Completed Painting: 'Untitled 6 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 6 (Constructed City)', Acrylics & Screen Print on Panel, 60 cm x 60 cm, 2020

Working on several pieces simultaneously once more, seems to be paying off, just now.  Here's 'Untitled 6 Constructed City', pretty much hot on the heels of '5', whilst my focus has already shifted to '7' and '8'.  Apologies - working like this leaves no time to spend on thinking up more imaginative titles.

Much of what I outlined in relation to '5' carries over into this one, but with one very obvious difference.  There I was getting all preoccupied with the relationship between digitally abstracted imagery, and its translation into some form of 'pure' painting - and with how that implied some shift away from physically collaged elements, when they promptly reappeared as the top layer of this one.  For once, I'm not going to waste too much time agonising over the whys and wherefores of that.  Yes - it's generally useful to set parameters for any piece (or group of related pieces) -  but rules are also made for breaking.  The collaged, screen printed sections seen here, definitely add something that was lacking before they appeared, and that's good enough to be going on with.      

 

One thing they did achieve, was a better tonal range overall, and I'd be lying if I claimed gluing on sections of printed paper wasn't a quicker way to get there than re-masking and over-painting even some of the underlying silver areas.  There's only so much masking tape in the world, after all.  More important, perhaps - is the greater degree of visual complexity that emerged, along with the implication of another layer of distinct reality.  I even like the slight awkwardness of the resulting augmented composition.   

Perhaps an on-going dialogue between the distilled simplicity I discussed in relation to '5', and the greater complexity exhibited here, will become a feature of this run of paintings - who knows?  But - as touched upon above, perhaps the best thing to do is to stop predicting outcomes, or inventing  regulations for the sake of it - and to simply get on with making the work in whichever manner seems most appropriate at the time.  

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 4 (Constructed City)'

 

'Untitled 4 (Constructed City)', Acrylic, Screen Print & Paper Collage on Panel,
60 cm x 60 cm, 2020

These 'Constructed City' paintings are still hardly rapid in their emergence, but at least things are still gradually progressing.  Here's '4' - the latest to be completed since the sorry lock-down saga began, and the second with these slightly larger proportions.  While writing about its predecessor, I intimated that scale definitely felt like a bit of an issue with these images - although I'm still to fully analyse why that might be, to my own satisfaction.  I'm sure that it's partly to do with the relative size of various painterly marks - and perhaps how perceptions alter when a more precisionist manner of working is adopted.  However, I still suspect it has something to do with general confidence too - which isn't necessarily as easily addressed in purely mechanistic terms.

In the latter case, the only real solution I know is to keep working with an open mind - and to take whatever momentum can be extracted from whatever bits of perceived progress do occur.  Dwelling on negatives is clearly futile - that I do know [1.].  Luckily, this painting feels like it may offer more than a little encouragement, in that respect.  My discussion of '3', also covered some of the difficulties I'd had in resolving that particular painting, and the ways in which doing so resulted in a rather different kind of image from that originally intended.  This newest version was hardly without its element of struggle, also.  However, in this case, the difficulties came early on, and mostly involved the establishment of that fragmented silver and white 'ground'.  Once that was resolved, and the process of dividing it with further collaged printed elements, things flowed with an encouraging fluidity.  The result was a painting which (I think) feels much less laboured -  and one which was resolved with a much lighter touch overall.  Surprisingly, for the painting in this little group with the least prior planning, to date - it also feels a bit closer to what I might have been hoping for when I set off up this road.

Ultimately, what I'm really describing is really just what has long been called 'The Creative Process'.  Many might also regard it as stuff that should just remain in the artist's head - rather than being self-indulgently dribbled all over the internet.  No one ever said all this was supposed to be easy - after all, and most creative practitioners will affirm that you have to  hack through a lot of frustrating terrain to get to the good stuff.  Whether or not that really is worthy of public discussion, and whether or not this really is some of 'the good stuff' - I'll leave for others to decide.  Maybe it's just another step along the way - and perhaps, merely some of the better stuff.  But, for now, whatever it is - I'll take it.

[1.]:  Over numerous older posts, I've discussed the various self-defeating mental road blocks I used to habitually erect as impediments to producing work - or to deriving much satisfaction from those things I did complete.  I've also reflected on how much more successfully I've managed to power on through them, in recent years - even when perceived difficulties arise.  Each time I prove that point to myself anew, the old version of events (and the need to rehearse all my old insecurities) feels even less relevant.  'Nuff said. 

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 3 (Constructed City)'

'Untitled 3 (Constructed City)', Acrylic, Screen Print & Paper Collage on Panel,
60 cm x 60 cm, 2020

Greetings from Plague Town!  I can't pretend Leicester's exceptional status, as the only British city to remain in strict(ish) pandemic lock-down, has impacted my own life too distressingly.  However, there is a palpable sense of frustration (and indeed, mounting anger) abroad, over the reckless behaviour and mismanagement that may have brought our local situation about.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of all that (as ever - I suspect the blame lies at several doors), It's frustrating to remain in a state of relative limbo, particularly as the rest of the country gropes its way towards something resembling rehabilitation.  Sadly, I doubt we'll be the only place to encounter such difficulties, before this whole sorry saga is over.  One can only hope something useful will have been learned from the mistakes made here (ha!) - not that the thought of being a test-bed for calamity is exactly comforting.

Anyway, as I say, my own existence remains relatively uncompromised - on a day-to-day basis, at least.  I had been going into work for a few days a week, over the last month, despite the fact that our school remained closed to the majority of students.  And there was some satisfaction to be gleaned from breaking the week up - and in regaining a partial sense of purpose in the outside world.  But that's once more on hold, given that, regardless of the lock-down conditions, we're now officially (if somewhat laughably) in the Summer holidays.  It feels fairly futile to try to predict exactly what awaits us in the 2020-21 academic year (besides more complications and uncertainty - no doubt), so for now, I'm a completely free agent, with only myself to answer to.  I really can't complain.  There are plenty of folk out there who'd give their eye teeth to be in this situation (and still getting paid).  And the answer - as ever, is pretty straightforward; just get on with some artwork.

So, in that spirit, here's the latest of my 'Constructed City' paintings to reach completion.  I've already described my slightly tentative entry into this particular phase of work, as reflected in the limited dimensions of the two panels previously completed.  This one is a little bigger (although still far from large), and represents an attempt to take some momentum from completing the two tiddlers.  Perhaps it's all in my head - but scale really seems to be an issue with these paintings.  I've yet to fully analyse exactly why, but it's clearly something to do with the size of individual marks and zones of colour as a composition becomes more complex.  Even at this modest scale, the simple act of doubling the dimensions of the panel's sides from 30 cm to 60cm, seemed to raise a whole new set of issues.

In fact, the basic composition was initially pretty close to both '1' and '2', making this new one much more of an evolutionary step than a radical leap.  And the theme of veiled geometry, which had already emerged, was deliberately carried over here too.  However, in this case, it became apparent that the simple expedient of dragging a translucent field of paint across a portion of the nearly-completed painting wasn't going to work quite so well.  And so the piece entered a somewhat extended phase of formal subdivision and over-painting of that central passage, before anything even vaguely resembling a satisfactory conclusion was reached.

In passing, it's also worth noting that this one includes an extension of the collage techniques already built into its predecessors.  As well as sections of some of my 'CC' screen prints, I was able to recycle some of the associated (and normally sacrificial) proofs - with a wash of indian ink applied over them.  That might seem a small thing perhaps, but it's always pleasing to devise a new method of covering some ground.  In this case, it's also justification of my belief that nothing is ever wasted.  Those proofs were originally laid onto notoriously unstable newsprint, so it'll be interesting to see how the painting ages. 

  

Anyway, if the final result is far more complex than originally intended, it' also represents a far more concerted process of problem-solving.  If I'm honest, I'm probably still not totally happy with the painting as a whole.  However, it does feels like some resolution was achieved - and that any unanswered questions are now best left for the next attempt.  And, actually, with hindsight, such pieces often prove to have been the most useful in any body of work.  Opening a whole new can of pictorial worms, even within a limited arena, is always more instructive, in the long term, than merely repeating what one already knows.

Onward...



   

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 2 (Constructed City)'

'Untitled 2 (Constructed City)', Acrylic & Collaged Screen Print on Panel,
30 cm x 30 cm, 2020

Here's the second painting to be completed as part of my 'Constructed City' project.  It's clearly a companion-piece to the one in my last post - being identical in scale, and very similar in composition and overall handling.  There's also a clear lineage between both these little paintings, and the paper-based studies and sketchbook collages that preceded them.

If this return to a rather methodical approach, and the fairly linear development that characterises it, suggest a degree of caution - it is at least bearing fruit.  And there is already some degree of new ground broken here (and also, a rather more overt element of pictorial risk-taking), in the form of the bright orange field which occupies the composition's central section.  Scraping fluorescent orange paint over much of the painting was the last significant action on this piece (barring a couple of minor additions), and was, inevitably, something of a make-or-break move.

But, as we all know, being prepared to kill one's darlings is a tried and tested principle (if not a cliche) of any creative endeavour.  In this case, it effectively dispelled any fears of having made the same painting twice, and also represented an element of sheer instinct intruding  into a process that had, as I've pointed out, been relatively tentative up to that point.  Taking that risk, and (I think) making a painting that is far more satisfying than it would have been otherwise, is a massive confidence-booster too.  That's important, not least in terms of what might follow.

This pulling back of the magician's curtain may be slightly more of an affectation than many viewers really seek, when looking at artwork - I'll accept.  However, I see no harm in asserting that most 'successful' artworks reach that state because the artist trusted a hunch, or went out on a limb at some point - rather than because they had predicted the exact consequences of each and every action.

Should anyone require it - there is a more literalist explanation for something that certainly didn't appear in any of the painting's preparatory images.  One prominent feature of the construction sites I've been photographing almost religiously for some time, is the swathing of their structural geometry in layers of tarpaulin and other gauzy screening materials.  Might this presage some ultimate magician's reveal of the completed edifice, on the part of the builders?  I'd love to believe so.  Certainly, there may be some PR-driven urge to suggest that such massive physical interventions into the urban landscape could be erected with the minimum of inconvenient 'process' or visual offence.  More prosaically though, we must also accept that, in the main, all this Christo-esque [1.] wrapping is a response to Health & Safety legislation.

West Leicester, March 2020

Trent Bridge, Nottingham, July 2019

What it does do, visually at least, is to create the delicious complex of interlocking grids and overlapping translucent veils of colour, to which my lens is repeatedly drawn.  In this case, it also takes-on the Hi-Vis hue of that familiar expanded plastic fencing mesh, which is similarly prevalent on the sites.  Even more tangentially - there might even be some suggested memory of the ruddy sunset I glimpsed through swathed scaffolding, at the turn of the year.

All these months of visiting and revisiting the same sites, with camera in hand, may seem a trifle obsessive to the bemused passer-by, and have certainly resulted in a challenge from over-enthusiastic security Job's-worths, on more than one occasion.  However, while it certainly involves the potential harvesting of specific source imagery, it's also about compiling a more generalised (and perhaps more lyrical) sense-impression of the chosen subject - on which one can draw in a more intuitive manner.  Just like this, in fact.

West Leicester, December 2019

Anyway, that's enough demystification for now - I think

[1.]:  It is with regret that I learned of the death of the artist, Christo Javajeff, aged 84 - even as I was writing this post. 



    

Completed Painting: 'Untitled 1 (Constructed City)'

'Untitled 1 (Constructed City)', Acrylic & Collaged Screen Print on Panel,
30 cm x 30 cm, 2020

Having taken encouragement from the paper-based studies I discussed in my previous post, I'm pleased to have now completed this modest little painting.  As I mentioned, a certain  lack of finished work feels like it's become too much of 'a thing' over recent months, so there's an undeniable satisfaction in having something new to unveil.  It should also be recognised as the first actual stand-alone product from my 'Constructed City' project.  Should I be concerned that the large buildings still being constructed around Leicester are progressing noticeably faster than my own responses to them (even in lock-down conditions)?

Well, enough with the overly-critical self analysis.  The painting does distill some of my thoughts about the construction work (if only visually, at this stage), and I'm still happy enough to live with it, after a few days.  Clearly, it deviates very little from the studies which precede it, and the decision to carry on working at their limited scale was deliberate.  That caution is also reflected in the fairly methodical and painstaking manner of its execution, in which respect it also resembles some of my 'From The New School' paintings.  The tight, grid-based geometry and crisp(-ish) masked edges do seem appropriate to the subject matter, however, and if a highly-controlled, confidence-building approach is to be my way into this body of work - then so be it.

Of course, the small amount of consolidated progress this piece represents, and the possible pointers it contains to work that may follow, should be what really matter.  If the welcome by-product is something that could also hang on a wall - then life is sweet enough for now.  

Completed 'Constructed City' Studies 1 & 2

'Untitled Study 1 (Constructed City)', Acrylic, Collaged Screen Print &
Fineliner Pen on Paper, 30 cm x 30 cm, 2020

Wherever you may be in the world, I'm sure there's no need to tell you - it's been a pretty strange couple of months.  We've all had to accustom ourselves to new and unpredictable forms of 'normal' - and will, no doubt, continue to do so for some time.  I'm fortunate enough to have been effectively getting paid to stay at home, so far.  However, constructive use of the locked-down hours has remained a concern, hovering perpetually at the back of my mind - even as normal sleeping/waking patterns have shifted, and normal temporal structures dissolved.

I'm not one of those driven souls who will claim to have been using the viral moment to 'live their best life'.  A degree of inertia has often been a frustrating keynote in my biography, and our current situation certainly hasn't altered that situation dramatically, in either direction.  Nevertheless, it's impossible for even me to ignore the massive dollop of creative opportunity contained within all these newly-liberated waking hours.  Admittedly, many have been spent attempting to devise potentially constructive ways to justify my wages, despite the fact that only so much of my normal work can be carried out remotely.  More have been spent on the gradually-elongating cycle rides that have provided both my main concession to physical activity, as well as much-needed visual and mental stimulation.  Those that remain have been spent trying to seize the creative/productive moment with my own work.

'Untitled Study 1 (Constructed City)' (Detail)

I've long bemoaned the lack of completed work to show for the last year-and-a-half's continuing activity.  Creative momentum has never abated, but it feels like I've struggled to punctuate a never-ending phase of work-in-progress for far too long.  The announcement of Lock-Down felt like an opportunity to address that once and for all.  Granted - it effectively put paid to my ongoing printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop, in pursuit of my 'Constructed City' project - but that in itself, had become another elongated cycle of  material generation without conclusions to show for it.  The decision was thus made to push towards some outcomes with what I already had - either by reconfiguring the existing printed imagery through collage, and/or by expanding the scope of the project to accommodate the kind of hybridised painting which has long been my default creative mode.

'Untitled Study 1 (Constructed City)' (Detail)

As an earlier post hinted, I rather hit the ground running at the start of all this - preparing a small group of shaped panels, and convincing myself I had adequate sketchbook imagery to seed the paintings I proposed to apply to them.  However, as is so often the case - over-confidence, and a misplaced fixation on final product at the expense of due process, sabotaged my best intentions.  Successful work only arrives after a proper period of gestation, and rarely through sheer force of will, and I really should know that by now.  Two weeks of concerted labour on the first of my new shaped panels resulted in little more than a series of false starts and dead ends, before the realisation dawned that it really wasn't what I wanted at all.  In recent times, I've normally been able to recycle the failed early states of any individual piece as it progressed - ultimately arriving at something more or less satisfactory through all that accumulated history.  This time it was different.  Effectively, I just ran into a brick wall this time, accompanied by the dispiriting sense of too many hours wasted.

'Untitled Study 2 (Constructed City)', Acrylic, Collaged Screen Print, Fineliner Pen
& Pencil on Paper, 30 cm X 30 cm, 2020

But (and here is the one important lesson I have successfully learned), it never really is wasted.  Abandoning or scrapping work provides no definitive proof you've lost your mojo - just a reminder not to rely on ill thought-out strategies or lazy comfort zones.  In my own case, it also emphasised the fallacy behind all my old fantasies about existentialist struggle and 'noble' persistence in the face of inevitable futility.  That approach may have looked good on Giacometti, but I know it to be a self-defeating trap for me.  The more sensible approach, I now find, is to avoid over-reaching for some illusion of final product, but without becoming bogged down in process purely for its own sake.  The key is to put down the brushes, question and re-examine the essentials of what exactly it is I think I'm about, then start over in a humbler, more considered manner, and with a lighter touch.

Which is a long-winded and somewhat pompous way of justifying the two little paper-based studies you see here.  They're not much, in a material sense - but fairly significant as possible pointers towards further progress.  They can stand as 'completed' pieces - I suppose, which is undeniably gratifying.  More importantly, they ask plenty of new(ish) questions, whilst answering just enough to encourage what may follow.  They certainly contain plenty of my old fixations with geometric abstraction and other quasi-Modernist formal affectations, but also attend to the multi-media and collaging techniques - and collision of multi-source imagery, that characterise my current concerns.

'Untitled Study 2 (Constructed City)' (Detail)

And their comparative modesty in physical scale may be their greatest strength.  It allowed me to work in a careful and considered manner - without feeling too profligate with the available hours, and to incorporate small sections of pre-existing printed content - without seeming to sacrifice too much of that precious material in a lost cause.  They feel like a necessary halfway house between the smaller collaged images in my sketchbook (which seeded them) - and the hopefully yet-more definitive pieces which may eventually follow.  Working at this scale - and with less self-imposed pressure to achieve in a grander manner, allows me the room to translate imagery in a manageable fashion.  They are, in other words, a useful and necessary step.  More ambitious pieces of greater scope will hopefully follow in their own sweet time, provided I resist the urge to run towards them with unnecessary haste.

'Untitled Study 2 (Constructed City)' (Detail)

On reflection, it may just be that I'm a bit ring-rusty, regarding two-dimensional imagery, after all those months of sculptural fettling.  For all that, you really would think I'd have learned some of these lessons by now - wouldn't you?  I guess it really is the case that you (I) have to just keep making mistakes, in order to find out how you might avoid making mistakes...             

'Constructed City' 13: Laid Off

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work in Progress),
Leicester Print Workshop, March 2020

For fairly obvious reasons, my regular printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop are now on hold for the foreseeable future.  In fact, it's already been two weeks since I made my last visit - during the second of which, my school workplace has also been mostly closed.  Like much of the population, I'm effectively living a locked-down life, and wondering just how different life will be in the future.  I'm choosing to believe there is 'life', and a 'future', if for no other reason that agonising over the alternative is futile and leads absolutely nowhere.  Who knows? - we may even emerge from all this, one day, a little wiser, if significantly chastened - and thus inclined to construct a slightly saner future.

Anyway, while we wait indoors, to find out whether or not this really is Armageddon, creative work remains as resilient a bulwark against negativity and despair, as it ever was.  I can't print, so have made the decision to expand the scope of my 'Constructed City' project to include painting as well - and have begun preparing a reasonably large shaped panel, accordingly.  But more of that in due course.  For now, it seems only reasonable to draw a line under what I achieved on my last couple of trips to LPW, before it closed.    

The good news is that I was able to bring all the pre-existing prints in progress to some kind of conclusion, in one way or another.  In many cases that involved adding new layers of (a slightly sickly) muted yellow, or of a lightish grey, and of black.  that yellow felt like a bit of a risk, but it actually helped to modulate some of the problematic bright yellow sheets, which had been bugging me slightly for many weeks.  As usual, the addition of more black provided a pretty direct way to tie together those last few that been refusing to just 'sit down' properly.

The results are both darker and denser than I originally envisaged, and I may have to drastically rethink my original idea that these images would function largely as backgrounds.  But that's okay - there's plenty of pleasingly nuanced detail going on within all that multi-layered complexity.  And, if it wasn't already obvious - it proves that an intuitive, in-the-moment, decision making approach works better for me, these days, than too much pre-planning.  It's essentially how my paintings have evolved in recent years, and it seems that's the kind of printer I'm going to be too.  One day, I might set myself the task of producing a technically slick, consistent edition of prints, but for now, there aren't two alike - and all that limitless variation feels fine by me.  It's also appears I'm unlikely to be adopting a less-is-more approach, anytime soon.  That's okay too - I've always tended more to a maximalist's approach to problem solving.  We can only be the artists we were always going to be, regardless of medium. 

Anyway, there's not much else to say about these - so I'll let you judge for yourself, for now.  In reality, much remains up for grabs, even now, as it's still my intention to start cutting up and reconfiguring many of these - collage style.  That in itself, will involve another round of improvisation and intuitive decision making.  The next time you see them, they may look considerably different all over again. 

It only remains to express the hope that anyone reading this, along with all those you care about, can remain safe and healthy in the coming weeks and months.  Whatever your circumstances - I hope they remain survivable, and that the 'symptoms' any of us may succumb to, are as mild as possible.  And, ultimately, nothing's changed really - I'm still resolved to just keep making stuff until I no longer can.