Stage three.

The lower half is going to cause problems, and I must try to find unity with the better top half.

Progress, changes.

The painting is slowly starting to form, I have decided on a more architectural structure. Sometimes the obvious is best. I wonder if I should remove the 9 metal plates that run across the painting? I do like the movement they create.

Icon project.

Icon is a new series that I plan to work on for the next year. I will create 15 to 20 experimental pieces in various formats, using objects and media to form abstract Icons. The works will be of a contemplative nature, designed to invite the viewer to travel through the various layers of meaning, both intentional and unintentional. This is a learning process, and while I realize I will probably make pieces that are derivative, or outright failures, I will be looking for something in each work that I can make my own, and use to find something new.

Artistic Murder Mysteries.

One of my favourite literary genres is murder mysteries. They are one of my great guilty pleasures. I especially enjoy it when murder mysteries cross over into my other interests and have an artistic bent. One of the best writers in this vein is Iain Pears with his Jonathan Argyll series. Jonathan Argyll is an art dealer living in Rome with his girlfriend Flavia di Stefano. Flavia di Stefano is an investigator in Rome’s art theft squad. She is the brains in the investigation part, while Jonathan is a clumsy and unsuccessful art dealer, but a brilliant art historian, who can’t resist sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. The series is funny and well researched, and has intriguing characters.

Pears is also known for the novel An Instance of the Fingerpost, which is an historical murder mystery set in Oxford in the 1660s. A young woman is accused of the murder of a fellow of New College named Robert Grove. We hear about the events of the murder from four witnesses. Each witness tells their version of what happened, and only one reveals the truth. Pears captures the times beautifully; set during the reign of Charles the second it is full of intrigue, hidden plots, religious and political ferment.

Pears has also written The Discovery of Painting, which was published by Yale University Press.

Cleaning up.

As the end of the year approaches I find myself looking around my studio for unfinished paintings that should either be thrown out or completed. There are a few that went straight to the shed, and at a later date will be salvaged for materials. There are also a few that I should finish or completely rework. This is one of the pieces that I have started working on again. What I like about this canvas is the colour, texture, and format. I feel it will make a good under painting to build on.

Guard.

Guard is a piece from my recent exhibition. It is built from three irregularly shaped canvases that I screwed together. The top canvas leans out over the viewer, creating an imposing effect, almost as if you are being watched, and several people have commented that they felt nervous standing under it. I feel that it was one of my most successful construction paintings. It achieved a sense of mystery and foreboding, and has a life-sized scale that confronts the viewer in an aggressive manner.

The question that crosses my mind is, how far I can take this series of paintings? I wonder if I should explore other directions at the same time? Self doubt is always to be explored, and I am looking back to my old work to see if there is anything I should take from it. The figure is still of interest to me, and I wonder if I can make something new with it?

Finding directions.

At the moment I am experimenting with two pieces that go in opposite directions, and each is as different from the other as is possible to achieve.

One is a painting that in some ways is fairly simple, except that I have turned it on its edge. It has an animal feel to it, almost like a mounted head.

The other is a construction using materials that I have had in my studio for some time. The construction is starting to feel like an altar: the fish shape of the bottles could be used to represent the fish symbol of early Christianity. The cord and clothes pins could represent talismans left at or taken from a shrine. The candles could be lit in celebration or remembrance. The leg shape could be read as a votive offering asking for a miracle of healing.

Finding new directions is a difficult thing for me, and I find that there are often influences of my own or other artists’ work in my new explorations. I have often read that artist steal from each other, and the best advice I ever received at college was to beg, borrow, and steal, and to use these influences as starting points in my own work.

Jester.

My latest painting is called Jester. I feel that the painting works better than I was expecting it to. I believe that the use of irregular shapes holds many possibilities for future exploration. A name for this series could be Contrived Irregularities.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions for the word Jester. Of the three I prefer the first definition which is the archaic use of the word; it best describes my intention for using the word.

Jester is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as;

1) A professional reciter of romances. arch.

2) A mimic, a buffoon; a person whose profession is to amuse; esp. a professional joker or clown maintained in a medieval court.

3) A person who jests, or speaks or acts in jest; a person given to uttering jests or witticisms, a joker.

Used books.

I love used book store and I often find books that contain unexpected information. Two books that are at first glance unrelated yet seem to slide over into one another in an interesting way are Picasso’s Women, by Roy Macgregor-Hastie, and Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre’ Breton, by Mark Polizzotti. Picasso’s Women is the story of the many women in Picasso’s life; it is an informative and interesting account of the personal life of Picasso. I especially find his relationship with Dora Maar of interest, as she was in many ways his most equal creative muse.

Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre’ Breton, is the story of the so-called pope of the Surrealists, who was quite possibly one of the most tedious people ever to walk the earth. That aside, it is a book worth reading, and tells the story of a time when artists were still untainted by the commercial machine of the modern art world, and were driven by a passion for ideas and creative exploration.

Of course Picasso and Breton are discussed in both books, but for me the pleasant surprise is the information pertaining to one of the leaders of the Dada movement, Tristan Tzara. He is a major figure in both books, as a friend of Picasso and as a friend and eventual enemy of Breton. Tzara is someone I would like to read more about. He seems to have been an interesting personality, and seems to have possessed the sense of humour that Breton sadly seems to have lacked. I actually find the Dada movement more interesting than the heavy-handed surrealist movement, and I often wonder if Dada’s influence is more influential today than surrealism’s. A chain of artists from Duchamp, Rauschenberg, to KiKi Smith, seem to stem from Dada rather than surrealism. The Dictionary of Art and Artists: “Dada aimed to destroy art as an aesthetic cult and replace it by anti-art and non-art. They rejected the artifact and replaced it with the ready-made object and collage, in which arbitrariness, rather than creative order, dictated the final form.”

Chaos.

It seems that I have too many things in various stages of completion in my studio. It looks like complete chaos with everything messy and in the way. It’s just the way I like it, and it gives the impression of someone hard at work, which I often am, even though I love being lazy. I often enjoy working slowly on paintings, and having several to work on seems to help my concentration and keeps me from rushing. My main problem is I keep coming up with new ideas for work, but I don’t spend enough time coming up with ideas for what to do with my work when I have completed it, so that it doesn’t just lean against the walls, adding to the chaos.