Some notes

I recently starting workiong as a lecturer and tutour on an art foundation course. I also split from a long term girlfriend. These two events, one positive the other negative, have perpetuated a recent paralysis in regards to writting on this site. I have also noticed a parallel slowing down of ideas for future paintings. Consequentially the process has been helpful. it has confirmed my intial hope that this blog woudl provide an improtant cog in the creative process. Its abscence has conifrmed this to be true.

A fair few things have taken my interest in the last few weeks but I have not had the time or inclination to articualtew them here. Firstly I still need to write up some notes on my visits to the Callum Innes and Howard Hodgkin shows. Once my scanner is set up i shall do this. I would also like to upload my lecture notes and images. The danger is that these are rather long and also touch on some points made in previous blogs. I do think it would be beneficial and interesting though. Andy, let me know if you think it is not appropriate. From my view point the more stuff we can get up of relevance the better. A long sprawling blog post is not too much of a problem as it soon get reduced to a title as we move from one month to the next. Anyhow... I dgress as per usual.

Was extremely touched by Andy's poem and it made me realise that my poetry, which I have so enjoyed writting again (despite its inadequacies) has dired up. So firstly I wrote a reply to Andy's poem and I will upload my next poem after this post. The next poem is a rift on the prescence of the flying, crow like figure (protagonist) in my paintings. I wanted to use poetry as a organic process in which to investigage the ideas which I have attached to this symboil. Notions of tragic inevitability, the exit of a protagonist from the painting as a stage etc etc. Poetry seems a far more appropriate medium for this exploration than more analystical writting. Analytical writting forces us to justify, to describe, to define. Poetry can get closer to the true meaning of painterly elements as it deals in similar elusive and less tangible descriptions.

I recently finished my two paintings 'The Wake of Endymion' and 'Lucretia' and will soon have finished 'Icarius II'. I thought I shoudl jot some notes down on these before I forget. I shall upload the pictures when I get a chance.

Lucretia- I covered these previously. 'Icarus'- Andy hit the naiul on the ehad with this subject. I think I am pulled optwards it as it touches upon the timeless nature of mans pursuit for perfection and its inevitable decline. The fall of Icarus is what interests me. The latest version attempts to conjure up a more contemporay depiction. Icarus not being a visual prop I need to latch onto, but a metaphor for what the painting is about. Not that the work moves away from the obvious figurative element of a falling man. It is just more that the context gives a nod towards our present culture. My only worry is that the nod could seem explitally to reference the evenets and attached poliitcal debates of the Twin Towers attack. That is not what I wanted. The architectural reference more came from a desire to use the geometry of the surface, a division into clear rectilinear sections, as Poussin or David might. (obviously in a far less sophisitcated manner) I wanted to use these divisioons to reinforce the sense of the fall, the sesne of its inevitability, the sense of the vertical energy vs the horizontal energy of the 'crow'.


'The Wake of Endymion' The figure quotes Girodet's Endymion. The subject of Endymion interests me. It is a highly romantic story. The notiuon of a young and beautiful mortal being sent to sleep for eternity. It deals with the romantic painters desire for painting, beauty and youth to be eternal. It is the kind of notion I aspired to for ages. Then suddenly you realise that transcience is inexcapable. Time and change (crucial parts of the Crows fabric) ensure we cannot hold onto the moment. In fact the beuty of the moment is the fact it does not last. It only exists in a positive light due to its fleeting nature, due to its relation to what comes before and after. If it exists permanently in a vacuum to this then it loses its appeal. It becomes vacuous and empty.

So I thought I would paint 'The Wake of Endymion' a paradoxical notion when you consider the story. That moment of awakening that never happened. The notion that the Crow arrived, moved thorugh time and space and interupted the dreamy eternal state that they aspired too. A pretentious side of me would call this tragic realism.


When I upload the painting you will see if I have acheived any of the above. I have taken the original figure an shown him reaching up to the light, as if his consciousness and awarenss of the lgihts prescence has awakened. His form breaks up, movign to abstraction, getting eaten by the shadows. The destruction of image relates, hopefully, to the sense of transcience.

I have also tried to create a surface which appears time worn but seems to sztart to break up in front of our eyes. From the edges to the centre I have attempted to create a sense of change in the surface itself. So the very medium and its application refers to the narrative context. If I have got anywhere near this I will be happy. For ultimately, as a painterly painter, I belivee the medium itself should be critical and central to the articualtion of meaning and poetry.

I have another painting, with the drummer boy and dancers, which has been a long time in planning without yet making its way towards a canvas. I am in danger of fear setting in. I just wanted to quickly touch on one tihng that painting wants to do though. I want to following from David in the sue of a stoic fiugre. Figures whose abscenbce of emotion is the sign of deep internal unrest. Also I am interested in manets use of masked, outward facing figures. They face us, suggesting a desire to communicate. yet everything about them evades any such communication. They offer us something then appear vacuous. The elusiveness is the key to meaning in Manet's work I believe. At times it is deeply troubling and melancholic.

One last not. i have started a third and fourth version of Danae. In both I am looking to pursue and puch further the idea of her body as a container which will receive both Jupiter (the light) and meaning. In these works she is pushed to the edge of figural representation. She is almost just a cup. If we read her as a female form it is only in the (hopefully) seductive fleshly quality of paint, or perhaps as a pair of detached open legs. If this works then I feel I am moving clsoer to the straddling of abstraction and representation which I desire. At this moment in time I have no idea if it does or not.

That is all for now. Apologies for the broken and waffley nature of this post. It has been a stream of consciousness. SO whatever its weakness or pretentious it is honest. That, above all else, is the most improtant thing.