Getting ready: 2013

mopping                                              

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before, and after                                                                                                                   


phew.                                   

Final year

New year is a week in.
My bank account is fluctuating up and down
and I have been blissfully ignorant of everything,
nose to book,
eye to photography,
mouse button to video game...

...erm... dissertation, I mean. Dissertation.

Research is like a tree.


You start uncovering one part of the foundation,
identifying the roots of something you're interested in...

...soon enough, you find yourself entrenched underneath it all,
or hanging very suddenly by a frail and totally off topic branch at the top somewhere.



 Focusing is hard for me. Really, drawing conquers this fractured attention span because you always move, make and change as you progress through the work.

But when I have all the information, when I'm compiling the words and relevant factoids,
its sort of like someone spilt the marbles in the jam,
which dolloped onto an unfinished jigsaw,
then threw the tinsel in for funsies.

It's shiny, messy, useless and distracted. But full of stuff I like.

This years mantra:
Be focused, stay calm.
Be calm, stay focused.

Silliness aside, I hope it works.
Good luck and best wishes to everyone on their own new years resolution, promises, goals and the like.

:) x

Baking Paper and Pins.

Obviously, I am painting.
So, I've been dallying away from the blog recently - but I have a good excuse.
Well, maybe not a good one, but an efficiently lazy one:

I've been busy.

"Stills" is my latest concept in the studio for the upcoming third year show in January (huzzah for Christmas, a great asset to the inevitable sugar-fuelled all nighters).

Working from last year's project, I have decided to develop the screen grabs into their own work, rather than use them to compile my portraits (see 'Conversations').

Ingredients include:

Baking Paper, Blank White Paper,

0.5 Technical Pencil, Watercolour set,

Pins (approx 2cm), Velcro Tabs

Mount Board, Spraymount,

Scalpel, Metal Rule, Cutting Mat.

So far, they look a little something like this:

Which is fab. I really hope that, using such delicate materials and subtle mark making I can encourage the viewers to step closer and examine each frame in its own right, while remaining in context with the original timeframe. 

People seemed to be intrigued by the fluttering paper and aesthetic quality of the presentation (squee!) Which is exactly the aim! 

The shadow is essential to define the frames as physical entities, 

freed from the video reel.

Well.

 Only 59 more to go... 

(then redoing the ones which have gotten scuffed on the way)...

Charity Auction: A Private Show

It's seven on the dot, and Artsite has opened its doors, 

champagne and smiles at the ready!

Straight away I'm off, nosing around for work I haven't seen yet. 

There is a diverse range of brilliant local artists showing their work, a handful of Swindon, Oxford Brooke's students including:

Minh Chau, Lee Carter,
Jemma Gunning, Kareen Jackson,

and of course, myself.

The proceeds from the auction will all go to the Swindon Carer's Fund, it's a great feeling that our artwork can take part in raising money for a good cause, as well as get a taste for curation and event planning in the future.

I liked this particular handling of the larger canvas's and frames: using easels well worn in paint and splatters tied in nicely to the finished works and white cube environment of the show.

It's also handy for framing the titles and business cards underneath their respective works;

as well as making the placement of works easier to re-arrange at any moment.

The presence of the standing easels adds to the work itself having a presence in the room, but not so much that it detracts from the image itself.

I always look out for this:

how does the artist sign their work?

Tonight, I found an ornately painted ceramic stamp by 

Tim Caroll:

bold, detailed, yet it tied in with this particular subject very well. 

It's a great cause with some wonderful artworks;

please join us on the 12th November and 

take part in a wonderful evening of Italien food, 

brilliant local art all towards a worthy cause!

Painting Boxes for the Big Draw

There is something unusually satisfying about this.

Stripping cardboard boxes 

from their original context,

into a body of blank faces
and forms.

As well as embellishing

the floor with messy 

outlines :)

Introducing a splash of colour in The Big Draw 

at Swindon College with some block primaries.

It's also been ages since picking up poster paint! 

That powdery smell of junior school art class, yum!

Excited to get started!

Play

Eggs, blobs, dough, orbs, goblets, balloons...?

I'm not so sure. 

I created a miniature colony of these organisms, who balance, cluster, or sit alone. 

Hiding in the shade between two lockers, camouflaged against primer paint,

with a post it not instruction for passer's by: "play"

These little critters encourage a quiet doodling for anyone intrigued, an essential exercise for art students. Aimless playing with no rules or agendas for five minutes, one minute, thirty seconds.

It's really engaging to pass by and notice one or two have clustered together, rearranged or drifted across the surface.

Open to interaction.

play

why am I drawing like this

There is a lot of conversation in artwork.

A lot to say about the relationship of perspective, 

of the viewers perception, of flatness and objectivity:

For the last year, 

I spent my practice drawing out 

tactile work from an intangible, online realm; 

creating compositions 

from our perspective 

through its lens...

the framing device 

of the monitor screen, 

abstracting our own forms 

from our fleshy reality.

So re-create a tactile side - 

so make a reformation of the input.

I like doing it so much I might

want to change the subject.

offer a more direct exchange...

of material on material,

like gestures of charcoal or pen, 

of pencil or paint,

expressive, fragmented, sensitive marks.

the back and forth of marks on a page,

a growing form of the abstracted humanoid

I want to find niches in the real world again.
Its like swapping the glass screen for baking paper,
its like switching the Hi def. for analogue,
its like swapping the mac for an apple.

it just tastes better...

my charcoal is licking marks along

the rough handmade paper;

who rolls along, just casually,

puffing dark dust clouds with

a sharp rustic smell. 

the smell,

its pretty meets pressure, its figments in friction, 

pulling out these liquid hints

I just keep finding it exquisite

how the delicate seems to grow into 

such scrambling, gestral branches, 

thickening its roots until something starts to bloom,

starts to breathe.