Archive: July 2006- October 2006

26/10/06

The fact that I've been taking as long as this to write new entries into the artblog is indicative of just how much drawing I'm churning out. I've been carried away for weeks and I haven't really stopped to put into words what I've been working on. Well, the rain is pounding at the window and I feel the need to sit back and describe it all. So far, I've worked my way through two projects with the GSA and I've never produced such a consistent output as this. The last time around, I had numerous false starts and all kinds of weird mental blocks that kept me thinking rather than resolutely keeping the pencil to paper. This time I'm creating a steady torrent of drawings, writings and 3D objects. My sketchbooks are filling up at an alarming rate and I am frothing over with ideas for new projects. Some of those I have in mind are particularly ambitious and outlandish for me - this can only be good. The truly fantastic thing about working in the GSA is the exposure to means of working that I would normally never choose to employ. For example, I've discovered a technique of sandwiching scraps of textured paper and pigment within sheets of wax that I can then twist, bend and re-melt in order to produce a variety of different effects. In many cases, I can cut out portions of the image to obtain a variety of translucent windows within a drawing. There has also been a lot of dedicated traditional analytical drawing. I've been using charcoals and chalks to build up a range of tones, describing installation work as well as representing the peculiar family of 3D models that serve as abstractions upon the initial round of scrappy work. Eventually I ended up taking sheets of the wax invention and fixing them to a skeletal frame reminiscent of experimental drawing. I included interior lights and a small water pump to animate the object. Finally, I produced two large-scale drawings of the finished "thing" on MG paper. The palm of my hand is raw from forcibly blending in all that charcoal and chalk dust. Working on such a scale as this has cause me to produce what I think more of as charcoal paintings rather than drawings - there's not much evident mark-making.

It seems I have nothing to write about other than all this work. Maybe that's a little grim. I've been so caught up in my work that I have room for little else - or rather, little else that I care to write about. My greatest joys are producing this artwork and playing music with the band. Bashing the drums on a Friday night is always a simple pleasure and there's nothing I enjoy more than playing gigs.

Last Thursday's gig was a bit of an exception though. There's been some horrible cold/flu bug that's infected seemingly half the city. When I was laid low, having to transport, set up and play my drums was not a fun experience. It was all shivers and Lemsips that night. Well, we're playing the same place on Friday - a headlining gig. This one will be a lot more fun, I'm sure - and I'm determined to leave my sketchbook at home. Time to give the art a rest, if only for one night. I've got a lot of custom design work to catch up on for people's tattoos too - need to get that sorted out.

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22/09/06

Its great to be back at the GSA again.

The course has started with the familiar and maddening 20 Drawings project. Its hard to be enthused by a series of relentless and scrappy studies of the same object over and over but I understand its relevance. I took some pieces of recycled plastic foam packaging and have been experimenting with different ways of "drawing" them ever since. This has so far involved using every known artistic material under the sun as well as creating "expanded" work based on the different renderings. For example, a small wire model of these objects has since become a more interesting object to explore further. I've also used the 3D modeling utility in Second Life to create sculpture based on the object and have since been experimenting with different scales.

Scale is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I went through to Edinburgh to see a few exhibitions recently - the one I particularly wanted to see was Ron Mueck's sculptures at the National Gallery. I've been thinking about them ever since. Regardless of whether they provoke uncertain reactions from different people they made quite an impact on me. I wandered several times around the rooms and took in different aspects each time I encountered an individual piece. I particularly liked the way that each sculpture was allowed large areas of space with very little clutter or distraction. Most of what I took away from the show was a strong feeling of being prodded in an instinctive way - feelings that were elemental and difficult to put into words immediately. All kinds of issues involving humanity in physical space were explored but much of the strong emotional reactions were primitive. Anyway, its only there for a few more days - I strongly recommend going along to see it while there's time.

In other news, I think my fish is finally on his way out - about to go to the great toilet bowl in the sky. He's had a bout with some kind of cancerous thing in his abdomen - lots of unpleasant lesions that seemed to calm down after awhile. Unfortunately, cleaning the bowl this time around may have been too much a shock to his system. Still, its been a good innings for a goldfish - I'll be sorry to see him go. He's inspired a few paintings here and there.

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13/09/06

Its been a while since I last wrote in the artblog. I've been working hard on two completely separate things. First of all, this beast of a painting is still ongoing. I suspect this is a major turning point after all these images depicting flesh. there are elements of landscape studies that are beginning to creep in. I want to create the sensation of the anguished body emerging from structure. I was trying to hint at man-made objects and city skylines from which the body starts to emanate. By keeping the brushstrokes loose and bold, I'm using the mechanism of blending flesh tones as in the previous works as well as allowing the technique to contribute its own presence. But then things changed - they started to evolve and pull me in unexpected directions. I suddenly felt strong urges to add more physical structure to the painted surface. I've had the feeling for a while that this piece was going to be an important departure for me so I allowed these urges to assert themselves - I went straight to rummage in my box of found objects and started gluing objects and arranging them on the painted surface. So far, I've included surgical tubing, syringes, cardboard, plywood, polystyrene (partially melted in places with acetone), baggage straps, fabric and sheets of coloured plastic. Every so often I pick up the brush or a grouting trowel and heave on great wads of oil paint and spectragel, enhancing the 3D forms and colouring them in clashing ways. The process is confusing and fraught with problems. For one thing, the studio's natural light comes in from a side window and the stark relief of the objects on the painting's surface completely throw my eye off working with colour. Best results occur in the evening when artificial light can be manipulated more easily. The "style" of this painting is as yet unknown to me because I'm allowing it to reach its own conclusion. For the most part, it seems too busy at this stage without enough cohesion in its forms. I believe that when it eventually arrives at a state of completion, I will have brought the image together with some sweeping, random changes. If I assign a stylistic theme upon the whole surface and still achieve the effect of a figure emerging from the structural chaos then I'll be happy. It seems reckless to me, to allow such haphazard and unplanned methods exert themselves on such a large "canvas" - these are not my usual preparatory habits at all. I still have the feeling that I'm engaged in underpainting and that the actual surface of the finished image is still a long way off. I'm allowing this painting to slowly deposit itself on the board in a slow steady series of occurrences, like sediment. More than anything I'll have created, there will be a heavy mass of stuff hanging from this board, looming off the wall. I'd like the whole thing to have a powerful initial impact to the viewer after which the eye will be led into the detail - the shapes and objects, scrapes and mistakes. Overall, I think it will be a distressing image. There's a lot of angst and tension tied up in this. I am not keen to title my paintings normally but I think this one demands to be given a name, for better or for worse.

In stark contrast, I've been drawing like a maniac. I've been working on a series of custom designs for tattoos. Apart from the sheer enjoyment of doing this, it has been beneficial in a number of different ways.

For one thing, working to deadlines keeps the pencil to paper which can only be a good thing. Also, it has forced me into researching and producing imagery that I would not normally choose to produce - this has led to varying results but has been a great learning experience. The other thing is that it has completely converted me to drawing on tracing paper. I have discovered ways of blending graphite and creating tonal variations with a precision I could not achieve on furrier paper. Larger custom pieces are often a collection of separate elements brought into a final composition that has to be tailored for the area of skin it will cover. I've amassed such an odd collection of scraps of drawings here and there, almost exploding the bindings of my sketchbooks.

All this drawing has to be fine and accurate with no room for error. After all, the finished drawings often have to be resized and manipulated before the transfer stencils are made. While I've been flinging all that paint and glue around on that huge board, the drawing is keeping me on the straight and narrow.

I'm starting back at the portfolio class at the GSA tomorrow - looking forward to it as ever.

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30/07/06

I've never seen so much paint thrown about in my life.

Sony have devised this grand-scale artwork to promote the Bravia high-definition TV. Its a follow up to the advertisement that featured all the coloured balls bouncing down a street in San Francisco. I have to admire that such a thing has been attempted in actuality rather than relying on computer-generated imagery.

Picture this: a huge derelict tower block in the city - each face of which is evenly decorated with hundreds of blue barrels. Those barrels are loaded with coloured paint and rigged with gunpowder. With split-second coordination each barrel is detonated, spraying paint across stone and glass on a scale never seen before. Dozens of cameras record the spectacle.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the set in Glasgow to witness the filming of this insane deluge of colours.

It was certainly an event to get the local people curious. The housing estate was completely transformed. Fences surrounded the perimeter of the set and within a crew of two hundred prepared for each shot. Obviously, with that much gunpowder and other equipment, there were some big safety concerns. Many of the surrounding buildings had been draped with tarpaulin sheets protecting them from the spray of paint and fragments. The paint itself was formulated to be as vibrant as possible - almost fluorescent. Of course, it wouldn't exactly be healthy to throw that much paint around if it were average household gloss. Each colour was made of non-toxic, water-soluble and biodegradable products.

The production team were taking a risk choosing a Scottish location for a shoot that required bright lighting and consistency of climate. After all, the shoot was scheduled over several days - it so happens that a recent run of hot sunny weather was on their side.

Dressed in a hard hat, I was baking. The explosive blast of each spray of paint was punctuated with long periods of sitting around. As I couldn't use my own camera at all times on the set, I sat on the grass, trying to capture some of the spontaneity of each shot quickly within the pages of a sketchbook. I was struck by the noise and unpredictable effects of a different colour hitting such a large expanse of stonework. Some barrels were exploded up in the eaves of a building, others were set off at ground-level with deliberate targeting in mind. Some were carefully timed to coincide with a camera on rails following each blast, others were detonated in unison like a cannon battery.

The scale of the whole thing was breathtaking. The main tower block had been derelict for some time. Many of the glass panes were missing and there was no sign of recent habitation - so the crew had spent days prior to the shoot installing hundreds of new windows and hanging fake curtains.

Its hard for me to imagine what the final result will look like. The real mastery will lie in the editing and soundtrack, I'm sure. Regardless, this whole thing was a risk for the production team. It was potentially dangerous, equipment could easily have been wrecked by numerous downpours of paint, and each individual shot was pretty much a one-off. Its hard for me to imagine how anything could have been duplicated once the scene was already coated in paint. No wonder CG imagery has become such an agreeable alternative these days. I have to admire the resolve that it took to pull something like this off for real when results could so easily have been different. Still, I'm sure these people know what they're doing.

I look forward to seeing the finished result. As in anything artistic, hard work pays off. If its anything like as spectacular as what I witnessed, we should see something very special.

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23/07/06

I'm continuing with the flesh - this cadaver that seems prone and vulnerable. Actually, I'm probably thinking more about this body than painting it. I know I don't want to depict a figure that is doing something. Rather, I'm trying to create a sense of something acting upon the flesh - something not necessarily physical. I don't want to show restraint of this form but I know I'm implying some kind of psychological restraint. Instinctively, I know its time to move back to large format work and I've prepared two boards that will house the image on a scale that I rarely work at. I'm getting close to summing up an aspect of this recent work and I want to make it big. Once again, its exciting to prepare huge boards - the carpentry and priming.

I'm finally introducing other elements into the background of the image. Simply, its an emanation of the environment in which I live and see every day. I'll hint at buildings and the colours of the sky, that's all. I tend to keep a sense of my surroundings as immovable. If there's any aspect of my thoughts that ring out at me from my paintings more than anything these days, it is this feeling of unchanging - an inability to influence events or their timing and outcome. Since being back in the city, I travel by public transport and the railways compound this feeling of lack of control. I'm not sure if we all divide our lives into those things that we can control and those things that we can't but I feel a strong sense of all these issues leaking around the edges of the sketchbook work in preparation for these big paintings. The city's infrastructure echoes predetermination. We move and work to clocks and timetables - finite numbers and well-defined quantities. When I observe the city, I see the regularity of the aircraft going overhead and the views I'm accustomed to. Yesterday, however, I had a very odd experience. I was invited to attend a very large "artistic event" that is part of an advertising campaign for a tech company. I was able to view the site from a helicopter before being given a larger tour of the city and surrounding scenery from the air. I'll be writing more about this event soon. While up in the air, the pilot asked if there were any requests for sights to see. I knew we would be heading roughly in the direction of my flat so I asked if we could hover closer to my neighborhood. Well, he spoke to air-traffic control to ask their permission which was subsequently granted. We flew to the area and he circled my flat while I took pictures. I haven't stopped thinking about this since.

It has completely altered my perspective of the city - that's it in a nutshell. This immovable and clockwork infrastructure was seemingly changed at my whim. The objects in the sky that we all see buzzing around from time to time were no longer part of the scenery. My request allowed me such simple but somehow powerful control over something that has been beyond my influence.

I know I'm not making myself clear - its a symptom of the way my mind is still reeling from the experience. Flight was attainable, the direction, the view and the simple desire to travel free as a bird (or close to it) for only just a moment. Perhaps not everything is as uncontrollable, inevitable and immovable as I've conditioned myself into thinking.

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03/07/06

I've just finished a mid-scale painting. Its sumptuous, with more discernable brushstrokes and a slightly more colourful palette - well, it features a broader range of colours used in the mix. There are more 'natural' flesh-tones on show in a way acceptable to a more traditional use of oil paint. The canvas itself was certainly a more conventional size.

I think I'll feature this one in the gallery. Before that, I'll need to wait for it to dry so I can get a better photograph of it. I feel I'm having more success by consciously avoiding trying to produce a good painting. If I keep myself in a more relaxed attitude of experimentation then I worry less about making unwanted marks. This loosens up my arm and the brush. Also, I find myself leaving a painting (or 'oil sketch') as it is rather than fiddling with it in a vain attempt to bring a mistake to life.

 

A little side-distraction has filled me with energy. I took my new camera out for a big long walk the other day. I wasn't expecting to take many pictures. My friend Dan came along for the walk and within about twenty minutes I was finding all kinds of things in the environment that seemed worthy of taking pictures; but not without a distorted form - a human form - amongst the features within the environment. I find it so hard to describe exactly why these ideas resonated so strongly but before I knew it, I was commanding Dan to lie on the ground, against the walls, face this way and that, all for the purpose of taking a huge series of photographs. Instantly I knew that the photograph was only the first step and that digital manipulation would be the next stage of the experiment. Although the results look nothing like my paintings I intuitively know that they are linked. I capture little arguments in my mind's eye, an internal dialogue that is trying to quantify where my work is going right now. I cannot form a conclusion and I don't feel that is necessarily a bad thing. Too much analysis would mess up this process of intuitive experimentation. But one little concept that keeps shoving its way to the front forces me to direct my attention to where the body ends and the air begins. By this I mean that something about all this work, be it in paint or pixels, is zooming in my gaze on where the flesh stops and the environment starts to surround the body. Can a body be environment? Can the air broach the boundaries in and around the body. Are perceived people environment or cadavers themselves? The paintings' crosshatching is forcing me to confront the limbo within which the bodies are twisting and coiling. On our walk, I found so many visual cues that were unfettered by local movement or the disturbance of the public, yet they reeked of elements of human activity. These included names sprayed down the length of a path, colossal brick arches, abstract shapes in a deserted playground - all manner of intriguing little set-pieces for experimentation. Dan and I arranged our bodies for distortions on the theme of habitation. The camera clicked away.

One thing that really singles out this human body stuff from the paintings is that I am less feeling the need to exaggerate and enhance colour effects compared to a lot of my older work. Perhaps colour work lends itself more readily to planes and atmospheric effects but studying more abstract concepts (especially those concerning borders and lines) have little need for the flashes and glare of impressionism or 'op-art'.

Certainly, I don't think I'm expressing myself well at all when writing down this garbled nonsense. For the most part, I follow my nose when making all this stuff - words come later. My sketchbooks contain very fragmented text that even I find hard to decipher after the event. The artblog has been enormously useful for me in that writing down little summaries of recent work helps me to focus and quantify what I've been up to.

Still, there's always a point where prose falls down. A picture is worth so much more than a thousand words - and if limping language was capable of conveying every little thing then there would be no need for other forms of expression. Nothing beats the plain impact of a visual image.

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