Please note: some of the other recent work can be viewed in the May 09 - Oct 09 artblog archive.

17/04/10

Term is finished...

"Tim Sandys
Semester 2 - Statement

The wall display of this semester’s work feels like a menagerie to me. The fusion of themes allows room for each piece to have an individual personality but they are all intrinsically connected. I find it important that they project from the wall - that they rely solely on the mechanisms between viewer and object and that their physicality and implied narratives are apparent.

The entire body of work is borne of painting and is informed by my (often negative) experiences within galleries. I have been frustrated with the disconnect between the 2D visual presence and the perceived implication of image - in short; the simple ‘optical illusion’ of a flat surface made to reveal an image has been ruled out. By organically approaching material experiments in a dispassionate and instinctive process, a set of constructive 3D techniques that I eventually acknowledged as ‘sculpture’ emerged despite it oddly feeling exactly like painting..."

"...Among their shared features, they all invite the implication or negation of physical contact and many are designed to be actually touched. They all impart a tactile experience and are aesthetically ambiguous. There’s also an undercurrent of recoiling or violence that I’am attracted to but it’s hard to pin down.

Everything here was formulated by drawing and small scale experiments in construction. A great deal of trial and error was necessary to arrive at eventual forms. Even greater was the physical effort of refining surfaces and textures. It generated a lot of dust and aches. The results always surprise me - I would have never expected to make such things. I am particularly pleased that they can be both conceptually addressed as well as functioning independently as autonomous forms.

As far as looking at other work and collecting influences, I spent a great deal of time researching Juan Munoz. The implied human presence (or aching lack of it) is something I’am seriously considering for future work - human forms, narrative and their mysterious and subtle associations - I feel the need to return to the body."

Since finishing the term, I'm aware of how much I've needed a bit of a break - but not too much.

It has been great to plunge into new projects. One of the first things I've been involved in since getting back to Glasgow was with the National Theatre of Scotland. Their high profile production of Peter Pan has been a huge technical undertaking with numerous last-minute design decisions. I was asked to produce a huge portfolio of tattoo designs for the pirates. Using a variety of temporary pigments, I applied two complete body suits and four full sleeves although at present the actors are keen to take turns with different designs.

In keeping with the play's vaguely contemporary interpretations, Captain Hook seems to prefer a mix of WWF tribal and japanese body art - just like your average Glaswegian villain.

Aside from this, Fear the Fives have been working hard. With new recordings under out belt, we're preparing a summer of multiple live shows. A new EP has been launched to excellent reviews - available online now. The activity of a busy band is enjoyable, especially when the music press seem to love everything we do, but I still enjoy playing live the most. Hitting those drums continues to be a wholesome pleasure. Every gig leaves me feeling drained with a big grin on my face.

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25/03/10

Again, this is a late update. Generally there's far too much going on for me not to comment about it online but I seem to have settled into my familiar routine of studio work and relentless physical exercise. Combine that with the traveling, the tattooing, and the playing of music - all this means that updating this has got a little sidelined. It leaves me with no option but to dump a load of photographs onto the site at once - so here goes.

I'm working towards some final pieces before the end of the academic year. All these things have their roots in painting but are sculptural objects. There's a long conceptual justification behind this 'menagerie' of work (and I'll no doubt get to writing it all down at some point) but the thing that pleases me the most is that they have the ability to stand (or hang) alone without explanation. They are physical, tactile exercises in form and the exploration of materials; mainly classically rooted - plaster, pigment, wax, varnish, etc.

Initially, this piece was made as an experiment combining the smoothed, fleshy presence with the solid wooden base. The overall effect was unexpected and the combinations of colour are jarring to my eye. Regardless, this trial run with the materials I lined up led to the larger pieces.

The first of these has taken up the bulk of my time. I knew I wanted to create a sensation of gravity and touch combined. I wanted a fleshy emanation working its way slowly out of the frame and onto the floor. First, I made the back of the box frame and fixed the front panel to it on the end of three supports. I knew there was going to be excessive weight involved so I took no chances with the structure. Chicken wire, scrim netting and plaster bulked out the form.

After much refining of the shape I started to coat it in a stronger, pigmented layer that could be sanded afterwards. With a lot of trial and error, it was worked up to the flesh tones I was looking for. Eventually, the whole thing weighted a great deal but once the excess water from the plaster dried out it was a lot more manageable. I had the dimensions prepared for the box frame and was able to paint each panel and assemble them onto the back piece to create the sensation of depth. Fixing the whole thing to the wall was a worry. The overall center of gravity is distorted to the right and about 20 cm off the wall. It needed some fairly serious means of hanging.

This piece uses blatant reference to flesh tones. Specifically, I was thinking of the way flesh can accumulate and discolour underneath the skin. Veins and fat can seem so unpredictable underneath the surface. It took a lot of experimenting to combine the colours. Mixing the pigment seemed an alien process as, for the first time in years, I was using and acrylic base. Oil would probably emulsify and this strange concoction of mine that I used to make the form has yet to prove its longevity and strength. I have a can of spray enamel that I may use on the surface but first I'm going to let the water completely disperse through the pores.

The next piece is reminiscent of a chronometer or devotional object of some kind. Using metal objects including one of my cymbals, I wanted to make an implication of horizon or celestial object. The wooden surround started as precisely manufactured pine construction but I liked the idea of weathering it - giving it that air of Duchamp antiquary or a hint of actual practical utility.

Two more of the same dimensions were made. One contained a dull, eroded steel disk to counteract the baking light of the cymbal. The other was to be the barrier / mirror / filter between the two states - simply, a lattice of elastic.

This elastic is a pleasing narrative touch to me. It seems to want to be plucked and distorted. I'm still searching for some final interaction with it that sets off the whole piece but I haven't found it yet. In the meantime, there is a hoop of scrap metal I found on the motorway lightly weighing down the elastic. Something else will suggest itself. I'm uncertain whether to bring in that sensation of flesh into this piece. I think it would be too visually competitive with the metal disks. With this, like many other pieces, it seems to be a question of applying the original idea and then drawing it back.

So, these are two of the final completed pieces. Another two are currently under construction. They all share similar concerns with flesh, materiality, framing and projection from the wall. There are all these issues of personification, antagonism and an invitation to touch that prevails throughout. My head is full of all this - I really need to write it down.

Still, that's for another day. One soothing aside to this studio work has been some fairly traditional coaching in clay work. It feels a little peripheral to what I'm working on but I doubt I'll get any other opportunity to do it. In any case, all this abstracted sculpture makes me feel like I've been neglecting drawing and working from a model to produce a head in clay feels exactly like life-drawing to me. It prods the same bits of my brain.

For a first attempt I was pleased with this. The textured surface and stylisation came from nowhere and I enjoy the effect. It is unsentimental and analytical. If I get the chance, I'll cast this in resin before the end of the academic year. Summer isn't far away and there's lots to be getting on with.

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26/02/10

Seventy two pieces of pine cut in six inch lengths - glued in pairs.

I knew I wanted to create something more 'real' than a two dimensional illusory image. This was something that was designed to project from the wall, beyond the usual reach of the canvas.

And this has been the crux of what this term's work has been all about. Bacon was once criticized that his portraits did not look like the people they were supposed to represent; that they did not look 'real'. He justified these images by their textures and application of paint. I would say their sheer physicality, their loose application of paint, was more directly engaging with the viewer' senses and thus more tangible and 'real' than a mere two dimensional surface that portrayed the illusion of representation.

In my work, I'm thinking of that. I'm thinking that the painting can project from the surface and physically confront the viewer. Some would call this sculpture but it doesn't feel like that to me. This is still display - a view.

The spikes are confrontational. In fact, they're overly provocative in this case - an unsubtle and amplified example of my current thinking. The geometry is too insistent and reminds me of the kind of stodgy minimalist sculptures of the 80s.

In a handful of cases, I've thought that the painterly mechanism of drawing a veil over the image - obscuring it - would be in step with the notion of 'painting'. Certainly, at this scale it doesn't work. There's too much going on to confuse the issue. Palette, contrast and materials are all battling for prominence. The status of these 'boxes' and all these right angles needs to be challenged if the pieces are to allude to their common parentage with painting. After some uneasy starts, I've started introducing colour in what I hope is a meaningful way. For one thing, it wasn't at all clear how to reintroduce pigment in these otherwise 3D settings. I ended up opting for acrylic mixed with wall filler. This has the advantage of drying in the same shape it was left in as well as being strong, if a bit brittle. As a plaster base, it can be sanded and textured. By layering up different colours and filing them down, I could create a marble effect. So, with the vague notion of representing a fleshy, or human / pigment presence in these images, colour has been placed in the interior of the cubic form. In this small scale I don't feel it achieves much visually but as a technical experiment it has been very useful. I now know that these fleshy plaster blobs can exude and interact with their box environments.

So far, these lumps of colour are lurking within the 'painting' but I am already visualising what could happen if they relentlessly fall from these wooden structures like paint squeezed from a tube, or some kind of slug-like entity from a pipe. Adding to this, I feel the need to draw away from the passive and deathly silent lumbering icons of minimalist sculpture. Andre and Serra were a starting point for some of the staging areas for these images; the geometric frames. Still, at the small scale that the studio insists, I would like to introduce some narrative into the paint-like features. I wouldn't want it to be cartoony or overly brash.

It is time to move away from these small-scale experiments. I have tested materials and made enough prototypes. Swimming back and forth in the pool at lunchtime has, as usual, given me some kind of weird hypnotic space in which new images and scenarios suggest themselves. I am going to build a series of 'sets'; wall-based constructions for my blobs of sculpted colour to exhibit forms of behaviour. It is a plan that will need some serious time and effort and I am expecting it to involve me until the end of this academic year. I will be spending much more time here, in the plaster room.

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03/02/10

Its 2010 and little has changed or is changing. In fact, what with the way the UK's politics, cultural and general social malaise is apparent, I get the feeling we're going back in time. Also, Obama has cancelled the next generation of manned missions to the moon so I get the feeling that the expected airs of 'future' or 'progress' are someone else's priorities. Anyway.

I'm back in the studio, starting a 10 week self-directed project. After setting down a vague and nebulous brief for myself, I can quickly feel that I'm picking up on themes I left shortly before I came to DoJ as well as a few technical experiments from last year. Painting is still the objective but I'm recoiling from the notion of a 2D image and wanting to incorporate a more 'projecting' or confrontational form of artwork. I don't mean that I'm out to shock or offend - that kind of thing just bores me. Rather, I plan to create works or units of work that allude to the material traditions of painting but sidestep the optical illusion mechanism of both representational images and flat abstraction.

Still, I love the excesses of materials; the build-up and profusion of marks that is often the hallmark of life painting and attempts to capture flesh tones so I intend for the human presence to make itself felt in the work I plan to make.

As ever in art school, you decide your own level of involvement. As I spend a lot of time working, I've ended up creating this messy little alcove in the studio. I get a strong sense of play from the way this project is turning out. There is little precise drawing compared to the puddles of paint and heaps of sawdust I'm leaving in my wake. I've spent a lot of time in the workshop making cubes out of MDF and then slicing them into angular shapes, always asking myself how I would wish to paint if I didn't have the normal option of a 2D surface. One thing I feel strongly about is that these experiments be modular - as if they were paintings - one piece after the next.

I've used typical materials of painting - the wood, canvas or muslin, primer and pencil marks that always end up buried in the sediment of a finished painted surface. Without wanting to be too precious, I've allowed these marks and materials to insist themselves on the image. In the first case, this embedded cube form was repeatedly doused with primer. I'm unashamedly allowing the random element to make marks for me, obscuring the under-drawing.

Arranging multiple blocks above one another, a cascade of primer has increased that random element that I more associate with life painting. For many days, I've allowed a diluted mix of primer to drip from blocks, slowly building up layers of thin white. The time element has turned out to be more important than I realised. This slow build up of pure white is useful - and although I pause the torrent to layer on new marks, I start the paint dripping again to obscure new forms. It has been a balancing process. I'm trying to avoid being too precious or clinical. Maybe it is habitual nature for a painter to attempt to 'control' the image. It feels hard to let go of the outcome and let probability dominate the finished product although this is exactly what I am trying to permit.

Aside from these, and continuing with the modular theme, I have elaborated on the box frame design by cutting the three dimensional shape with an irregular geometry. The interior is painted black to enhance the framed 'image'. In this case, it is not a painted article but another prepared surface as much as the flat planes of the frame. Layers of primer, drawing, oil paint and fabric coat every surface of the entire object, hopefully transforming the notion of painting and frame into an object solely. For now, the central image is a flat expanse of denim. It is fixed with velcro so I can quickly remove it and experiment with other themes. Although the modular theme is helpful, this object took too much effort to replicate quickly.

Again, it all felt like a balancing act. By far, I spent the most time thinking about the outward appearance of the 'box frame'. I didn't want it to be decorated nor plain wood. I wanted evidence of time spent in the studio to appear - the spills and scrapes - but I didn't want those messy intrusions to utterly dominate the appearance. In the end, the scrubby marks that made it look like it had been picked off the studio floor looked appealing but felt contrived and solid. I glued a layer of unbleached muslin to the outer surface to play down this effect until the right balance was achieved.

The element of paint is beginning to creep back in. I've been mixing pigment with wall-filler to create heavy slugs of colour that have excessive texture. After all this minimalist, thought-out stuff, the introduction of smeared and untidy colour is hesitant. There's a ruthless, angular quality to the cut boxes that, although thought-provoking, comes across as overly sterile for my tastes. Perhaps because I've already deemed it inevitable that fleshy pigments are going to intrude into these little experiments I feel I have to control the next few steps with infinite care. This last little piece is where it all stands right now. I have taken a geometric frame, painted the interior black, and quickly smeared a lump of coloured wall-filler onto the sloped surface. Its an old favourite technique of mine to obscure the image, to hide the substance of the painting, so I've fixed a layer of tracing paper along the frontal plane. this serves to obscure and diffuse the coloured element according to depth within the cube. This is a crude and small piece but the fundamentals are going to be repeated on a grander scale.

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31/12/09

Its been a little while since I updated the Artblog - mainly because the term was drawing to a close and some of the more recent work was destined for underneath a few certain people's christmas trees. I didn't want to put any more images online until then.

We had a small period of consolidation - time to go through the term's work and pull out the better pieces for assessment. As usual, it almost alarming to wonder where the time has gone but seeing all the images stacked in one place gets across the sheer volume of work that constant studio time can produce. The 'quality' is a different matter entirely.

Towards the end of the last project, I started another small format painting in fine detail. I wanted to rework the white rose. There was something a little too heavy and synthetic about the previous attempt and I also wanted to push the detail as much as possible. These iPhone photographs don't do the detail much justice. This is the best realist painting of a rose I've managed to pull off but the errors grate at me more than ever. There's a kind of luminescence to the petals in a rose that still defies me. Light passes through some parts to illuminate a shadow; the subtleties of the real article are torturous. The finish of this painting was very light. In portions of the background the initial priming shows through as a result of a fan brush lightly polishing the wet surface of heavily oiled pigment. This minimal use of paint intrigues me.

This piece was an utter contrast but using the same subject matter. I had prepared some larger canvases, laden with texture such as chipped pine, shredded yarn and strands of ripped canvas and muslin. I knew I wanted to build up thick texture and use the more plastic properties of paint. In this case, I used texturing agents as well as the raised surface to build up an almost sculptural surface. Ironically, I think the heavy application of paint has led to the rose bloom's 'lightness' being better realised. Maybe its just the choice of colour. In the mix were finely ground marble dust and matt spectraflow. This allowed me to mix a paste of pigment that would retain the shapes of the palette knife without any grain effect showing through. It was completely random experimentation but I'm sure I'll use it again. This thing will take a long time to completely dry. Right now I'm supposed to be writing up some vague form of project brief. We're moving (not before time) to self-directed study and I find myself gravitating to familiar ideas involving random chance, injury, mortality, redundant superstition and so on. However, this 'plasticity' of pigment is also gnawing at me. I'm wary of the literal treatment of 'painting as object' in the ways that are associated with Hodgkin or Auerbach but I feel drawn to work in some way that doesn't simply deliver a two-dimensional image or a three dimensional sculpture. I don't know - I've not been in the studio for awhile and my head is bunged up with ideas as well as some nasty winter illnesses. As I write, I'm watching the clock tick down to the last moments of the decade. I feel no great need to sum anything up in detail. The population is victim to the inept and deceitful. Media and flailing religions lie as usual so I, for one, am pleased to be engaged with truth when I'm working. Few people are this lucky. I'm g oing to have a quiet night in. In a moment I will go up on to the roof with a little drink and look for any fireworks go up across the city. I'm smiling as I count my blessings. The best to you all in 2010.

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20/11/09

A new pose - and it presented difficulties.

Initially, the lying pose is pleasing. It is simple to hold and re-establish over long periods as well as providing a challenging foreshortening. However, this was set up near the studio windows and the continuously changing light was a real problem. In autumnal months the sun low on the horizon and changeable stormy weather lit the body so variably as to baffle me completely. The strong blues of the sheets contrast sharply with the flesh tones so subtleties within the skin were crying out to be recorded. Unfortunately, I would look up one moment to see some elusive orange in a shadow, try to capture it, look up again and discover that all warmth had disappeared and was replaced by the overhead cold fluorescence.

I tried a few different techniques, none of which really worked. Initially, a tiny little board seemed to be working. I pulled it too far with expressive scrapes of the palette knife though. I then had a frustrating few days of working into a medium-sized canvas only to wipe off the paint at the end of the day. I find these kinds of images tend to work for me either immediately or not at all. When painting, I find each mark needs to be added smoothly, with few pauses and the progression of adding tones seems to take care of itself. This just didn't happen with this pose - too many variables were throwing me. I struggled to complete an experiment with thick, blocky brush-strokes that partially worked in places.

I started a larger canvas, hoping that the increase in scale would free me up and maybe provide a few happy accidents but it just proved to be twice as frustrating. In the process of cleaning off an area I got all artsy and threw some drops from the knife onto the surface... and then I kept doing it. With the flick of a switch I started making messy marks with next to no thought other than 'I should be enjoying this'. This finally freed up the process. I consigned the large canvas to a cathartic process of relaxation, continued to throw paint, scrape and twist it, and tried a few texturing agents in the process.

This turned out to be just what I needed - I made a choice to bring in some more subject matter that I could control the lighting of more precisely. The rose is always a challenge with those glowing, soft shadows in the bloom but I felt sufficiently loosened to tackle a small, precise painting that didn't rely completely on the troublesome nude.

I'm going to repeat these themes. I've just finished preparing two supports of varying size. In both cases I have layered strips of canvas and muslin to texture the surface. Where possible I'll work in fine detail but if the surface texture insists itself on the materials, I'll allow the paint to find its own way, even if its messy. Time to head back to Glasgow - more tattooing afoot.