Written City 6: The Grey Boxes

Many of my paintings employ a fairly vivid palette these days.  However, there is a variety of utilitarian battleship grey that also seems to recur in my work, providing a useful foil to the passages of heightened colour.  There’s nothing clever about it, it’s usually just a mixture of Titanium White and Mars Black about halfway along the tonal scale between the two extremes.

'Safe From Harm 1', Acrylics & Paper Collage on Three Panels,
Each Panel: 150cm X 50cm, 2011

For all my love of colour, I always return to that unassuming grey for its ability to give the eye a brief rest within a painting and allow a neutral space where simultaneous contrasts may occur optically.  Perhaps, in the not too distant future, I’ll attempt a primarily grey painting.  Indeed, Gerhard Richter practically made a career of that at one time or another.

Gerhard Richter, 'Stadtbild M8 (Grau)', ('Townscape M8 (Grey)',
Oil on Canvas,  1968

Gerhard Richter, 'Grau' ('Grey'), Oil on Canvas, 1968

Another painter who, I think, uses grey beautifully is Christopher Wool.  I originally came to Wool through his stark, ironic text paintings but also love his more recent wiped abstracts.  The greys in these canvases are the result of the turpsy dilution of black paint rather than of methodical mixing and are full of beautiful nuance and transparent tonality.  I think there are parallels between his looping, self-cancelling calligraphic lines and the graffiti tags which always catch my attention.

Christopher Wool, 'Untitled', Enamel on Linen, 2009

Christopher Wool, 'Untitled', Enamel on Linen, 2007

Out in the field, I particularly associatiate the colour with industrial surface coatings of a mundane, practical nature.  A while back I realised this probably originates in my observation and photographic documentation of the most unassuming forms of street furniture, - the grey boxes.  I’ve been collecting these for a while now as I travel around with my camera and have even been known to return to a specific site that I’ve observed from the car window on a routine trip.  Pointing my camera at them always attracts bemused stares from passers by, making me realise just how eccentric the activities I take for granted as an artist must seem to some folk.

I don’t even really know what purpose they serve, although it’s pretty obvious that they generally contain electrical equipment.  As many sit at junctions or kerbsides, I assume they contain the control systems for traffic signals or street lighting.  Possibly, some are part of telecommunications networks.

At first glance the boxes appear pretty similar but closer acquaintance reveals that they’re all actually individual in different ways.  Of course, what really distinguishes them, and the reason they first came to my attention, is the wealth of graffiti, fly posters, stickers and other examples of unofficial signifiers they attract.  It’s evident that many constitute way-markers in the network of taggers’ territorial squirtings; whilst others become regular bulletin boards for fly posters and accrue beautiful textures of torn paper, tape residue and text fragments in the process.

These photographs were all taken in Leicester and Birmingham and are collected in a round-up of the ‘interesting grey boxes’ I’ve found over recent months, (this bit makes more sense if you imagine it spoken in an adenoidal, anoraky voice).

Twelve Months

Whilst casually looking back through this blog earlier today, I noticed it’s a year since I started it.  I’ve just read my slightly tentative and rather mannered introductory post and realised that writing all this stuff has become a far more significant part of my current life than I could possibly have imagined twelve months ago.

'Together 1', 2011

'Broken 1', 2011

'Home 1', 2011

My initial intention back then was to use it primarily as a fairly straightforward means of displaying my artwork.  I’d come to the end of a productive year of concerted painting activity and felt that, for the first time really, I had the beginnings of a body of work I could really believe in.  I’m pleased to say that process has continued through this year too and that the creative momentum of painting, and indeed blog-writing, has become pretty much self-perpetuating.  After years of procrastination, that feels like a major cause for celebration.

'Safe From Harm 1', (Triptych),  2011

'Asylum 1', 2011

'Sick 1', (Set of Four Panels), 2012

Even at the start I knew that the speed at which I work implied I’d end up writing about other things in the gaps between completing each painting.  I’ve always enjoyed writing and, as regular readers must now realise, love words for their own sake.  For years I never really had an outlet for that, (other than boring people in pubs), so this has become a fantastic arena for me to get  the thoughts that regularly clutter up my head into wires and onto screens.

'Welcome', (For Nina May McDermott-Crampton), 2012

'Closed 1', 2012

'Closed 2', 2012

Many of those additional posts feature cultural artefacts of various types, produced by other people.  Some deal with my relationship with the physical environments I’ve passed through, in particular my feelings about inhabiting different cities throughout my life.  A relationship with ‘place’ has always been intrinsic to my perception of life and, along with the whole element of text, plays a major part in my artistic process.  Others venture into the field of philosophy or even politics but, I fear, in a somewhat woolly-headed manner.  The rest are just things it seemed important to say at the time.

 

Untitled Studies, 2012

It seems I’ve averaged around seven posts per month, which is far more than I ever envisaged.  If Google are to be believed, I’ve had visitors from all continents except Antarctica, including places as divers as Nepal, The Alaand Islands and Reunion, (look up the last two, - I had to!).  To anyone who only stumbled over me in search of information on Gerhard Richter, Stuart Davis or Supersilent, - I hope I could add something to your sum of knowledge.  To anyone who may regularly read this but has never left a comment, - Thanks anyway; I hope all’s well with you.

Studies For 'Shut 1', 2012

'Shut 1', 2012

Perhaps the single most significant effect of the blog to date is how it led directly to my participation in a proper, grown-up exhibition last month and to make some new friends in the process.  Thanks again to those who made that happen and to those who came along to look.

Studies For 'Shut 2', 2012

'Shut 2', 2012

At the risk of over-repetition, this post includes the images of my own work that have featured on the blog over the months.  Sorry if you are sick of looking at these, - there'll be new stuff to show you over the next twelve months.

Completed Painting: 'Shut 2'

'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 120 cm X 90 cm, 2012

I’ve just finished my latest painting, titled ‘Shut 2’.  It’s been a few weeks in production and a couple of significant events occurred since I posted about its preparatory development stages.  One of these was the ‘If a Picture Paints a Thousand Words…” exhibition in Birmingham in which I participated, as also discussed in recent posts.  I'm sure that the thought processes it triggered, and the potential of Birmingham to provide source material for future artworks, will percolate through next year’s work.

Study For 'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage
On Paper, 60 cm X 45 cm, 2012

Study For 'Shut 2', Acrylics & Paper Collage
On Paper, 60 cm X 40 cm, 2012

However, the origins of ‘Shut 2’ precede that show and it’s actually more revealing to relate it to another important influence, namely October’s visit to Walsall, (itself, a stone’s throw from Brum), to see Fiona Rae’s exhibition, - ‘Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century’.  I had been thinking about Rae’s work as the idea for my painting emerged so the timing of the inspiring Walsall show was particularly fortuitous.  It’s no accident that, whilst continuing themes I’ve been exploring in paintings during 2012, this one draws consciously on certain aspects of Rae’s own visual vocabulary.

Fiona Rae, 'Moonlight Bunny Ranch',
Oil & Acrylic On Canvas, 2003

The painting’s origins lie in the photographic images of industrial steel shutters I’ve referred to repeatedly this year.  In this case, the individual subject was the same as the preceding ‘Shut 1' but observed from a closer viewpoint.  Though still based upon parallel vertical bands, the newly asymmetrical composition gave increased prominence to the various elements of door furniture and other visual incidents distributed over the corrugated surface(s).  This triggered thoughts about Rae’s habitual scattering of disparate motifs, (apparently) randomly across a composition.  If ‘Shut 1’ was elegantly austere in its formal regularity, '2' soon became more extravert and less rigorously balanced.

Industrial Shutter, Leicester, 2012

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

'Together 1', 2012

This increased overtness is also expressed through the introduction of a certain Pop sensibility into the individual motifs.  Initially, they evolved from the elements of graffiti and stickers in the original subject and came to refer to the appropriation of contrasting, (often kitsch), font characters and cartoon motifs in Rae’s painting.  It revives a certain quality of my own work from early 2011 too, (best seen in ‘Together 1’).  However, whilst Rae appears to pay homage to the online world, my own work remains largely tethered to the materiality of the urban environment.

In its construction, ‘Shut 2’ followed my usual procedure of layering paper collage and acrylic paints.  It shares a similar background palette of off-whites and pastel blues, and certain visual textures with ‘Shut 1’.  I realise that, in addition to obscured blue paint in the source subject, these blues also derive from the backing paper of the tattered advertising posters I regularly salvage and collage into my work.  My use of repeat dot patterns originated from observations of perforated security shutters, but here, may also recall to the printer’s dots in such material.

I think there may be more mileage in my ‘Closed’/’Shut’ theme but suspect that the series will probably rest here for a while.  ‘Shut 2’ clearly reflects the ideas around urban entropy, economic frailty, mixed messages and exclusion that haunt its three companions but with an added dimension.  I once described last year’s early works to someone as "Like Pop Art left out in the rain”, and this painting may be the closest I’ve got to that feeling so far.  Above all, it’s my most recent attempt to capture the sense of flimsy market stylings pasted onto the crumbling edifice of a society in decline.

R.I.P. Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck

I was saddened to hear of the death of the pioneering Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck this week.  At just a day short of 92 he was unusually long-lived for a Jazz musician and had consequently witnessed most of the important developments in the genre and worked with many of it’s major players.  Brubeck himself became a prime exponent of progressive Jazz and particularly the 'Cool' style that emerged in the late 50s.

I won’t pretend to be familiar with his entire oeuvre but have often returned to his classic 1959 album - ‘Time Out’ over the years.  It’s the perfect embodiment of his stated intention to explore alternative approaches to rhythm and harmony within an approachable framework.  ‘Time Out’ has an undeniably easy-going West Coast cool that can’t obscure the fact that Brubeck and his quartet were applying a consciously experimental approach to style, structure and time signature over its seven tracks.  It’s also a showcase for the sinuous saxophone work of Paul Desmond who’s ‘Take Five’ became a massively successful and immediately recognisable single.

Ultimately, I guess Brubeck's main creative achievement was to demonstrate that music could be seductively listenable and still present a satisfying artistic challenge.  His musical scope was considerable and he was well versed in High Modernist theory and had even studied with Arnold Schoenberg.  Nonetheless, to this day it seems that, whenever I’ve played ‘Time Out’, someone in the room will claim they "don’t normally like Jazz but really like this".

The 'classic'  Dave Brubeck Quartet.  (L-R):  Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, 
Brubeck, Eugene Wallis

The other facet of Brubeck that his Californian hip credentials and commercial success might obscure was his integrity in matters of civil rights.  Having recruited the black bassist Eugene Wright into the quartet he was to cancel several gigs and at least one Television appearance in opposition to the segregationist attitudes of club owners and producers.

It seems that Brubeck’s long life was an ‘Unsquare Dance’ indeed.