in december 2008 i wrote i had started some incidental abstract paintings on some scavenged pieces of wood, surfaces that have been gradually built-up, partially obscured, then revealed, slowly reworked & edited over the course of about two years. it was never my intention to finish these paintings in a week or a month - painting them has been a slow, drawn-out process, as i added some colour here and there and then left them for quite a while, before attending to them again, effectively lost then found again - a succession of related 'incidents' contributed to the visual outcome of these paintings.here are some surface details of one of the incidental abstract paintings...
as ever, the colours are muted, faded... and the surface textures a little aged...
drawn from hereabouts perhaps, in the rural/industrial environs...
a chalky, bluish white, a greeny-grey and a dark, earthy brown...
elements of stone, dark earth and slate grey-black...
a slab of tawny orange, light grey and a thin brown stripe...
dark brown-black and a scrubby, scratched layer of grey-green......the dilemma of having to give paintings titles, which should either reference the process or the subject matter... square forms, surface elements, hidden layers, interior/exterior, industrial blocks, stacks, containers, structures, doors, windows, walls, a flawed facade..?this painting 'incident' is called 'orange slab, dark brown and various greys', 30cm x 30cm, acrylic on wood...
orange slab, dark brown and various greys, 2011if these incidental paintings represent anything, they are another small record of my enduring fascination with weathered surfaces and the working dialogue that develops as i have created them - the slow emergence of a simple grid structure or rectilinear form, much influenced by the originating ground or surface (wood) - unlike say, the relative smoothness (or 'not') of paper or the regular weave of canvas (i like the texture & colour of raw canvas, but i seem to go to great lengths to deny its material existence in my paintings)...some visual clues scavenged from the journal archive might hint at some of my surface influences...
…all images & text © jazz green 2005-2011…Reunion Refresh @ Reunion Gallery, 5 Feb - 22 Oct 2011(incidentally, there will be two 'incident paintings' on wood in the reunion refresh exhibition)HWAT exhibition 2011 @ Harleston Gallery, 18 June to 11 July 2011...
more art made by mother nature
an altogether more natural artistic intervention in the landscape - the somewhat startling sight first witnessed on a sunday drive to the supermarket - a short stretch of rambling hedgerow wrapped in a fine, gossamer grey web. i passed the spot on two further occasions, and on the third drive-by pulled over to take a closer look... (photographs taken with a mobile phone)
i think it may have been a hawthorn or perhaps a spindle or elder bush but there was really nothing of it left, just a skeleton... cautiously peering into the faintly spooky, sticky mesh of fibres i could see hundreds of off-white, wriggly things...i later googled caterpillars and webs and ascertained this was a colony of ermine moth larvae or caterpillars (later to become ermine moths) and they can completely envelop a tree or a shrub to keep predators from attacking their growing colony (which here must amount to many thousands of soon-to-be caterpillars!). i discovered a similar infestation has occurred in a public park in yorkshire... maybe it's the prolonged spell of dry weather...
quite fascinating and yet mildly frightening in a way too, alluding to a small act of god's damnation, a biblical allusion to the great plagues of egypt, or nature just proving its powers again - we are all doomed!.. but i think i'll let you decide...
an obvious art-historical reference sprung to mind - the wrapped trees of christo & jean-claude...wrapping up the landscape, here looking especially marvellous in the early morning (or is it evening?) light...
[Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Trees, Fondation Beyeler and Berower Park, Riehen, Switzerland, 1997-98 (Photo: Wolfgang Volz) © 1998 Christo]the trees still look ghostly but seem alive (this is winter), with the appearance of fluffy clouds that have just landed or are about to take off, the trees not tightly bound or swaddled into submission as other artists have done...
[Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Wrapped Trees, Fondation Beyeler and Berower Park, Riehen, Switzerland, 1997-98 (Photo: Wolfgang Volz) © 1998 Christo]curiously, it was about this time last year that i chanced upon or found some found or readymade art in the landscape (albeit of a humanly-constructed kind) - what is it about the month of may, i wonder?...
a minor road painting incident
recently spotted in a small norfolk town with an unfortunate name, and i had the camera to document the road works in progress...
a council roadworker with an keen eye for absolute precision in road painting, even if it doesn't entirely match... i was left briefly pondering, is this normal for norfolk*..?
but this wasn't the only painterly road incident. further along this minor road there was another occurence of fresh double yellow line painting... what would this exact colour be in pantone..?
it seems that council yellow comes in many shades, or else it fades very quickly...
and sometimes remedial action is taken later on, in trying to match the original colour...
but i am saving my favourite photograph for last... here in close-up, a unique road work composition in a medley of mellow (and not so) yellow hues, wonderfully crackled textures and mismatching layers, subtly embossed by the pattern of tyre treads, my found painting (or print) of the day...this image has some definite kerb appeal and more than enough art historical references, should one wish to analyse it any further...
this post is written with much reference to and respect for the artist over at the aesthete'sfoot blog, aka the opposite of tomato, an artist who has brought an intriguing, conceptual dimension to what could be loosely termed 'creative kerb crawling' in his two years (or more?) drawing project, to visually document discarded drinks cans in all their myriad convoluted, crumpled and flattened forms - see also the curious incidents of the double black (not yellow) lines.. he now calls himself the darjeeling fop... well, that's the line painting finished - time for a brew..?...*normal for norfolk; a somewhat derogatory slang term used by medics, often shortened to NFN, as a means to identify in the Doctor's patient' notes that the unusual symptoms or behaviour presented maybe the result of the patient being, relatively speaking (so to say), someone wuss abit darf, nut roight in the hed......