the surfaces of the sculptural 'woodwork' pieces have progressed which has in turn inspired something else...
see previous states of this work in progress here: on making art again and not a painting, not a sculpture.on the much smaller panels (gesso on wood), there is a deep bloom of patina, quite muted and monochromatic at the moment, with the illusion of atmospheric depth (if it is a given that painting is always an illusion).
and inbetween things, some sketchbook drawing...
...in the new year i decided to watch three tarkovsky films almost back-to-back (a feat of visual endurance) with some sideline dipping into 'sculpting in time'. it was interesting to compare tarkovsky's writings on art and film to the 'the non-object through painting' (with only six illustrations!) - slow looking, slow narratives, subtle signs and symbols that we wait (or wish) to discover for what they might reveal to us about the perilous course (and meaning) of life - allusions and analogies aplenty.art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art.andrei tarkovsky, sculpting in timethere are always books of various kinds 'open' here, as art seems unavoidably connected to various strands of philosophical thinking - artists are natural thinkers although we may take some time to arrive at any clear conclusions.last week i read an excerpt of foucault's the order of things; back in 2007 a work colleague had mentioned this book, because of foucault's critical discussion of the interplay of analogies or 'similitudes' as he terms them, to communicate and construct a universal 'taxonomy' of knowledge (inspired by a story by borges). this resonated with me:the interplay of duplicated resemblances to all the realms of nature; it provides all investigation with an assurance that everything will find its mirror and its macrocosmic justification on another and larger scale; it affirms, inversely, that the visible order of the highest spheres will be found reflected in the darkest depths of the earth. michel foucault, the order of thingsi found some of foucault's textual expressions quite poetic (obviously in translation) but mostly it seemed too convoluted in its reasoning and argument to grasp it fully. i could see how my work colleague found this book a stimulating read, as a collector of things, how someone working in art or education could create new taxonomies, creating new meanings and connections out of collections of things. you can read more about foucault's concepts here.however, foucault's reference to 'nature' drew me back into thinking once more about the miniature world of lichens, and also to many years back, when i worked for a while in a herbal dispensary, learning more about various healing plants and their connections to organs and functions of the body. i recall the 'story' my boss told me of the plant usnea (a type of hairy lichen, also known as oak moss), how it was once harvested from the rotting skulls of dead soldiers and then used to treat the wounds and infections of the other (alive!) soldiers in the battle field. i am not sure how true this story is although the plant is known for its antibiotic properties. extracts of willow bark reduces pain & inflammation and oak bark is a powerful astringent, suggesting that their 'nature' or constitution (such as willows near flowing water) somehow aptly signifies their medicinal benefits.thinking of weeping willows and oak trees and the history of herbal medicine (many herbal cures & remedies originate from china) draws me back to the non-object through painting again and to the notion of the 'holistic'. the inter-connectedness of nature feels to be one of one vast, breathing organism, a symbiosis of forms and space, between being and non-being, as he describes:true resemblance lies in the allusivity to the invisible dimension that permeates the concrete particularity.françois jullienthe ambiguity that resides between space and form, between the real and the imagined, the perceived and the invisible is difficult to express in art without some outward expression of an object, a physical, lasting presence - which leads me back to materiality of process and the making of art in the physical absence of the 'thing' that it represents, and that in time the 'thing' will make itself visible again. is this the difference between western reasoning & eastern spiritualism..? that a form need not have to represent (or depict) the original form (a look-a-likeness) to be truthful, but could appear as a re-representation in a new form/space, as an emblem or a symbol for it, or (as i have understood from the book), a 'transcendence' of it. in essence, one need not 'picture' the whole form to 'see' it whole.also fascinating to watch a while back, was the bbc documentary 'the strange science of decay', how slime mould so efficiently & intelligently 'grows' and maps out a network in the search for nutrients for its survival, a pattern mirroring modern transport systems - and thinking along similar lines, how certain cells in the body when observed under the microscope function like miniature cities, or how the network of blood vessels mirror the spreading branches of a tree. this is not the stuff of science analogy, it is the stuff of life and the cosmos (but i am not a scientist).
last summer i took some photographs of grape mould through the lens of a cheap (a child's) microscope...
...and a couple years ago, while photographing some lichens, i also stopped to gaze at the miniature landscape of mosses growing on a grave. who wouldn't find such micro-landscapes fascinating to observe?
...
...i was reminded of a more reflective, spiritual path in art earlier this week on hearing about the death of the catalan painter, antoni tàpies. for the media to describe tàpies as an abstract painter (abstract reduced to the expression of a style) rather misses the material complexity and the philosophical, symbolic content so evident in much of his work. i first got to know about tàpies' work when i was an art student and his work regularly appeared in the high-end galleries of london. around this time, the work of the artist anselm kiefer also started to become more widely known and there are many similarities in their work.for all the ambiguity of my painting [et amicorum, 1978], i wanted it to express a central theme: it signifies both a symbolic gift to all friends of painting - only they really know that its beauty belongs only to those who love it! - and a homage to my best friends, books...antoni tàpies [in tàpies, andreas franzke]
on achieving a perfect lichen-ness [part two]
the lichen-ness continues, though not that much further on in the process...
lichenscape I (a working title) has suffered some surface erosion, in the manner of the real elements - i am not scared. many years ago a tutor at art college said that that one had to push the image-making to the point of almost losing it, right to the critical edge as it were, and then resurrect it - it would then embody some of the passion, tenacity and spirit of its making. this method of working is not for every artist; it is risk-laden and sometimes stressful, but ultimately liberating. for myself, the secret history of the surface, the discreet (or discrete) signs of erasure or slow accumulation of layered matter over time is at the core of what i do. it also denies the sterile nature of cool, perfectly-rendered abstract paintings. i have a rough plan, a road map, an agenda even, but i will take the necessary diversions to fully explore the territory of my own making.just what is it that makes artists such as twombly, kiefer and hodgkin so different, so appealing? (to quote richard hamilton's work entirely out of context) - answer - they lay bare the messy truthfulness of the painting process. i was reminded too of the two works of sequeiros and reigl in the tate modern - there is some evidence of denudation or guano here, not entirely out of place within the environmental context of lichens...
a very close-up detail of eroded surface textures...my interest in surfaces continues even within the documentary process - i discover more found paintings. of course these are just reframings but they exhibit the same concerns and qualities that i seek within my abstract photography.a few years ago i applied for a grant to support a found paintings project. i wanted to re-present my small paintings as found, or 'reframed' in the conceptual sense as large abstract photographs - which, i thought at the time, would question the authenticity of the photograph (its source) and the creation (or reproduction) of a painting. in short, i would create the paintings, but would disseminate the photographed, found surfaces as the final artwork, images that i had re-authorised through my own photography...i made a brief reference to this idea in this blog post from february 2006 and earlier in december 2005 i wrote a little about my feelings on the rejection letter. yes, they politely declined my request for funding my research & development. it was, on reflection, probably a fair decision. the idea was just that, one in perennial incubation, it was not clearly mapped out how i would do it and why - but, now there are the means to create large prints and canvases on demand, which makes the idea still a possibility, albeit a costly one; it's always a matter of time and money (of which i have little)...and so, progressing on to lichenscape II...
which i contemplated and scrutinised quite closely today... here are a couple of close-up images of the surface textures...
i hadn't, during the process of painting, referred directly to my photographs for compositional elements, but looking at them now i can see that i am edging closer to an impression of a colony of lichens...
but i wasn't sure about the scale, the number, the shapes, the placement - it just looked a little busy, too cluttered... so, with a little jiggery-pokery i quickly manipulated the photograph to edit out a few elements of the painting... such a simple idea... here is the result...
then a quick play with a little digital effecting... a simple inversion and i uncovered some fungal mould spores, or is it bacteria, some rogue pathogenic cells, a deadly virus..? who knows what it is, but i'm not scared...
this reminds me of the dissolved, blind landscape photographs and the digital image transfers that i experimented with a while back - needless to say, those particular ideas are in cryonic suspension while the lichens take hold...
on losing focus and seeing things
I have been playing with a few landscape digital photographs, having not pursued much in the way of any painting or drawing this week...
A few filters applied here and there, playing with digital effects up to the point of image dissolution... i am interested in the notion of blindness or visual impairment and the many classifications and measures of visual acuity... rarely is someone completely blind... they may have an awareness of objects in space, a perception of distance, or a sense of light in determining day or night time... one assumes that the other senses are heightened in compensation - hearing, touch, taste and smell..these images mirror washes of watercolour or sepia ink blots on wet paper, or smoke drawings...
melting...
diffusing...
dissolving...
dispersing...
evaporating...blindness has also become a metaphor for stubborness, weakness, ignorance or indifference, on not wanting to see something: turning a blind eye, having blind faith, going up a blind alley, not listening to a blind word, effing and blinding, it's all so blindingly obvious...I am not just seeing things; i have some ideas...I could, in artspeak, say that in these images i am aiming to subvert or undermine a belief that landscape photography is inherently truthful... but when i really think about it, it's about achieving emotional distance, separation, remoteness, seeking a form of liberation, acceptance, transformative and reflective, of one's own memory to reality... even a memento mori… but it seems too reductive and limiting to intellectualise from a distance; art is inseparable from one's own experiences of life - there are gaps waiting to be filled. these are just my thoughts; here are some from others...Anselm Kiefer:I don't paint to present an image of something. I paint only when I have received an apparition, a shock, when I want to transform something. Something that possesses me, and from which I have to deliver myself. Something I need to transform, to metabolize, and which gives me a reason to paint.
Anselm Kiefer, Heavy Cloud, lead and shellac on photograph, 1985Gerhard Richter:Strange though this may sound, not knowing where one is going, being lost, being a loser, reveals the greatest possible faith and optimism, as against collective security and collective significance. To believe, one must have lost God; to paint, one must have lost art.
Gerhard Richter, overpainted photograph, 1992Andrei Tarkovsky:Any artist in any genre is striving to reflect as deep as possible a person's inner world... [to tell] about the inner duality of a human being, about his contradictory position between spirit and substance, between spiritual ideals and the necessity to exist in this material world.Tarkovsky - Solaris[last scene, solaris]...the local lakes shrouded in mist in midwinter recall Tarkovsky...