i was quietly sitting in the garden one sunny afternoon and very soon spied the covert movements of a wood pigeon making a nest. this particular garden bird rustled in the top of the spindly bamboo with a furious flapping of wings, with a slightly ungainly, shuffling side-step manoeuvre along a very slim-looking branch, finally hopping into the dense greenery of bamboo. after a short while the wood pigeon would reappear again, waddle its way back along the skinny branch to fly off again. it would then return a minute or so later with a long strand of grass or a thin twig clasped in its beak and once again make the awkward, gawky sideways shuffle back towards the location of the nest.
a wood pigeon building a nest in the garden, seemingly unruffled when i went inside to get the camera, prepared to wait a moment for the close-up...there is another wood pigeon nesting high up in another tree, hidden among some rambling honeysuckle; she has been sitting on her eggs for four weeks or more. meanwhile, the grumplesome hen of henley house's own nesting quarters, for all the appearance of wanting to brood herself, has steadfastly refused to lay a single egg since late april... am i to be the brooding, quarrelsome hen or the hard-working wood pigeon?anyone with a garden will have been busy these last few weeks. i proudly potted up ten small courgette plants grown from seed (that's zucchini to any passing americans) in early may, five black and five yellow (plain green is just so last year) and placed them outside, only for them to be caught by the first morning frost in what seemed like months - all my green-fingered work instantly undone. one yellow courgette plant has since survived and three of the black courgette plants also appear to be slowly springing back to life from their shrivelled stems... so, ne'er cast a clout 'til may be out (or whatever; i'll get my coat...)now, we hope for more customary british weather to quench the arid earth, after what has been the driest (and probably the warmest) april on record. the months of april and may passing by without a good old-fashioned drenching undoubtedly signals that august will once again be characterised by many days of rain......dear reader, it seems like it has been a while since i last wrote, due to a certain ambivalence about the relentless task of blogging (too much of the introspective grouch)... much has happened which is relevant to the life of this contemporary artist, but there is no need to share it here... i had cause to think back five years, to how i assumed that writing a blog might invite some exchange and subsequently change... i realise now that the creative exchanges that i most draw upon tend to come from the small, real world that i actually inhabit... art is art, and everything else is everything else...
hands that do dishes
another papier mache vessel, 2011
a small object of survival..
upturned, after the storm...
washed up, weathered and worn...
art or craft, handled with care...
one lonely relic, rescued from the past......view more papier mache wabi sabi bowls here..
on taking a walk around the square
it has been twenty years since my first artworks using squares. it is quite a scary thought that i haven't (except in drawing) ever deviated from this pictorial format - as mentioned many times the concept of akind of objectification and visual containment ensues. however, i have been quietly contemplating the square's more rounded friend for a while now... in fact, the circle within a square is something quite universal, symbolic & spiritual...as written about in a previous post last year, i started printing lots of irregular circles (or discs as i prefer to call them as circle seems too linear as a term), taking multiple intaglio prints from some old sanding discs - even deciding to break the circle into two mismatching halves...
[studio wall, march 2010]these initial concepts gently simmered the imagination were then put on hold while i actively pursued the lichens & moulds (which, it has to be said, are also not yet 'done' as a series). i figure that i am on a five year cycle when it comes to resolving any of my own work so quite how art students complete projects in a couple of months is anyone's guess (clue: they use the internet)...myriad spots & patterned speckles of mould, and the irregular, frilly-edged crustose lichens, as photographed here on the farm in early 2008 (a 'found painting' that i found just as impressive as a monet at the time because they covered the whole of one side of a trailer container), also inspired a series of circular etchings (thanks go to SW for cutting the circles out for me) and these were also supposed to be loosely based on patterns of lichens or moulds...
[some lichens growing on a large blue farmyard container, march 2008]however, what turned out to be the most instantly visually gratifying way of creating lots of circles (with no blood, sweat or tears, on a very frosty morning just before christmas) was to simply take some of my small, square paintings and just digitally circle-ulise them. half an hour on the computer, scissors and some masking tape was all that was needed to create an instant wall piece... seen here with some flat farmscape paintings for visual contrast.
[studio wall, december 2010]now, it might at first seem that these concentric circles remind one of the work of kenneth noland, frank stella or even damien hirst's spin paintings, but any twentieth century art reference (within my own realm of prior knowledge and understanding) would be a big, fat red herring - even if academics, critics, writers, artists & students focus on the importance of the 'contextual reference'...
[studio wall, december 2010]choosing to work from digital scans of my own square paintings, those with only earthy ochre, brown or grey hues (from the 'chromatids' series, my terminological appropriation, as in chroma and id), i was actually planning to travel much further back in history... it was just a matter of time.
a bronze age shield, image © Trustees of the British Museumi instantly want to interpret these experimental concentric forms (they are inkjet prints on paper) as shield-like, for i have been feeling very defensive of late (even the paper bowls with their interior space and rough outer surface hint at a sense of self protection), and i also felt that they are symbolic (obviously) of arming oneself, more so because i have made them slightly convex, curved and cone-like (some sculptural thoughts pondered upon a few years previously) - and now i have a personal army of protective shields on my wall! a sign perhaps of beginning to win the small battles of making art on my own terms... it is just a matter of time.
[digital spin (or spun) paintings, studio wall, january 2010]i amusingly thought they looked a little like madonna's famous jean-paul gaultier outfit at first, or one could easily see the organic growth rings of trees, turned wood, old vinyl records or even art deco buttons - and there was also something quite oriental in their projected layout, like a wall of japanese parasols or chinese hats... but i wasn't really happy with the geometric spin factor, i wanted something a little more organic, natural, irregular in surface and form (as with the sanding disc prints above)... it was one of those random things which i like to do on a computer and these demonstrate working through something, initial workings-out and concepts which are forever spinning around in my head, breaking away from the notion of making a conventional picture into making 'things' - it is just a matter of time...
the bird's nests i found, hen's eggs, collected pebbles & seashells, a large piece of striated agate given to me by a friend, coins, a tin of buttons, fossils, cellular structures or satelite images, looking through a lens or a magnifying glass, even the little glass ramekins that i mix paint in or a simple paint jug, have all found their way, however obliquely, into my personal visual vocabulary... so the circles, however they evolve as artworks, will have forged a new way around of seeing things square on... i am the cave artist who has just discovered the wonder of the wheel!
[the inside of one of my plastic painting jugs]so, the overall plan has been (for two or more years at least) to create a series of circular works to banish the square from my creative life, and it is another reason to be indecisive about which way up it should be viewed, because there is no 'right way up'... the circle 'project' was beginning to take form before christmas but my hopes for it to be part of a regional group exhibition** have been thwarted... sometimes you really need an exhibition to get going with an art project...so today i have been feeling very melancholy, on whether it is worth pursuing this art 'project' any further, even though i've already started the work for it, if there is no venue to show it, no audience to see it... tomorrow i will feel better and by the weekend i will have forgotten all about the small matter of a simple rejection...this is probably why i started writing this blog, to stay focused and committed to my art even when i feel utterly dejected, on those dark days when there seems to be no definitive reason for making art... i quite wanted to blog a little about the 'project', the creation of the work leading up to the 'exhibition'.. i will try to keep myself focused on it and hope that it does still have some creative purpose, that even though it currently looks to be a non-runner it will perhaps feature in a another exhibition... it is just a matter of time...
[a handmade paper circle - who just said pancakes*?]while perusing yet another charity shop i came across a box of sewing things, and there within the jumble was a bundle of embroidery hoops - it was serendipity indeed, when thinking of making paper for my 'circle' project! i bought two of them and then promptly made a large stash of circular sheets of paper, because i am still fascinated by the edges of things, be they straight, precise, irregular or broken. i wanted the irregular deckle edge of the paper (naturally) and also the uneven surface, the unique character in the random slubs of paper fibres - i didn't want these to look perfect. this handmade paper has a purpose if even if won't explain its potential use right now... it will just be a matter of time - and time is perfectly symbolised by the universality of the circle......*pancakes were traditionally a means to use up stored food prior to the abstinence of the period of lent in the christian calendar (this year it's on the 8th of march, buy your maple syrup early)...** i started writing this post in the new year, hoping that it would round off quite nicely with some related exhibition news...*** i took the title of this post from the fictional characters in 'eastenders' who invariably take a walk around albert square when they have 'issues'......