new work for salthouse 09.. mined, excavated, eroded, corroded surface textures in gesso on small wood panels.. taken in artificial light, hung in no particular order, these will need some more work, have to review them in daylight..
next stage is metallic leaf and colour glazes....on a different tack, spotted this on richard serra's fulcrum...
on beauty and the wabi sabi aesthetic
the artistic dilemma; wondering if the exploration of surface, colour and texture is sustainable as an artistic concept.
XIII 2008 and LXI 2009 (click here to view more)colour as symbolic, surface and texture as calligraphic mark and gesture, yes.. but surface as a signifier, a metaphor for something else? the success of this approach depends on the prior experience of the viewer, and their ability to suspend belief (it is a painted surface) to allow the multitude of subjective references to permeate their senses. as artists we depend on a similar engagement from others that we have ourselves when making art; absorbed, intense, committed to its reason for existence. this acceptance justifies our work. Bataille, in the essay The Cruel Practice of Art, said that:the painter is condemned to please. By no means can he make a painting an object of aversion. The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds, to keep them away from the field where it stands, but even the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors.consider the fascination we also have with the ugly, the damaged, the deformed, the repulsive. we rely on the ugliness of things to help us measure and possibly re-evaluate what is beautiful. in the wabi sabi aesthetic, things exude a kind of understated beauty through their very fragile hold of it, beauty faded, beauty decayed, and then from the emotional associations and socio-historical references.. a wabi sabi approach to experience also relies on a degree of humility and modesty, or solitude, which is often at odds with the motives of the successful artist: the need for an audience, looking for opportunities, in control of events.. in wabi sabi, the underlying principle is not to commodify, objectify or judge things, but to acknowledge, contemplate and reflect: objects, scenes, events, the landscape of the moment.. and then move quietly on..p.s. it would be interesting to find other artists who are also pursuing a 'wabi sabi' aesthetic in their work, but the current nature of the internet (the proliferation of social networking sites) is at odds with such a gentle philosophy..
found paintings; the search continues
three more found paintings, march 2009..
the idea of the found painting became a bit of a personal obsession back in 2002 when i first acquired a digital camera and i submitted some of my found drawings to the drawing research group tracey.accidental drawings, scratched, scraped or drawn by unknown forces; human traffic, vehicles, the weather.. revealing hidden layers, creating new deposits.the concept of appropriation or incorporating the found in art is nothing new, the act of finding is just a part of it, making sense of it is another matter. as a concept, i haven't pushed it beyond an act of objective recording, visually documenting the abstract. they are fascinating images to capture and collect over time; untouched and unrefined, as found. all you see here are photographs, they are not art. they are a representation of the visual experience of one artist, believing for a moment in time that they could also be works of art.see more found paintings in the archive...