns, 'The Critic Sees', Sculpt-Metal On Plaster With Glass, 1961

• Sculptures like ‘The Critic Sees’, or the ‘Painted Bronze’s, are among the most elegant jokes in Modern Art, and feel distinctly part of Duchamp’s legacy.

Jasper Johns, 'Painted Bronze', Oil On Bronze, 1961

Jasper Johns, 'Painted Bronze', Oil On Bronze, 1960

• If Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were once roped together, (even more intimately than Braque and Picasso, at another pivotal moment in western art), how fortunate are we to have been presented with major retrospectives of both artists in recent months?  The chance to compare and re-evaluate works so emblematic of their particular moment - and so freighted with significance, (and to mostly find them still vital and enduring in resonance) feels like a luxury.  This show hasn’t been without its detractors, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

• In the light of this, is it too obvious to observe the inconvenient (but oft-repeated) sense of a diminution of power in the later work of both artists?  Of course, these things never travel in an undeviatingly straight line, or as explicably as art critics and historians would wish.  Nevertheless, both retrospectives seem to suggest a certain dilution in the intensity of each artist’s powers or effect, as time went on.  Is this the price to be paid for such early acclaim? - or a debilitating function of the foaming art market? - or simply an assertion that almost no one can keep scaling the same lofty heights of eloquence they once did, whilst simultaneously avoiding the spiral into repetition and self-parody?

Jasper Johns, 'Spring', Encaustic On Canvas, 1986

• And this is, of course, the real dilemma with John’s career.  The prevailing theory that his work beyond the 1970s represents a notable fall-off in quality and purpose is commonly heard, but I was determined to seize the opportunity to make up my own mind.  The sad fact is, all three of us found more foundation in that view than we might have hoped for.  Regrettable though that may be, 'Something Resembling Truth' must surely trump any desire to airbrush an artist’s reputation.  Perhaps we should instead be grateful that an artist who seems almost too good to be true, early on, proved himself merely human after all.  And ultimately, I’d defend the right of any artist to struggle on for as long as they feel the need to – regardless of the outcomes.  The truth is, it’s probably less of a problem for Johns than it is for his audience and critics.

Jasper Johns, 'Racing Thoughts', Encaustic & Collage On Canvas, 1983

• For what it’s worth, my own ‘problem’ seems connected to John’s desire to replace his earlier, peerless demeanour of cool detachment, with one in which he admitted personal emotions and insights into the work.  But that’s hardly a crime per se.  Indeed, it still forms the main agenda of a huge proportion of artists.  And the impulse to collage more personal allusions, obscure signifiers and tangential references into an oeuvre where once elegant distillation or a tendency toward minimalist concentration once held sway, is a forgivable ambition.  It might even represent a degree of personal growth on Johns’ part.  The real issue is a seeming difficulty in realising his new agenda.  There’s a sense of an artist forcing the ideas more, at the same time as the ability (or energy) to resolve them is somehow diminished.

Jasper Johns, 'Montez Singing', Oil On Canvas, 1989-90

• What feels most disappointing is the transition in Johns’ work from sublime plasticity (be it painterly, sculptural, or in print), to a dispiritingly thin variety of illustration.  It seems ironic that his shift to more personal subjects, and emotional insights, should seem them merely described (often poorly), rather than evoked.  It’s a seeming reversal of his earlier state of sensual philosophy.  The use of supposed trompe-l’oeil effects, feels particularly shoddy (all those corny peeling corners and badly-rendered nails).  It could have been an interesting strategy, but actually ends up feeling lazy and lame.  The quotation of child-art eyes and lips is especially embarrassing (when it might have been a effective paraphrase).  A painting like ‘Montez Singing’ looks like a waste of a lunch break.  It’s all somewhat dispiriting, and I was surprised by how much anger it seemed to unleash within us.  Is that just an inevitable pit-fall of hero worship, I wonder?

• Of course, it could just be that John’s mark-making is better suited to the abstract that to the representational.  Could my adverse reaction be because that is how I feel about my own?

Jasper Johns, 'Between The Clock And The Bed', Oil On Canvas, 1981

Jasper Johns, 'Corpse And Mirror', Oil On Sand On Canvas, 1974 - 75

• Although it represents a transitional phase between ‘classic’ early Johns, and the more questionable later work, I still find much to like in his works from the 1970s and early 80s – in which all over patterns of hatching and flagstones take precedence over the more overtly emblematic motifs of previous years.  These new devices might appear to hark back to the painterly concerns of the Abstract Expressionists, but there’s still a sense of conscious deliberation about Johns’ new methods of getting across a canvas.  They feel like signifiers for certain Ab Ex. tropes, rather than an unmediated outpouring of emotion or spirituality, and despite their more obscure, personal origins are essentially just new elements of vocabulary within Johns’ own invented pictorial language.  There is a sense of layered meanings filtered through these broken fields; but they are mainly still references to external sources or quotations from other artists (such as Edvard Munch) – rather than any non-specific expressionism.

Jasper Johns, 'Dancers On A Plane, 'Oil On Canvas With Painted Bronze Frame', 1980

• Thankfully, not all the news from the latter portion of the exhibition is as bad.  The ‘Regrets’ series feels to me like a moderate return to at least some of Johns’ intrinsic strengths.  He selects a single, found motif in a photo of Lucian Freud, commissioned by Francis Bacon.  Instead of overburdening it with additional imagery, he allows its resonances to emerge through the layering and mirroring of this single source; for the negative shape created by the photo’s damaged portion to become a formal pictorial element of some significance; and for the ghostly skull which haunts the series to be found through pictorial chance operation - rather than tritely imposed.  Lest we forget, Johns moved in the same circles as John Cage, back in the day.

 

Jasper Johns, 'Regrets', Oil On Canvas, 2013

• Whilst the exhibition closes with a perfectly acceptable painting derived from the Freud image, the full implications of the ‘Regrets’ series really play out in a suite of printed variations on the theme.  Johns continues to quote himself (and others) in all this, but it feels like he’s digging a bit deeper again, and releasing things rather than merely forcing them.

Jasper Johns, 'Regrets (State 13)' Aquatint On Paper, 2013

• The underlying theme of ‘Regrets’ is a fairly standard one of ageing and impending demise -  underpinned by a distinct sense of existential despair.  But, surely that’s forgivable from an octogenarian artist – isn’t it?  Would that we might all be working as productively as Johns, at a similarly advanced age.

'Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth' runs until 10.12.17 at: Royal Academy Of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1S 3ET.

Completed Painting: 'Map 5'

'Map 5', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 90 cm, 2015

As I predicted, the demands of producing as much work as I can for June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ Exhibition, is deflecting me from writing too many blog posts just now.  Hence, this is a little delayed, - referring, as it does, to a painting that I completed a three weeks ago now.  On top of that, the piece itself took somewhat longer to finish than I’d originally hoped.  Never mind, everything arrives in its own time and, whilst I can always wish I worked faster, I certainly can’t beat myself up for slacking.  This is all, of course, a largely unpaid vocation, but I’m definitely putting in the hours just now.

‘Map 5’ is, unsurprisingly, the latest of my ‘Map’ paintings and has ended up looking uncannily like the others in several respects.  Each time, I’ve set out with the intention of pushing a new painting in a slightly different direction, only to find I’m actually producing a surprisingly homogeneous little body of related pieces.  Is this because I’m just trying to keep turning them out in a somewhat head-down, unreflective manner?  Am I in danger of just producing the same painting over and over again?  Who knows?

'Map 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2015

One thing’s for certain, - now isn’t the time for second thoughts.  The time to appraise all this will be when they’re hanging together in Rugby, alongside Andrew Smith’s work, and my own, somewhat different photographic pieces.  Only then will I really be able to take a deep breath; assess what did or didn't work,  and what I might carry forward into future efforts.

'Map 4', Acrylics & Paper Collage On panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2015

For now, the main issue is whether I can meet a deadline whilst maintaining the quality of and belief in what I’m doing.  So far, I’m unusually optimistic.  In terms of quantity, there should be around two thirds of what I might once have hoped for in an ideal world, - but that was always (deliberately) unrealistic, and one’s reach should always exceed one’s grasp, after all.  If, as now seems possible, the show is comprised of wholly new work, (produced since the exhibition slot was secured), - then that will actually feel like quite an achievement.  More importantly, I do believe in these paintings.  Whatever their shortcomings, they have been produced with sincerity.

B&Q DIY Warehouse, West Leicester, February 2015

There are actually one or two differences between this painting and the four that precede it.  The most obvious is the move from a square format to a horizontal rectangular one.  This 2:3 format derives from the painting’s main visual source, - namely a set of service gates at the local B&Q DIY warehouse in Leicester [1.].  This is the first of the ‘Maps’ to take its compositional framework from an actual visible subject in that way.

B&Q DIY Warehouse, West Leicester, February 2015

I’ve already mentioned how the majority of the wood, PVA, and hardware that go into my paintings come out of that particular store.  It’s both relatively local and on my way home from work.  It’s also situated opposite the corner, with its row of advertising hoardings, that I’d already identified as a prime location for my ‘Map’ paintings.  Certainly, I’ve passed these gates hundreds of times over the years, and always been drawn to their delightful quality of irregularity-within-formality.  Whilst nominally a regular, utilitarian arrangement of four orange painted panels, - the gates are actually full of nuance and history.  Repairs, irregularly sixed replacement panels, repaints, colour mismatches, graffiti and a haphazard wealth of Health and Safety notices have all combined to create a lovely screen of banal beauty.  I’ve wanted to do something about them for ages, and now realise they actually hark back to the industrial shutters that triggered my ‘Closed’ and ‘Shut’ paintings from a couple of years ago.

'Closed 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Paper, 100 cm X 100 cm, 2012

'Shut 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Two Joined Panels.
150 cm X 100 cm Overall, 2012

Taking the essential format of the gates for my composition, the painting itself became a screen on which to float a section of street map relating to the location, along with specific references to found signage text and graffiti fragments from the original subject, the stylised triangular arrows from an adjacent sign, and the dominant “If you need help please ask” legend.  The latter is slightly paraphrased from another sign found in the car park beyond.  In my mind, it might become as much of a philosophical injunction, or a pointer towards a succesully-lived life, as a singularly patronising reference to the use of the establishment’s shopping trolleys.  Once again, I realise that these paintings are all about seeking drama and magic (or, more realistically, some form of contemplative resonance), within what are really very mundane routines and journeys.

B&Q DIY Warehouse, West Leicester, February 2015

It will come as no surprise that the orange, white, (and a little grey), palette comes from the B&Q livery.  This co-opting of corporate chromatic identities to provide a painting’s colour scheme is something that has become common throughout the ‘Map’ series to date [2.].  Just as certain tunes might get lodged in one’s head, I often become fixated on certain colour juxtapositions.  I’ve had a thing about orange and grey for a while and this was an obvious opportunity to scratch that particular itch.

Another way in which this painting differs from the previous four is in my having crossed the road and largely left the advertising posters behind.  Layers of torn poster material from the hoardings opposite the warehouse do still form the collaged basis of the piece, but there are relatively few fragments still visible on the final surface, and relatively few passages half-tone dots.  Here though, they have been partially replaced by the labels from packs of the own-brand masking tape used in the painting’s production.  I do enjoy all this knowing self-reflexivity.

Like all the other ‘Map’ pieces to date, I simply worked on this one with relatively little pre-planning, until it appeared to have reached some kind of reasonably balanced conclusion.  There were no preparatory sketches or studies, and just a handful of reference photos.  There was however, a pretty vivid sense of my personal response to a particular site, which was something I was able to keep topping up, even as I replenished my materials supplies to complete it. 

In truth, the painting ended up a lot busier and more congested than I’d originally intended, which seems to have become my default method for resolving these ‘Map’ compositions.  It seems that working without much pre-planning leads me to keep chucking in more and more, accumulating a mulch of guesses and mis-steps, until the thing seems somehow satisfied.  Perhaps this is one reason for repeatedly returning to strategies that have already worked in previous pieces.  Consequently, I do wonder whether I might return to this ‘subject’ in an attempt to achieve something a little more distilled, or which goes in a slightly different direction, when time allows.

[1.]:  Should I be accused of advertising, I should point out that other (although not many), other large DIY outlets are available.  Topically, this week has brought the news that B&Q are themselves struggling and propose to close a significant proportion of their stores.  Should we be so surprised that the DIY market is flagging, given the inability of increasing numbers of Brits to buy, (or even rent), a home nowadays?

[2.]:  I still maintain a considerable affection for much Pop Art, even if much of that movement might be seen as a less-than-critical celebration of mid-twentieth century consumer capitalism.   My own position might be described as a rather more nuanced or disillusioned acknowledgement of the extent to which commercial concerns have now absorbed our lives - shaping our physical, perceptual and mental landscapes in the process.