Current studio practice
As a child I was fascinated by a phenomenon introduced to me by my brother. I held a large key dangling on a string and tried to hold it very still whilst thinking of a clockwise motion. Slowly it would begin to rotate in a clockwise circle however much you tried to hold the string still. Other thoughts for the motion, anti-clockwise, forward and backwards, side to side and a static key, all worked in the same fashion. There remains an echo of this childhood engagement within my studio practice as I bring about unforeseen imagery born out of prevalent day-to-day concerns. A painting can go through many technical states, sometimes many times over, throughout which there is a balanced interplay between my actions and that of the habitual nature of the materials. To allow the matter to ‘speak’ and hence maintain this equilibrium between it and myself, some mechanistic, distancing controls are employed. However, far from being a cold processing of materials this can be a passionate, turbulent collaboration, engaging the intelligence of matter to seek out cognitive insights, embedded within emotionally charged imagery. This engagement is hampered and aided by indeterminacy. With the initial shifting dry powder, I interact, waiting, watching each moment until something is realised within its form. On fixing and priming the relief surface the panel goes on to receive paint via several modes of delivery, all of which demonstrate the behavioural nature of paint, its signature. Imagery relating to some critical concern of the day has regularly emerged from this balanced interplay with materials. Mutations are created, serendipitous chance occurrences that mimic the evolutionary process itself.
Brief notes on ten works
Sisters: A splash of paint could stand as the archetypal symbol of chaos within painting. In an attempt to replicate a complex multi coloured splash, while not an identical disarray of fallen paint, they have the sense of being from the same family. Like watching waves breaking on the shore, all are similar yet no two are ever identical, as with genetic forms.
Beyond Register: This painting relates to duration beyond the realms of our comprehension, the infinitely slow and fast e.g. geological time and the speed of a neutrino or something much slower but still beyond our perceptive range e.g. the beating of a bee’s wing. However there are also some references to occurrences that lie in the narrow band of duration that we can perceive.
Ferment: This super energised painting vibrates with cross-drawn frequencies and intense colour forming a caldron of activity, fizzing and multiplying itself. A boiling mass of action is in an extreme state of agitation whilst gathering its cells into new genetic entities.
Heavens Open. At the base of this ‘drawing’ is a thin fragile and uncertain line. This is our earth, our home. The heavens tower above us. A deluge and solar winds cascade upon us. I see this drawing as a reference to foreboding thoughts in relation to the sky e.g. fears of ozone depletion, catastrophic weather, radiation and meteorites.
The Intelligence of Matter: A disarmingly simple painting with little apparent activity. This glowing painting is somewhat light reactive and takes on a variety of subtle colour changes in various light conditions. On closer inspection it begins to reveal its forms (cymatic – forms created by wave frequencies / vibration) and one becomes aware of its ability to form structure. It has an intelligent presence.
Home by Christmas: 1915-2015 - The anniversary of the battle of the Somme, there was much playback in the media and I was remembering my Grandfather’s story too. The underpinning drawing layer references the strategic mapping of the trenches, whilst the active space is of dismemberment. There are amongst other things, decorative ribbons expectant of joy falling back to earth along with miscellaneous body fragments, all is raw, ugly and bloody. Balance and harmony to be seen in other paintings is absent from this work.
Ash to Spark: This is a reference a phoenix-like state, that is, a creative insight emerging from destruction and chaos. In some ways this is a painting referring to revelatory events that happen in the studio in the making of painting, just following a seemingly cataclysmic destruction of the work at hand. I see this painting as emblematic for all rebirths from disaster.
Garden of Delights: The title is in reference partially to that most famous Hieronymus Bosch painting. It speaks of cornucopia and sensory, hedonistic pleasures; a kind of sensuous emersion into an excess of colour and structural complexity, without guilt.
From Here: I am here and you are there. Living on an Umbrian hill and having friends on other hills, valley after valley, leads one to be aware of how we make personal mental maps to organise and remember the space between all those places we habitually visit. The Mappi Mundi made around 1300 currently in Hereford Cathedral is not a map of space. as is a road map, but is more an identification and quantification of all that is important to the maker.
Inexorable: A set of multi-coloured splashes, mechanically thrown; give this painting its reference to a shrimp like invasion. While not identical these splashes possess sibling-like similarities. Closer inspection of the smaller outer elements of these splashes reveal intricate multi-coloured forms. This mimics how we are presented with more and different elements in nature as we home in on the minutiae.
As a child I was fascinated by a phenomenon introduced to me by my brother. I held a large key dangling on a string and tried to hold it very still whilst thinking of a clockwise motion. Slowly it would begin to rotate in a clockwise circle however much you tried to hold the string still. Other thoughts for the motion, anti-clockwise, forward and backwards, side to side and a static key, all worked in the same fashion. There remains an echo of this childhood engagement within my studio practice as I bring about unforeseen imagery born out of prevalent day-to-day concerns. A painting can go through many technical states, sometimes many times over, throughout which there is a balanced interplay between my actions and that of the habitual nature of the materials. To allow the matter to ‘speak’ and hence maintain this equilibrium between it and myself, some mechanistic, distancing controls are employed. However, far from being a cold processing of materials this can be a passionate, turbulent collaboration, engaging the intelligence of matter to seek out cognitive insights, embedded within emotionally charged imagery. This engagement is hampered and aided by indeterminacy. With the initial shifting dry powder, I interact, waiting, watching each moment until something is realised within its form. On fixing and priming the relief surface the panel goes on to receive paint via several modes of delivery, all of which demonstrate the behavioural nature of paint, its signature. Imagery relating to some critical concern of the day has regularly emerged from this balanced interplay with materials. Mutations are created, serendipitous chance occurrences that mimic the evolutionary process itself.
Brief notes on ten works
Sisters: A splash of paint could stand as the archetypal symbol of chaos within painting. In an attempt to replicate a complex multi coloured splash, while not an identical disarray of fallen paint, they have the sense of being from the same family. Like watching waves breaking on the shore, all are similar yet no two are ever identical, as with genetic forms.
Beyond Register: This painting relates to duration beyond the realms of our comprehension, the infinitely slow and fast e.g. geological time and the speed of a neutrino or something much slower but still beyond our perceptive range e.g. the beating of a bee’s wing. However there are also some references to occurrences that lie in the narrow band of duration that we can perceive.
Ferment: This super energised painting vibrates with cross-drawn frequencies and intense colour forming a caldron of activity, fizzing and multiplying itself. A boiling mass of action is in an extreme state of agitation whilst gathering its cells into new genetic entities.
Heavens Open. At the base of this ‘drawing’ is a thin fragile and uncertain line. This is our earth, our home. The heavens tower above us. A deluge and solar winds cascade upon us. I see this drawing as a reference to foreboding thoughts in relation to the sky e.g. fears of ozone depletion, catastrophic weather, radiation and meteorites.
The Intelligence of Matter: A disarmingly simple painting with little apparent activity. This glowing painting is somewhat light reactive and takes on a variety of subtle colour changes in various light conditions. On closer inspection it begins to reveal its forms (cymatic – forms created by wave frequencies / vibration) and one becomes aware of its ability to form structure. It has an intelligent presence.
Home by Christmas: 1915-2015 - The anniversary of the battle of the Somme, there was much playback in the media and I was remembering my Grandfather’s story too. The underpinning drawing layer references the strategic mapping of the trenches, whilst the active space is of dismemberment. There are amongst other things, decorative ribbons expectant of joy falling back to earth along with miscellaneous body fragments, all is raw, ugly and bloody. Balance and harmony to be seen in other paintings is absent from this work.
Ash to Spark: This is a reference a phoenix-like state, that is, a creative insight emerging from destruction and chaos. In some ways this is a painting referring to revelatory events that happen in the studio in the making of painting, just following a seemingly cataclysmic destruction of the work at hand. I see this painting as emblematic for all rebirths from disaster.
Garden of Delights: The title is in reference partially to that most famous Hieronymus Bosch painting. It speaks of cornucopia and sensory, hedonistic pleasures; a kind of sensuous emersion into an excess of colour and structural complexity, without guilt.
From Here: I am here and you are there. Living on an Umbrian hill and having friends on other hills, valley after valley, leads one to be aware of how we make personal mental maps to organise and remember the space between all those places we habitually visit. The Mappi Mundi made around 1300 currently in Hereford Cathedral is not a map of space. as is a road map, but is more an identification and quantification of all that is important to the maker.
Inexorable: A set of multi-coloured splashes, mechanically thrown; give this painting its reference to a shrimp like invasion. While not identical these splashes possess sibling-like similarities. Closer inspection of the smaller outer elements of these splashes reveal intricate multi-coloured forms. This mimics how we are presented with more and different elements in nature as we home in on the minutiae.