“That Matter We Talked About” Acrylic on canvas 400mm x 400mm
For my next show in the Round Tower at Black Swan Arts, Frome, I want to do a couple of collaborative pieces and for the first of them I need the help of other artists. The working title of the show is “Black Squares, Black Lines & Black Magic” and I want artists to make something, anything, that is their interpretation of or idea about that theme. It can be anything at all, in any format or media as long as it is exactly 4″ x 4″.
So if you are an artist in any discipline please send your contribution to me c/o Black Squares, The Round Tower, Black Swan Arts, 2 Bridge Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1BB. Please do it NOW! I will be creating the piece during the show which runs from 6 November – 29 November 2015 so if you wanted you could bring me your piece (I will accept submissions up to 21 November) but you know you’ll forget – so do it NOW!
There is no higher purpose, no charitable intent, other than to create an interesting piece of art that is influenced by the chaos of multiple artists. I do not promise that your work will be used and if it is used it may not be obviously visible (those of you who know my work know that the work is often unseen!) When you send or deliver a piece you pass all physical and intellectual property rights to it as an object or idea over to me to use in any way that I see fit. Yes, I am asking you to make a small gift to me of your work with no chance of anything in return except the satisfaction that you will have played a small part in a web of art.
The one thing I do promise is that every artist from whom I receive something will get a publicly-visible credit at the exhibition. That name check may in itself become an artwork, who knows?
It is quite likely that I will also tweet the image and name of pieces sent in, but I make no promises on that in case time and numbers forbid.
So get cracking on your “Black Squares, Black Lines & Black Magic” submission and send it as soon as you can. Thank you very much in advance
*PS I need to have a physical contribution. So if you make a digital piece please produce hard copy for me to use. If you are a musician or a poet or dancer or whatever you can still take part as long as you make your contribution into some kind of hard-copy 4″ x 4″ submission.
“Cool It” Acrylic, Indian ink & metal on board 200mm x 200mm
Riding on the success of Bridport Open Studios I am launching myself headlong into preparations for my next show. It’s going to be in the Round Tower at Black Swan Arts in Frome starting 6 November 2015 under the working title, “Black squares, black lines & black magic”. It is a really brilliant space and I am determined to create a show that takes the building into consideration rather than just arranging my pictures nicely round the walls (round being the operative word!) I am also determined that it will not be just a static display: I want the show to evolve over the three weeks it is open. I haven’t the luxury of a proper residency, but I will be there each day the show is open and I hope to develop site specific work during that time. Of course the more people who come through and engage with me the less work will I be able to do, so I have planned two participatory pieces that will help ensure something new gets finished during the show – “with a little help from my friends”!
The first of these pieces will involve the help of other artists. After my meeting at the Black Swan tomorrow I will post an open call to artists to submit their take on the theme “Black squares, black lines & black magic”. I will be looking for submissions in any materials or media but they must be exactly 4″ by 4″. If you send something in it may be used in any way I choose, so you mustn’t expect to necessarily recognise your piece in the finished work, though I will publicly credit each artist. More details to follow very soon but in the meantime get your thinking caps on and get those creative juices flowing!
The other participatory piece will be an homage to Bob Law. As a painter of black paintings Bob Law has to feature somewhere in the process of making this show. I will be asking the help of all visitors in the creation of this piece and though I have got it pretty much planned out I will wait till the exhibition opens to introduce it.
Oh, and don’t think that just because “black” appears 3 times in the working title that everything is going to be dark and sombre. Those of you who follow my work will know that my black squares are often neither black nor square! But there again, people who know me know I can become a little “overfocussed” – dare I say “obsessional”? – which could mean it all does end up pretty monochrome! You’ll have to wait and see.
“Colourful Black Square 1” Acrylic on board 200mm x 200mm
“An Index of Metals (Thank You Brian and Robert)” Acrylic on canvas 400mm x 400mm
I am delighted to report that I sold 15 pieces during Bridport Open Studios and generated a lot of good feedback and met some wonderful people. My new works on canvas were particularly well received and i sold “An Index of Metals (Thank You Brian and Robert)” pictured above. I also sold “The Bit They Know About You” (pictured below) which is one of my favourite pieces, so I am particularly pleased that someone has seen its merits. I hope it gives the buyers much pleasure for many years.
“The Bit They Know About You” Acrylic and Indian ink on Saunders Waterford paper 559mm × 762mm
I suppose I am now going to have to change my Twitter header as the artwork I was using, “Mystery Evolves” (below) has also gone to a new home. I am fortunate too that quite a few smaller studies and collages sold, as well as the larger pieces mentioned in previous posts.
“Mystery Evolves” Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm
Outfall 2 Ink & watercolour on paper 559mm × 762mm
I have been pleased with the quality of visitors to my Open Studios this weekend. Most people have displayed a keen interest in my work and I’ve enjoyed meeting new people and talking about art. I’m also pleased that I have sold something each day – including today when I was technically not open! A visitor over the weekend called this morning to say they had decided to by “Outfall 2”, the piece pictured above. It’s quite a special piece for me and I am delighhted it has found an appreciative home.
I have also sold some of the small studies I framed up and another larger piece, “You Were Born And So You’re Free”
You Were Born And So You’re Free Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm
“Double Erasure – that soft spot in my heart” Multiply-erased graphite drawing on Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm
It’s that time again and now I have a studio at St Michael’s in Bridport town centre it would be foolish of me not to open up and join in Bridport Open Studios. Since completing my #Letter365 project I have been busy catching up on a couple of years’ neglect in the garden but I have also been getting on with new work.
Thermopylae (not as black as you think) Collage, acrylic & ink on board 306mm x 306mm
I completed the erasure drawing I was talking about earlier (shown above) and have been working on black squares (as usual not always black, not always square!) and various field pieces. Some of the field pieces are on canvas! That’s the first time I have used canvas or completed a piece on canvas for 43 years! (It has been interesting!) I aim to add images of some of this work in the next few days.
I have also been moved to return to using wet-in-wet watercolour again and have been creating large field pieces, starting a new series of work under the working title of “The Stone Archive – Fields of Oblivion”. I will post some of these later too, including some small pieces I have framed up especially for Bridport Open Studios. These small nicely-framed pieces are designed as affordable introductions to my work and would make great gifts for loved ones or yourself! They are the sort of things people point to in my sketchbooks and say, “Ooh, that’s nice!” Since I have been working on larger sheets than my sketchbooks when I am trying out some ideas (especially the watercolour and acrylic stuff as I can do more while the paint dries) I thought I would isolate some of the ones that work best and frame them for sale.
As usual there is a “6×9” show to accompany Bridport Open Studios. This year it occupies the foyer and cafe at Bridport Arts Centre and I have entered some specially made pieces that explore my current themes and, some, move into new territory. The show opens on Wednesday 19 August and runs till 18 September after which it transfers to Black Swan Arts at Frome.
Tired but inspired after doing 3 shows in London: Agnes Martin and Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern and Joseph Cornell at the RA.
After just three rooms of Agnes Martin I was ready to call it a day: either call it a day for my art career – for what point when she has done so much of what I’m exploring – or call it a day and go back home to the studio and get to work with renewed fire and vigour! As it happened I forced myself to be disciplined and make the best of the day in London.
I had been really looking forward to seeing Martin’s work after being recommended by a friend. I wasn’t disappointed, though the quality was variable ranging from averagely interesting to sublimely beautiful and completely enveloping. Some of the early work and some of her last seemed to lack a positive spark, seemed to be floundering, looking for a connection. The rest was hard-wired to her muse. Most of it I would love to take home with me and look after lovingly!
I may write in more detail about particular pieces, but over all I felt she was investigating similar areas to my current and recent work, that there is more than a superficial similarity in the way the finished pieces look.
I only scooted round the Delaunay because I was with my daughter and thought she may be interested in the costume and textiles. It was nice to reconnect to a few favourite pieces from my last visit, but it didn’t add to the positive inspirational effect of the day so far.
The Joseph Cornell was a disappointment and a delight: irritating and inspirational. I first came across his work in the early 1970s but never got to see the show in London around that time. At that time I was making sets and boxes – in a very different style – and was very drawn to and, possibly, influenced by his work. The disappointment was that photographs have shown them brighter and somehow more polished. In the flesh they seem a little dull. The delight was in the detail. If I had seen them in the seventies I would have been put off by the apparent slapdash construction, but now I can accept and cherish the poor mitres and uneven paintwork: it’s the ideas that captivate and intrigue and they are mostly put together perfectly. There was less humour than I expected: quite a few had fairly dark subject matter. I liked that many were physically dark, making you work to see what was there. I liked that the show connected me back to the best of the ideas and materials I was exploring back in college days that I have started to tinker with again.
Tissue paper lain over the almost completed double erasure drawing (detail)
I am increasingly interested in the idea of veiling work so the viewer has to work harder to see what they are looking at and have used semi-opaque papers in collages to mute and soften images below. I am considering using etched and frosted glass in front of some pieces, in particular some black square ideas that are 3D or relief pieces. The image above was totally by chance when I covered the erasure drawing I was doing with tissue to protect it till I returned to make any final adjustments. I am certainly tempted to experiment with more veiling, maybe with silk voile or cotton muslin. Perhaps I should go the whole hog and use black perspex or something totally opaque like black-sprayed metal to cover work?
Last year the show I had in Ramsgate was called “The Seen and the Unseen”. That refered partly to #Letter365 being sold unseen but also to the fact that my work is designed to make the eye unsure of what it is actually seeing (amongst other invisible aspects). During the #Letter365 process I had a number of conversations with people who liked the idea of never opening the letters and Schrödinger’s Cat was mentioned on a number of the envelopes and in many conversations.
So much of my work has been inspired by the sea’s marks on the shore and the transient and uncontrollable nature of our existence. It could be said that much of my work is an attempt to freeze a record of those unseen forces at play in the littoral landscape and my mind and emotions. Perhaps my work should move towards even more conceptual and ephemeral work?
For now, I have this piece to finish off. I have not seen it for a few days and other issues may arise when I do, but the biggest question I had when I left it was “how much do I clean up the edges and how big a border”? Of course it still needs a signature, which will, of course, be erased!
How much cleaning up at the edges of this erased drawing should I do?
Erased black square 1 Pencil and eraser on Canaletto paper
It may seem odd that my work on black squares and my Tidelines theme are intimately linked but it is all a continuum. This latest phase – erasing and redrawing and erasing again for as many times as necessary to get the effect I want – mirrors the tide’s twice-daily erasing of the sand patterns and debris on the beach; rubbed out but leaving a trace of the history of previous times and tides. I am experimenting with various surfaces. These featured are on 300gsm Canaletto paper. It is thick enough not to buckle and stretch too much and robust enough to take repeated erasure yet still soft enough to hold the indentation of an HB pencil.
Detail of surface after repeated erasing and redrawing
I have chosen to use traditional pencils rather than a clutch pencil because it allows a greater degree of chaos to enter the mix. The sharpness wearing to bluntness and my reaction to it in the marks I make, plus the length of the pencil affecting my grip on it as it gets shorter, are important elements in the content of the works.
Erased black square 2
The piece I began today (detail below) is on a full sheet of Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm on which I have created a semi-accurate ruled grid. I am using what I believe to be HB pencils that were liberated from conference rooms at various hotels 20 years ago – knew they would come in handy! I may have to buy some more as they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In future drawings I may use harder pencils depending on what the surface of chosen paper suggests. For the first layer I am trying to be pretty loose and not get into my usual rythmns and shapes. I am listening to Soft Machine and at times using my left hand. Once this “ground” has been established, with the general shape and form of the piece tentatively mapped in, I will be more controlled about the marks I make after each successive erasure.
First layer of marks (detail) on an as yet untitled erasure drawing
Another Moment Waiting To Happen Ink on Paper 303mm x 216mm
I am delighted to announce that “Another Moment Waiting To Happen” has been selected for the Evolver Prize Exhibition at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton from 4th July to 29 August 2015. It is only a small regional prize but I believe it attracts some of the best artists in the area so I am delighted to be ranked among such high quality. (Sorry for the appalling photo!)
In my last post I left the narrative of my trip to London at the end of last week ar the Royal Academy. What I failed to relate was my disappointment with the lack of interest and training in the staff at the RA. I have to say there is something odd about the RA to my mind.
The founding Royal Academicians in a painting by Johan Zoffany
I never feel comfortable there really, yet have never investigated why that might be. I avoided visiting for a long time. I started to get a bit of a feeling about it on this visit – and it’s not just because it is a different clientele to the Tate.
A friend once, in response to me voicing my unease, said “well they are a bit up themselves there aren’t they?” The clientele is definitely more conservative, more establishment, more old-money, more class-conscious and there is the sense of a posh club. I feel as if the RA as an establishment doesn’t really care about its visitors or it would have paid more attention to the basics of its retail/visitor-attraction offering. The terrible indictment I realised when I left was that in 11 interactions with Royal Academy staff only one was “good” (the lady in the cloakroom), one “adequate” (the person who checked my ticket) and all the rest were below the basic standard you would expect for day-to-day dealings let alone a major art gallery and visitor attraction. For example, I asked four different staff members (three at desks) where I might find the “Converse and Dazed” show “you know, the emerging artist thing” and they had no idea. Rather than taking responsibility the first three suggested asking someone else (“ask at the desk”, “ask downstairs”, “you’ll need to ask at the information desk for that”). The woman at the information desk looked at her screen and seemed not to be able to find it and treated me as if I was mad and not giving her enough information to go on! Whoever is responsible for visitor-facing staff at the RA really needs to visit Tate Modern to see how to improve; or the Whitechapel to make the visitor feel involved; or for a proper object lesson in how to do it properly they should take a look how they do it at the Turner Contemporary!
So I finally managed to get to the Converse and Dazed show (despite the poor signage, lack of information and aggressive security staff!) and had to take some time to calm myself before I was in a good place to look at the art. You enter the show through Jonathan Trayte’s “The Shopper’s Guide” and it is as good a place as any to shake off the irritation. It is fun, wry and quizzical: I can see why Grayson Perry picked it as his favourite. It didn’t hold my attention for long enough in the end and my rosette goes to Rachel Pimm’s “India Rubber” which is engrossing and subtle and, at times, quite beautiful. I can’t illustrate this as there are no relevant images on the RA website!
One of Klaus Staudt’s pieces at the Mayor Gallery
I then went for a little wander down Cork Street where Klaus Staudt’s show at the Mayor Gallery was quite interesting, especially the very minimalist pieces. I also found some Gillian Ayres work at the Alan Cristea not really to my taste. Her work is vibrant and colourful but my reaction to her work is often black and white: love it or leave it. I feel I would do well to spend some more time looking at her work to examine just why!
Next stop was Tate Britain to see the Salt and Silver exhibition. I had been prompted to visit through the Tate’s marketing, Tate Etc and the (careful) selection of images I had seen. I was especially drawn to the statements about the “materiality” of these prints; the image being absorbed in the top layers of the paper rather than a surface coating giving them a more artistic sense compared with other early photographic processes. Sadly I was disappointed not to get any of this sense of the image becoming an object. Behind glass and in the subdued light needed to preserve them I found them pretty much the same as any other early prints and even the side-by-side display of three techniques failed to make much impression on me, though I am sure if I was holding them in my hand in normal light the differences would be obvious. That aside, the exhibition did illustrate the history of 20 years of early photography but what is it doing in an Art Gallery? This should have been a free show in the Science Museum where they would have done an even better job of telling the story of the process. I looked at the images (and I do find old photographs interesting and involving) and thought “so even back then people took boring snaps of old ruins!” I have dozens of old postcards and many wartime images, bought or taken by my father, which have similar poorly-composed, tonally-challenged images of random people, churches, ruins and the like. They too are not fit subjects to be in a paid-for show in a major international art gallery. And yes, there is a historical, documentary aspect to the show – 20 years of a few countries in flux – but that’s a job for a museum not the Tate. The photographers were, with a few exceptions, not artists and were not recording the world from an art perspective or intending to make aesthetic creations; they were lawyers, politicians, scientists and generally rich folk! I quite liked the uncropped ones where the edges are black in swathes from the excess silver salts exposed in full light. I didn’t have to pay extra as I have Tate membership but I would have been pissed off if I had to pay £12 to see it! Perhaps I am being harsh – and there were perhaps a dozen images that were a true delight – but frankly I would have been just as happy seeing them in a nicely printed book because behind glass I could not see that special “materiality” of the image as object.
Nick Wapplington image of Alexander McQueen creation
So after a few experiences where my expectation was higher than the exhibitions delivered, one that was the opposite. I wasn’t even intending to go to the Nick Wapplington/Alexander McQueen: Working Process exhibition but I am pleased I did. By this time I was tired and had done a lot of art and wished I’d seen this earlier. If I had I would have spent a lot more time with it. It is a shame I won’t get a chance to revisit before it closes. What started out as a photobook collaboration has been transformed into a larger-than-life celebration of McQueen’s final 2009 “Horn of Plenty” collection. The photographs of every aspect of the working process of putting a major fashion show together are fascinating and involving and often movingly beautiful. These are juxtaposed with Wapplington’s huge images from landfill sites and recycling plants which act as a comment on the short life of consumer goods, fashion, art and the regeneration and constant reuse of ideas within the creative industries.
