Written musings on making art and the results. Life in the slow lane
Art lives Outside the Hive
The city needs the constant injection of youth and brains sucked in from the rest of the country, and it spits out its elderly. In England we spit them out to places we mockingly call ‘God’s Waiting Rooms’
Surfs Up
I imagined how the Coastguard buildings must be shaking under the blasts of the gales. The surf was breaking above the cliff edge at its lower points, and the sound was deafening, the force generated by spray and wind only adding to my determination to try to capture something of the violence on the camera
Sunset Colour Cliché Conundrums
Using large prints of the photographic images I collage the sunset realities with my interpretations in oil pastels. In turn the oil pastels are also photographed to give a commonality of paper, size, texture and colour quality for the collages.
A Riot of Colour
I work on paper on the wall using oil pastel, and the scale is important as it has to be large enough to contain the energy of the stroke of the arm and the intensity of the colour application. Using pastels enables me to mix colour in an almost pointillist way in the sense that the marks mix visually rather than a physical blending.
Cancer and Honeysuckle
The success rate for this Cancer treatment is a staggering 80%, good news for me. It was during one of these bouts of post treatment weakness that I sat in the sun amongst the honeysuckle in the back garden, giving rise to this latest painting.
Exploitation vs. Conservation: Wildlife Tourism in Crisis?
It is distressing for these communities and for the operators, that poaching is so endemic that it is now threatening the survivability of whole species (the Western Black Rhino, last seen in 2006,is now officially extinct). With death of these beasts come the death of the businesses that rely on their presence. Worse, far worse, is the oft voiced suspicion that the rangers who are so good at locating game by day for the tourists are making additional short term incomes by selling those locations to the poachers.
Snap Judgements and an Innocent Eye
The use of technology is reinforcing my interest in the nature of the mark. Much as when I screen-printed I became interested in how different meshes changed the nature of the print so I am beginning to experiment with different ways in which the printer or the printed image can be ‘abused’ to fuse with drawn marks.
France is failing in Laon
Grey narrow streets carry the dust of ages. Pale blue skies and sunshine throw shade echoing the dark shadows that are the past of this ancient town. Ghosts walk the streets . A town that has a past but seems to have little future
Learning the Visual Language
College experiments from the 1960’s to confirm learning about colour using light modulars and stage lighting gels, photography. Advancing and recessive colour demonstrated
Design: Towards a new English vernacular?
Defining and recognising an English vernacular style, all part of a resurgence in English national awareness as Scots want to go home. Examples from Interior design, including France and Germany
Honeysuckle Fun
Analysing colour and form through photography and drawing . Honeysuckle the subject, mixing the digital image and the auto-graphic mark
Walking Wounded
The dangers of physical and emotional ‘burn-out’ for the creative mind. Creativity needs nurturing. As Picasso is supposed to have said, ‘artists are the elite of the servant classes’ but need treating with respecrt
Paint’n Place
From Monet to Hockney – recognising that location is important to an artist’s oeuvre. Examples from my own art over the years reflecting Lancashire, London and Sussex
Silly Season in Seaford
The frenzy started when a photographer for the Mirror saw the pictures. Although on a holiday he lives in Seaford and has himself linked into the local Coastguard, so he saw the images straight away. He rang me and persuaded me that the Mirror should have the pics ahead of any other national media, but said it was OK to respond to any local enquiries. From there it spiralled.
In Praise of Colour
February Canon announced their 50 megapixel 5Ds. I was unable to resist a camera that promised Hasselblad quality images in such a familiar package. I skipped the 5Dmk3 because I though as an upgrade from the mk2 it didn’t offer enough to justify the cost over its predecessor. Not the case with the 5Ds. The results after just two weeks of use are challenging me to rethink what I am doing with photography.
Bridget Riley at the De La Warr Pavilion
The exhibition at the de La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-0n-Sea explores Riley’s development in a linear way from the initial disturbingly disorienting black and white images through more disturbing curvilinear colour work to the calmer more lyrical recent works.
Honeysuckle Sun
First step always these days is the camera, which I use instead of drawing. This image was taken with a Canon 100mm macro lens, which is stunning for flower pics. The range of colour is wide
Grid Lock
We use grids daily. Sometimes we don’t recognise them as grids, such as in a car park. Sometimes we label them with other names such as ‘cells’ when in a spreadsheet for example, or ‘apartments’ in a block of flats. Pixels in digital imagery work as a grid. Grids provide a framework for colour
A Tea Breeze
The wind came off the sea, fast and hard. Hitting the 300 foot high cliff face it shot upwards joining forces with higher level wind to bend and blast …
A Waiting Game
The gallery is unusual with at its heart the 13th century wine merchants ‘shop’, or at least the cellar he used to deal his wines from. Looked after in part by English Heritage its flint rubble walls proved to make a fine background to my work.
Cut and Run
I’ve been playing with cutting up and collaging imagery. I have been using an Albers-like square to explore colour in plants from the garden. Sometimes I have been mixing the mark with imagery directly, not in the sense of filling colour into the image but treating image and colour as separate and complementary parts of working method.
Hanging About
I rarely drive across a drawbridge. Especially one where the door have to be held back, their ancient bolt heads securing the planks barely an inch either side of the car (contains stunning flower images)
Frigid English Beauty
The French say English women are beautiful but cold, maybe because they don’t all go in for two hour lunchtime trysts (funch to American apparently) as French women are reputed to do. If true of course, then these images of frozen roses are a great representation of England.
It’s all a Performance
Art is a language and all language is about communication. It takes a transmitter and a receiver, and all art need s an audience as without an audience it is like a proverbial tree falling in a forest… so the website is my new stage on which my performances in the studio can be critically measured.