Danae Series

Without wishing to repeat myself I wanted to consider my intentions in the continuing Danae series. I have been working on designs explicitly based on Titian’s Danae paintings for a year now. In the last month they have translated form digital designs to painted form. One is complete and another is on its way. I thought it worth trying to articulate my aims with this particular ‘crop’ of work.

I am interested in both the pose and the subject matter of Titian’s work. As is often the case he drew his inspiration from an Ovidian source. The story of Danae appeals to my sensibilities as it is one of love, sex and ultimately death, the key ingredients of human tragedy. The Greek myth stats that Danae’s father (King Acrisius of Argos) was keen for a male heir. The tragic seed is planted by his inquisition of an oracle who confirmed he would have a grandson but that his grandson would kill him. (Proto King Lear in the kind of tragedy) In order to stop this happening he looked Danae up in a bronze tower.

Whilst in the tower Zeus took a fancy to Danae. He transmuted into a golden shower and entered through the window, thus impregnating her. This is the scene which Titian and Rembrandt showed and is the scene I am interested in. The moment in which form melts into light, the coming together of two realms- almost a metaphor for the experience of creating and viewing a painting. A painter is only given one moment and as the dramatic crux of the story this is the moment to select. This does not mean, however, that reference cannot be given to the scenes wider narrative context.

In Titian’s painting (Particularly the versions with the old nurse rather than Cupid) there is a definite dark foreboding air beneath the scene of celestial lust. It is this which I want to borrow and exaggerate. I want a moment of conception which is as sensuous as it is dark. Whilst I have borrowed explicitly from Titians figure I have looked to push other things in another direction. In my first effort I worked out the composition in a square format. I thought this would give the image more the feeling of a dramatic statement than a view into a boxed, voyeuristic stage.

It is my later (currently unfinished) work which I am happier with in construction. The format has moved from Titian horizontal rectangle to a vertical one. I hope this exaggerates the downward motion from the light above to the form below. I believe the space and shape of a canvas can be used to create a visual dynamic. Danae’s position in the bottom half of a taller rectangle should provide the means to dramatise the lustful moment.

Beyond this I wanted a sense of the sinister. The notion that the moment of lust ensures the inevitable death of her father is something which fascinates me. It is as if some unseen force of nature is at work. Call it fate, divine intervention, the zeitgeist or whatever you want. For me this is what the crow can symbolise. I think it is similar to the Crow’s symbol in Ted Hughes’s poem. As some creature which governs all humanity, whose every action has some chaos theory ramification. I see the crow as a post god controller of humanity, capable of flying through space and time. For me he is the protagonist of tragedy. Is he the antithesis of Cupid or perhaps Cupid himself in his true form, the planter of tragic seeds?

My desire is to have a sense of the crow in the painting. Not a graphic reference but a sense of otherness, a sense of a mystical form which occupies or passes through the space, which appears to be the conductor to the paused theatre. I like the idea that he kicks of a succession of events then leaves and lets havoc break lose. The notion of being disguised as Cupid is due to a belief that the succession of events he causes are ultimately tragic in that they start of with happiness of love but have an inevitability of death and depression in them.

The Crow is therefore a reference to the sense of Shakespearian tragedy I want in this painting. Firstly the right hand side of the painting has a curtain. Obviously not at all original but it gives the feeling of a stage, as well as framing one edge of the painting. This creates a stage like feel, we become the spectator and what’s more it creates a closed door on one side of the painting which suggests the other is open. I have placed him centre right. He is moving from right to left, as if exiting the stage. It is if he has some, planted the narrative seed, then left. (With only one moment, and the inability to show successive events, I believe this is very much the painter’s role, to plant the narrative seed then leave. So in this sense the crow becomes self reflexive with the painter being the unseen force, the demi god of his own worlds; self loving or what?!?!) I believe that placing the crow central with a horizontal dynamic creates a dichotomy between the central act and this supporting role. The verticality of the divine union is countered by the horizontality of the protagonist’s action and exit. A play on such spatial concerns is of course time old. Just think of the cross, the horizontal being the earth and the vertical being the move through the earth from a profane to sacred realm. The physiological tension of such dynamics only works by having one play off against the other. What is created is a dialogue between the two in which meaning can be found. In this case the vertical is the moment of lust, the moment of conception. The horizontal is both the cause and the effect. The crow as the protagonist which flutters and pulls the curtain back to start the chain of events and the knowing being which moves through time to ensure the act concludes with the fulfilment of the fatal premonition.

Titians "Bacchus and Ariadne" and the dawn of plastic reality

Thanks must go out to Bridget Riley and her book of interviews and essays for supplying much of the information and insight through which this little piece has developed. I am also perhaps jumping into deep water tackling this particular subject seeing as Tom has devoted much of the last 2 years studying paintings from this era, so don't expect anything too spectacular.

Ok, so it is a slight exaggeration to suggest this was the first work which dealt with painting and its inherent plasticity, you only have to look at Giotto and his forebearers to understand that they were dealing with a series of flattened surfaces inherently plastic in their nature. However if we study Bacchus and Ariadne there are many formal devices which are particularly useful for painters studying their art today, as artists who are acutely aware of paintings falsities, its realities, its strengths and perhaps most importantly its limitations.

The painting is shocking even today, when we are so accustomed to shock as a tactic with which one can briefly capture a viewers attention, so how is this work shocking and how does it endure, even with our saturated senses. The prime reason appears to be the sheer volume of blue, "and what a blue!" Painters from antiquity avoided using such a large proportion of deep blue because it threatens to destabalize the coherence of a piece. Yet Titian uses it with such apparent abandon and he doesn't attempt to integrate the blue with hues of similar intensity, which would be the choice taken by many lesser painters. Apart from some of the reds the rest of the tints are incredibly soft. Titian ties the blue to the rest of the image by the force of his narrative and the dramatic interaction between the characters, in fact he uses the overpowering nature of the blue as the kick-start to the whole story and it is perhaps apt that something as abstract as the colour of the sky is the beginning to this particular narrative, which takes place over the matter of instants. A pace which compliments the explosive, exhuberence of the story unfolding.

Titian is often known as the most Shakesperean of painters, so much attention to detail is placed on the subtleties that underscore the individuals humanistic behaviour, however, i think it is safe to assume that Bacchus... is not one of the paintings where sublety takes precedence, the characters appear more like actors on a stage, precisely because they are working to win over the viewers attention from the saturating blue, which in turn is flattening the space and creating a staged effect. The combined effort of the characters produces explosive diagonals, from the blue through Bacchus to the man wrestling snakes, and again an opposing diagonal using bacchus with his red cloak to point the way towards Ariadne with her red scarf, who seems to exist in a space all of her own, in realtive calm away from the troup on the right.

WhaleCrow gets a plug

No, this is not some kind of conflated and pretentious concept of this blog site being presented with a three pronged plug. Rather, we were given a thumbs up from http://www.metabunker.dk/. This blog site is run by Matthias Wivel and friends. I met Matthias last year. he was a supervisor on the History of Art degree I just finished. He is, I believe, doing a phd which looks into the link between Titians woodcuts and paintings. His site deals with a broad spectrum of visual and cultural issues. From attribution of Venetian masters to cutting edge 'cult' comics. I was quite worried about showing images of mine and Andy's paintings to people from the department, through fear that they would think my work in particular was kitche. Kindly Mathias made some very nice comments. On his site, below a nice big image of Danae1 he posted the following (saved on here for posterity as much as anything- plus its good to blow your own trumpet occasionaly.)


...Just wanted to plug the blog of one of last year’s students here at Cambridge, Tom de Freston and his friend Andrew Foulds. They are both painters and have now started a blog showcasing their work all the while providing a forum for their thoughts on art and such. There’s some good work there - Tom has an acute sense of saturated, rich colour that I dig. Above is reproduced a riff on Titian’s Danae. Check it out....

Many thanks Matthias. Now I must work out how to create a link to relevant sites such as this. ummm, buttons buttons everywhere.

Right, enough self congratulation. I am going to return to the Adonis painting. That is sure to drag me back into self deprecation and frustration. Currently quite jealous of Andy's efforts in 'The Dance.' Characterisation, 'narrative', surface, composition and colour really seem to be coming together. I still prefer 'Melancholy...' in principle, but it does not have the formal sophistication of 'The Dance.'

Plus- meeting another local artist next week who is just starting up again after completing (I believe) a phd which i tihnk considers the Theatrics of 17th Century painting (It could be wrong though) Could be interesting.

In response to Jimmy Hat

James is one of a few people to have asked me about the sources to my recent paintings. In there intial photoshop form and final painterly outcome there are certain quotations that could be close to pastiche. In certain works, Danae for instance, the quotation is clear and there is not intention to hide it. The figure and subject draws explicitally from Titians Danae series. I do believe though that in this instance I am trying to approach the issue from a slightly new position, as a 21st century young english painter, not a 16th Century Venetian artist. (I hope that sentence does not make it seem that I am comparing my little sketchy efforts to the supreme powers of Titian. I believe i am interested in a slightly darker and more tragic drama. I am also interested in pushing the figure towards abstraction. This menas the form can be manipulated and in this instance I like the notion of Danae's body become a curved container which catches the shower of light. This has obvious sexualised resonance with the story. I could be wrong and works such as this are obviouly coming very close to touch kitche.






My image and form series do not draw explicitally from any source in terms of either the figure or the subjectg matter. This is partly due to a slight lack of specific subject matter. They do show a fondness to the figures of mr O'donohugh but the quote is indirect.

The Icarus painting draws from no visual sources. Form the classical myth and from Ted Hughes Crow. Both these have been filtered through my own vain attempt to tackle the subject in a poem. Visually, however, the figure is entirely mine. Although it does draw on certain religious precedents.

The Adonis in the river lethe work. Unfinished and still not uploaded, draws purposelly form its source. That is infact where its meaning comes. The poem, written a few blogs back, looks to construct a story of Venus and Adonis, looking back to Titians work (whichdraws from Ovid) and again Ted Hughes crow with a nod to the kind of tragedy Shakespeare was a master of. The figure of Adonis is derivved from the grasp of Venus in Titians painting. Inthis case I fully dismiss any quotation as being kitche. I have purposelly drawn from this source to strike, hopefully, a emotive note. By remembering (in death) the now absent Venus and her visual plee for his love, the tragic nature of his death is hopefully reinforced. It is a vain attempt to try and collapse the causal plot of the story into one unified dramatic statment. perhaps it does not work, but the borrowing is not derivative.







The above image is the start of the painting. I have put it up here in its fresh form to help illustrate the point.

In some cases the borrowing goes through a considered process. I was keen to borro from Titian the pose of Lucretia in Tarquin and Lucreta. The painting and the horror of the subject matter fascinate me. I am keen, however, to convey a more detached, more generalised sense of horror. Some more unknown and less specific. Her pose to me conveys a particualr type of horrow. I thought if that was removed from the context of Tarquins attack then it could stil hold weight. I pushed this notion through an organic process in photoshop, to create a design. The result is a mere design for a possible paitning. (which will hopefully be better if compelted) She is now grabbing at fresh air, grasping at darkness. I have yet decide how far this could be pushed and still think it is a bit derivative. I thought it useful to demonstrate in one instance, however, the particular process gone through from source to potential outcome.






These examples show that I am struggling with my borrowings. Two years of an intense Art History course had its impact. Being immersed in the works of so many greats i have naturally been keen to use what i have learnt. It is natural that to start with I will be a bit too attached. I hope that I can prove the borrowings are not hierachical though. It is not some excercise to boost at Art historical knowledge. Iwould be just as happy to borrow from the internet, real life, newspapers and magazines in the search to convey a particualr visual outcome. I do belive that direct observation of the figure is a root i need to coniute to pursue. I will, however, be conintuing to look directly at previous artistic solutions and borrowing poses and figures without concern. We only need to look at the work of Titian, where virutally every painting quotes some precedent (often Michelangelo.) In our postmodern, semiological aware era we should realise that we can take something and byremving it from its original context into a new one give it new meaning. Nothing is of bounds and its use, however, direct, can avoid the ktiche if its final intention is different to that seen in the original. This is obviously a dangerous line to walk at times. I hope as I develop in the next few mothns that people will see I am after more than mere self aggrandising nods to past and present 'masters'.

Coughing up Phlegm

There are a few issues which I have been meaning to explore in written form for a good few months. Exams, laziness, change and confusion have all meant I have yet to get around to articulating them. They are concerned with quite specific painterly notions I am keen to deal with. The semiotics of the medium, its history and its relevance to 21st century practise; most concerned with paint as a sign with mimetic, self referential, symbolic, expressive and musical signification. I am also keen to get into writing some thoughts on space, again as a semantic tool, with a multiplicity of dimensions. On top of this an interest in two fold-ness as something all painters have been interested in is something I want to look at. I say all this because I feel a need to remind myself of what it is I want to consider for fear of forgetting. I hope to get some notes out here on the above issues very soon.

It brings me onto the fact, however, that I have some issues which I have just considered, which I am going to tackle now. Whilst they are fresher, more generalised and less important I feel I can just splurt them out without so much worry. Hopefully it will staert to jog my mind and writing back into action for above mentioned posts.

Andy’s post, two below, made me think about the point of painting. In particular I’m interested in the lessons to be learned from Modernism (that strands of Modernism caught up with Greenberg’s ideals and pervaded in the work of the 20th Century abstract painters)

Despite much ‘progress’ since the 1960’s the peak of ‘high Modernism’ is still the visual and philosophical starting point of most young people, like myself, with pretensions to become ‘painters’. It is fashionable to idolise Greenberg first and then to laugh over his Imperialist idealism later. Both these polemical stances don’t get to the crux of the matter. What did that period of painting tell us.

Greenberg’s artificial narrative was a necessary call to arms. He made painters realise that to move on we needed to focus our attention on paintings independent properties. Thus a growing obsession with the surface and flatness developed. What Greenebrg realised was that to develop painters needed to question paintings very nature of being. It was an ontological inward looking dispute. Ironically, however, the painters who triumphed were those who in looking to the specifics of the medium started to challenge the nature of being in general. Rothko’s canvases. They pulsate, great vacuous expanses throbbing in front of our eyes. To cast them off as mere plays on formal values is ludicrous. Within the shifting layers lies, as Andy said the timeless and the tragic, the core essentials of humanity seem to vibrate in front of our eyes. These are, of course, highly unfashionable statements. But merely ‘experience’ one of his best paintings and it is clearly true. Where Modernism fails is when painting becomes a closed door, where in questioning itself it seems to look literally no further than the edges of the canvas. It’s a self loving, elitist, indulgent and, ultimately boring pursuit.

Which brings me to painting today. We need to learn from the success of a Rothko or A Pollock. In looking forward we need to search for something beyond mere quick fix decoration, cheap sensations and skin deep beauty. We need to harness paint and use it to continue to explore its limits and its potential to deal with bigger issues. Which brings me neatly to another point. Is this not what painters of any note have always tried to do? Obviously only really good painters can do it. But have not all painters been concerned with that symbiotic duality, to extend the knowledge of the medium and the mediums ability to articulate notions beyond itself. So concerned are we with progress, with a linear history, with evolution that we forget that many things don’t change. Painting is the placing of a coloured fluid onto a two dimensional support. We can theorise all we like but however much history passes between us that means a painter today is as united to Apelles as Veronesse was to Titian. If modern Physics has taught us anything is it not to realise that all notions of time are constructed. Can we not apply this to painting and instead of seeing the past as an ordered ladder see it as one continuous whole, from which we feed? With a continued obsession with sociological and contextual research I doubt this will happen. We will continue to feel a need to locate and justify painting in regards to its specific time. Yet we should not be surprised. Lucky the potential painter can ignore all this academic crap.

By the way tom, i quite like that self-portrait of your's, its curiously interesting. how do i alter the names on my images? duh.

Veils, alluring veils! Hmm.

The problem of what to paint is an obstinate one and every painter who picks up a colour with the intention of applying it to a 2D surface has to confront this predicament. It is quite possible that it is more prevalent now than it has ever been, in previous centuries narratives have been laid in front of the artist and if there wasn't a particular narrative, either religious or mythical in scope, then there were commisions of rich patrons who desired to hang likenesses of themselves for their own vain glory.
Then modernism struck and the subject that was closest to everybodies lips was the paint itself, the aim being to take paint as far as it could go. Many people would have us believe that this then became the only subject, although that was never really the case for the majority of the great artists. However, one could assume that for some it did become the veil through which they poured the rest of their artistic ambrosia. And whilst they concentrated on this veil, it allowed the real artistry of the spirit to filter through untainted.
So now what to do. I mean in actuality everything is possible, but then again everything is tainted. The critics have given us a reason for and against everything we could dream to do, so ultimately they have out-critiqued themselves in the process. Still this is not getting to the crux of the problem, what can we paint, if indeed we can paint anything and in anyway? Perhaps Gerhard Richter was onto something when he lent from pop art and decided to paint anything and everything, proclaiming that non of it had any meaning other than the enjoyment of the painting process itself. Of course he was wrong, and has since admitted so himself; every choice we make has significance on a psychological level. Still, this work for myself at least, is unsatisfying just as pop art was unsatisying once the statement -to the commerciality and throw-away nature of our lives- and the subsequent adjustment of our psyches had been made.
I think we require a certain sense of permanence again, a journey back to Rothko's "timeless and tragic", but how to approach an artist whose mature style was so pared down. To move further back, maybe, to the other artists of myth and narrative? I dunno.

Icarus and the Crow

Crow and the zeitgeist copulated
Out spun a nightingale
Between two centuries and clouds
Trapped with eternal dawn
A flickering beauty which caught Icarus’ glance
Crow planted the green seed

Icarus’ rattling skull dreamed of such wings
Crow forwarded him a pair in an email
No questions, Icarus downloaded them
Wearing them with pride
Then a sun caught his eye
Crow watched from the stage

Air turned to escalator
Icarus ascended decorated in poetry
Slipping between realms
Self dissolved and the light came closer
Until it burnt, darkened flames
Crow giggled

Icarus fell towards the city
A splattered puddle of guts awaited him
Crow pressed pause on the remote
He hung Icarus in mid air for eternity
Forever falling to his death
Crow went to the pub

Adonis and the dry heart

The related painting is currently half finished. Will upload when complete. :)

The crow descended as a black rain cloud
He disguised himself as Cupid, dressed in white jester wings
His black beak, a protagonist’s arrow
The seed of tragic love was planted
He grinned mischievously

Venus, believing she was unseen
Continued to inhabit other bodies, in other times, in other spaces
Between the shadows the crow struck her
A dagger blow delivered in a caress of a package
He slept, chuckling

Love soaked her as two realms collapsed
The mortal Adonis appeared, flawed
She embraced him, grasping at the intangible
Two young lovers forever about to kiss
Crow danced between them

Her grasp held a warning, silently playing
The prelude to the grand sorrow of love
As autumn leaves danced to a tune of melancholy
Through line time would have to pass
He fluttered his wings

The mortal urge is stronger than lust or love
He exited stage right, moving towards death
In his urge to hunt the boar dealt him that blow
A bleeding groin pulling him to death
Crow received a text

Laying in a pool of blood the crow arrived
Disguised as a river
He dragged Adonis’ empty corpse into limbo
Then drowned him in the river Lethe
The crow became the river

Adonis lay motionless, floating in the ether
In his Amnesia he remembered the pose of Venus
He became her unfading shadow
Grasping towards the past
The crow flew off, smirking



Notes for self:

Convergence of various plots: still to reliant on sources, to the point of pastiche. I have written some notes on these sources below to try help me realise the flaws in the process/approach/method.


River Lethe- one of seven rivers which flow to hell. Those who drink its water have a bout of amnesia, forgetting all that went before. Keats talks about it in Ode to a nightingale.

Hugely reliant on Ted Hughe’s the crow (continuing the idea of the crow as this anti God, a creature which with every move can condemn actions upon all humanity. I like the idea of an epic protagonist, capable of passing through all. I particularly like the idea, which I don’t think I have borrowed, of the Crow disguised as Cupid. There seems to be something particularly Shakespearian about that. Within love the seeds of tragedy grow. Which does not mean I am aligning myself with old Will, merely keen to pursue the kind of tragedy which is sown at the start of King Lear. I love the idea of the inevitability of the decent)


Titians Venus and Adonis Ovid’s Venus and Adonis. In each of Titians versions of this work the basic format is the same. The manner in which he moves from the Ovidian source is inspired….

In Ovid- Metamorphoses story unfolds in time through word and line.

In the painting: the prelude to the grand sorrow of the goddess of love

No singular moment in the poem which seems to condense the tragic drama into a pictorial solution. Rather than retell the narrative over a horizontal or recessive plan of reading Titian events a device which can condense the causal relation of events into one moment which can be seen rather than read. He seeks to find a pictorial solution to the poetic problem.

Titian invents the central exchange between Venus and Adonis, in which we can see her love for Adonis, through gaze and grasp and her fear of what is inevitable. Titian has translated a verbal warning into a visual depiction of physical restraint, which conveys the love of now and the fear of the future.

Adonis’ action: expresses the moment his natural instincts pulls him away from her literal grasp. Bold step forward and lean of the body give a powerful sense of movement and makes the break from her arms seem inevitable. His spear draws draws a line between, symbolic of the permanent divide which will be caused by his lust for such weapons ahead of her.

Dogs hungrily avert their attention to the next scene. Titian has translated a rebuttal of a request into a dramatic and pictorial rejection of a passionate embrace. The translation from word to picture has lead Titian to invent a pictorial equivalent to Adonis’ actions. This is what poesie is, the poetical evocation of a drama formed by exclusively pictorial devices. Painting as poetry on its own terms.

Props which point towards cause and effect of central action, the

supporting cast. Cupid- asleep, job down, set the story in motion, also suggests that love is now unable to intervene in the tragic unfolding of events.

Burst of light on right- suggests the return of Venus. Floating above a dark forest we can speculate she is looking down to the now dead Adonis. The forest certainly seems to resonate with such tragic potential.


Past and future events not shown but suggested. These do not precede or follow the central action but enrich and inform it. We do not move from one to the other but we stay engaged in the singular moment and pose.

Causal interrelation of parts in tragic plot have been condensed into one pictorial moment. Painting competing with poetry on its own grounds.

What most interests me about this is her pose. How Titian has found a visual, figural, motionless dramatic equivalent to the narrative causal plot. What I liked the idea of was taking her action, which seems to contain the seed of the tragedy, and posting it into the end seen, the death (or post death) of Adonis. The notion that once dead, when floating in Lethe, his figure resembles her pose. As if the two moment have collapsed. As if the tragic potential of her grasp is fully realised in his floating dead corpse, which appears to grasp at empty space behind him, as if reaching for what was (off stage to the left ie the past). A kind of visual symmetry in the love and death. A kind of parallel opposite of joy and despair that Keats speaks about in Ode to Melancholy.


Other visual notes about the work-
Wanted to create a dynamic where two diagonals cross each other. Defiantly need to pursue this kind of visual mathematics. I think it is where my mind natural moves towards. The use of space for dramatic effect.

The search for narrative

One of the biggest realisations I made during my two years at Cambridge was the need for a return to subject matter. I think Brian Graham and Andy both made little statements that really stuck in my head. I have finally lost faith with my obsession with Modernist ideals regarding pure abstraction. The total autonomy and self worth of painting for its own sake feels to me now to be an empty and self aggrandising philosophy. I have allowed this notion of subject matter to filter through my mind for some time, not sure of exactly where to latch onto. Initially I went back to old friends like Keats, or the notion of music as a source. All I found was indirect avenues towards abstraction. I finally realised that my subject has to be visual in its root. That does not mean painting something which stands in front of you. It does mean, however, taking an idea, a source which sparks off visual rather than philosophical notions. The intellectual rigour will then hopefully emerge from that rather than some preconceived abstract notion searching for a visual answer. Without such a tangible source I think there is a danger of stumbling in the dark looking for something which was never there. (Only a month or two since I stopped writing and already I have fallen into pompous crap) The French painting paper I did made me realise that perhaps figural narrative is a place I can start.

I have been reading Ted Hughes Crow as advised by Andy. Christ its epic. Has really triggered off some ideas about the potential for poetic narrative in painting. By poetic I think I mean something which is none specific, but which looks to trigger suggestions of a causal narrative plot which is more universal. For me this is where I think my painting should be going. I don’t believe in the supposed total lose of autonomous meaning, which has led us to suggest that every painting needs maximum explanation through comparison to another discourse. Equally, however, I don’t believe that a painting can be a doctrine. It’s nature does not allow a didactic tone. As a container of messages it moves more naturally towards suggestion. The fact it is silent. Therefore we need to move towards narrative which deals with something less stable, less tied down. Okay, waffling now. So the crow and what it is making me think.

I have taken from Andy the idea of no longer be restricted by a particular narrative. Rather taking a range of sources and allowing them to feed each other to create a new poetic narrative. That being one which can expand and contract without necessarily fully revealing itself, if that makes sense. I think I also like the idea of the narratives developing in both writing and painterly form. Informing each other but able to also grow independently. So it is neither illustration of the written narrative or explanation of the painting.

ok tom, here's Leviathon, just slightly influenced by Paradise Lost!

The original 'Paradise Lost' verse
"There Leviathon,
hugest of all living creatures, on the deep.
Stretched like a promontary,
sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts, a sea"

I liked to exaggerate the idea that he spouts a sea to suggest he created all the sea's. so i wanked on for several pages thinking i was milton. it turned into a sci-fi-athon. might be able to take some bits tho and apply them to the crow notion.

"And there, Leviathon,
Hugest of all living creatures
On the bone-china ground of proto-earth,
before gods, monsters and media moguls
Raised empires and built scrapers,
so high.
With their crowns of spires
As to block out the sun
And tear shadows in the chiffon sky.

Before all this.
She was queen, emperor, sire to the dirt
And all who crawled on it
or slithered through it.
And as the rocks of ages wore to dust around her,
her and her wisdom bloomed.

And everywhere she stepped brought forth new life.
plants that breathed in her air
creatures that fed on the plants.

Though through success
builds successes pyres.
For those who deem to fly too high
or dig too deep,
oft burn under the burden of torchlite fingers.

Thus, the Fates showed their cruel hand
And sent their mistress, Gravity
To press her desires upon Leviathon
whose legs as wide as a forest bower
buckled under the weight of success.
Herself to become an isle in an ocean of dust.

A state to confound and burden slow demise
on lesser beings, earthly beings.
But earthly she was not
so through sacrifice she defiled the Fates
and bid adieu to her lover and only master
Life.

Tears welled in her third eye
(of what man, as man was, called the blow hole)
And thunder, from the cavenous depths of her bowels,
at first a low tremor, rising to a terrifying crescendo
threw mountains from her belly.

Tears of composition untill then unknown,
flowed across the partched land.
Hewn from her bosom, Lifes milk,
Water soaked the desserts and the rocks.
The land drank with fervour, as befits one,
who knows nought but thirst for a creations age.

The land drank
Then the land drowned."

endless rant and poetic vomit over, and out.

The Crow's Seed

The crow descended
and planted a seed
Before melting into shadow
to watch it all unfurl below

TESTING.... TESTING...1..2..3

Hello world?!?!

Currently really busy so not be able to work on the series of mini articles I have had planned for a few motnhs now. Currently though I am more absorbed in the actual act of painting. Having had a self imposed painting break for the last two years I am more concerned with the paitnigns themsleves than any surroudnign ideologies. Even in these first few studies I have realised that my practise, whilst rusty, has progressed further during this break than it ever has before. I shall get around to getting something written soon and upload it as soon as I have. There are a large range of things (pretensions?) I feel a need to get off my chest to allow me to stop obsessing over them.

As the header of this blog implies this is a site for myself and Andy to discuss our artwork, the history of painting and surrounding issues which impact upon our practise. I think it is important to keep an open dialogue between word and image in the development of my practise. At this very early stage in my work I find the two are not as close as I would like.