Work In Progress: 'This Skeptic/Sceptic Isle'. 'Flags' 1

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,
40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

Recent months have been characterised by a kind of creative diffusion, in which fluctuating engagement with a number of competing projects has replaced concerted, in-depth focus on any one thing.  The inevitable consequence of such a situation is that I have a variety of things in production, or gestation, but still relatively little in the way of actual completed work; oh, and ideas – every day more ideas…

As Above (Detail)

It’s a strange problem to have.  For so many years, I tortured myself with a perceived inability to do anything of any value, whilst being simultaneously unable to imagine what it was I actually wanted to make or say.  The current state of affairs is the direct inverse of that; i.e. so much I want to do, coupled with frustration over the inevitable stop-start nature of so many parallel ventures.  The impossibility of fitting it all round the demands of a day job and age-related, diminishing energy levels don’t help much either.

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,

40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

As Above (Detail)

But, (and this is important), I’d take this brand of frustration over the previous one - any day of the week.  Even if a certain lack of confidence still hold sway over my life, (as has been quite noticeable just lately), it’s largely uncoupled from my art.  That’s not to say that what I make is necessarily any good – just that I have few doubts about the value of persevering in the attempt to improve it, and absolutely none about the central role it plays in my life.  To be honest, it’s all the other everyday-life stuff that causes more uncertainty, these days.  In that context, any impatience with having too much I want to do, and insufficient time or energy to resolve it all, merely feels like something to ‘just deal with’.  Either way, the only workable solution is to stop wasting time on navel-gazing, and just get on with what I can, when I can.

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,

40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

As Above (Detail)

Which is all a long-winded, self-indulgent way of introducing some actual new work.  Recent work-related posts have showcased completed paintings from my ‘From The New School’ series (itself part of a larger, ongoing project).  What you see here are the first concrete manifestations of a completely separate undertaking, which, for now, labours under the working title of ‘This Skeptic Isle’.  Actually, depending on how bleak my view of current events and the news becomes, on any given day – that might alternatively read as ‘This Sceptic Isle’.

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,

40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

As Above (Detail)

From which, you’ll deduce, - the disposition of this particular venture is hardly sunny or optimistic.  Accumulating despondency over current political events, both global and domestic, and the alarming lurch to extreme Right-wing narratives, blinkered ‘populism’, petty nationalism, and a general devaluation of fact or reason, is hardly an original idea, just now.  But, in this part of the world at least, it’s impossible to sidestep a general mood of fear and insecurity; a sense that the centre will no longer hold, if you like.  And, like it or not, one single event seems to cast it’s long shadow over the attempts of ordinary British/European people to just get on with their lives.  It will continue to do so for years to come, whichever side of the divide you find yourself on.  Let’s call it Post-Referendumb, Brexistential despair - shall we?

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,

40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

As Above (Detail)

So, if these images suggest a somewhat unoriginal outbust, rather than any attempt at constructive insight - so be it.  If nothing else, that seems to square with the prevailing zeitgeist.  Besides, sometimes it’s perfectly valid to just deal with the most obvious thing before your face, and to chip-in your two-penny worth to the wider debate.  And sometimes you just need to get stuff out of your head - in order to preserve what passes for ‘sanity’.

Untitled: Acrylics, Paper Collage, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish On Paper,

40 cm X 60 cm, 2017

As Above (Detail)

It’s not worth going into too much detail over these particular pieces here - not least because they may actually turn out to be work in progress.  Each employs a somewhat unhinged variation on my now-familiar hybrid painting/collage M.O. and is resolved to my relative satisfaction at this stage.  But it’s also possible that they may be further adapted or recycled within what is now shaping up to be a wider, more far-reaching project (in my mind, at least).  Alongside them in the mixer are also a kind of appropriated, 5-act script (for what may become a video of some sort), and rapidly accumulating photos of white vans, cardboard boxes, discarded white goods, and street trash.  It’s impossible to say exactly how this all fits together as yet, but it is definitely starting to acquire a kind of cumulative, more or less oblique, state-of-the-nation vibe.

West Leicester, April 2017

North Leicester, April 2017

Balsall Heath, Birmingham, February 2017

One last thing: It would be foolish to pretend these flag images aren’t heavily influenced by Jasper Johns’ American flag paintings.  They come from an entirely different context, of course – and carry a far more nuanced philosophical freight.  Nevertheless, Johns is an artist whose work and example I’ve returned to repeatedly over the years, and those paintings are inevitably engrained within my own subconscious image bank.  It’s an influence I’m more than happy to acknowledge.

Jasper Johns, 'Flag', Encaustic & Paper Collage On Canvas, 1954

Invisible City 2

All Images: North Leicester, November 2015

"Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles.  If you ask, ‘Why is Thekla’s construction taking such a long time?’ the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, ‘So that its destruction cannot begin.’  And if asked whether they feel that, once the scaffolding are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, ‘Not only the city’.

    

   “If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in the fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes,  scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams.  What meaning does your construction have?’ he asks.  ‘What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city?’  Where is the plan you are following,  the blueprint?’

  

    “‘We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now,’ they answer.

    

  “Work stops at sunset.  Darkness falls over the building site.  The sky is filled with stars.  ‘There is the blueprint,’ they  say.” [1.]

[1.]:   'Invisible Cities', Italo Calvino, London, Secker & Warburg, 1974

Minor Events 2 (Unbidden)

All Images: Former Cattle Market Site, Nottingham, April 2017

Reclaim one frustrated hour in the ghost market…

(Gritted wind angling across repurposed cement meadows, where furtive Wagtails make neurotic darts.  An archaeology of slaughter - stockaded in the Magpies’ overlook, and a monument to the spectral herd.  The Union flags over the Government’s surplus.  England fades on a grimy pane.  A neglected display of the unwanted.

Hunker over subsiding cartons.  Itemise a catalogue of Auctioneer’s residuum.  A fellow despondent scavenger assessing storage solutions alongside.  Record a valise in brown vinyl – lost en route to an archipelago of discarded plastics.  Silvered splinters; Hidden Treasures; broken Love.  Tables are occasionally overturned.  Vacancy framed in the empty hearth.

The orphaned carriage shifts almost imperceptibly, on fully-functional wheels.  Derelict Minors, corroding nostalgic ‘round the back.  Primery and good in parts.  A static convoy of white Transit – Luton-boxed and chilled.  Alpha-Beta removes to the head of the directory.  The coffee chair awaits.  A bold sales pitch and cold storage.  Threefold refrigeration, overall.

Gaze through an aperture in concrete fascia.  Beyond: locked van doors - assailed with cold chisel and lump hammer; the enthusiasm of herpetologists, peering conspiratorially into trestled tubs.)

…Exit through a carnal gate - emerging into the world between the Incinerator and the Iremonger.

Mail Shots 7

Sneinton, Nottingham, January 2017

It's time for the mail-slot slot again.  These never really go anywhere, other than to top-up my prevailing love of formal geometry  and Modernist frontally.  Nevertheless, they're always there, in the background of nearly every urban photoshoot I conduct - and so my collection slowly grows.  These were captured over recent  months - mostly in Nottingham, (supplemented by one from my own Leicester back yard).

Central Nottingham, September 2016

They form a kind of, largely unexploited, notional sub-theme, at this stage.  Doubtless, one could construct a thesis around their symbolism as conduits of faltering, analogue communication, or as organs of admittance.  Somewhat simplistically, it's difficult not to read them as oral simulacra.  I'm also aware of an implied dialogue between notions of impassive closure and gaping vacuity.  That, in turn, seems to trigger a slew of related fantasies about the status of whatever spaces lie beyond.  Either way, I'm equally attracted to the smartly-painted-green-chequer-plate, and the rotted-plank-and-wire-basket iterations.  

Former Cattle Market Site, Nottingham, April 2017

The pretension and allusive prolixity of all this is deliberate and unashamed.  It is, however, equally valid to suggest that these images represent little more than some periodic recourse to a visual comfort zone.

West Leicester, April 2017

It also occurs to me that, in time, they might also come to form a surprisingly comprehensive catalogue of physical urban texture, revealed via the medium of building materials, and construction techniques.

Former Cattle Market Site, Nottingham, April 2017

Love In The Underpass (Trip Switch My Heart))

North West Leicester, April 2017

This is the first urban heart to feature here for quite a while.  Appropriately enough, I found it, earlier today, in my favourite subway/underpass system - beneath one of Leicester's main arteries.

Completed Painting: 'Untitled (From The New School) 5'

'Untitled (From The New School) 5', Acrylic & Paper Collage On Panel,
30 cm X 30 cm X 106 mm, 2017

Here's the fifth in the 'Untitled (From The New School' series of small panels.  There's nothing particularly new to say about the motivations behind the series as a whole, so I'll refer anyone wanting to catch up here, here, here and here.

I'm rather enjoying this deliberate, highly synthetic mode of painting.  It's the antithesis of any heroic painterly 'struggle' (which suits me fine), and certainly allows me to produce them fairly quickly.  Any occasional insecurities I might feel about it all being too easy, or a bit too much of a production line, are dispelled by remembering that it's the series as a whole that will really constitute any final statement, and that each of these little paintings is as much a component of a composite entity, as anything overly profound in its own right.

As far as this particular iteration goes, the main thing to say is that it was just plenty of fun to paint.  It occurs to me that 'fun' is some thing artists (or painters, at least), often neglect to talk about.  We're much more used to hearing about artistic quandaries, existential despair, or just the frustrations of wrestling an image into some form of resolution (then deciding it's no good after all).  Is that to stave off any risk of this stuff seeming too frivolous or facile, I wonder?

But, really, what's so wrong about admitting the simple pleasures to be found in simply balancing a composition or laying-down colours, or in discovering that an educated guess or happy accident create something that just 'works'?  My hunch is that, if the underlying idea is strong enough, or the artist is sincere enough in their motivations, admitting to some joy in the physical realisation might signify a healthy creative process, at least as much as all that traditional angst [1.].

So I'm not going to pretend I didn't enjoy harnessing those areas of random collage or painterly gesture, in a deliberately 'knowing' manner.  The magic 'reveal' of peeling away masking tape never gets old, and  laying down that flat field of cadmium red - well, that was an unalloyed, sensual delight.  Sue me...



[1.]:  In this context, I'm reminded of songwriter/comedian, Tim Minchin, and his song, 'Dark Side'.  Minchin is a man who seems perfectly happy to balance the profound with the mechanics of showbiz (and clearly sees no conflict in producing quality work whilst drawing a salary from the Disney Corp.).  The intro. to this performance of 'Dark Side'/ underlines that this stuff is all just artifice anyway.