April 2020
The processes of making continues, the repetitions, the rituals, the same questions differently phrased, similar marks differently organised.
The questions I asked myself in 2019 about how to begin again when meaning has been lost elicits the same answer as the question that all the world seems to be asking at this time of Covid 19, how to continue when meaning is challenged.
I just pick up a pencil, a paintbrush a torn piece of paper and begin with my usual meanders between randomness and intention. Randomness in the initial actions, intention in the way in which I dismiss one outcome and embrace another.
The decisions are made intuitively. Primarily I am exploring. Perhaps in time I will be able to articulate my findings but maybe I never will. It is not important, I just do what I need to do when I feel the need to do it.
There is no greater truth or philosophical explanation to be applied to my actions. The images have nothing to say in that I make no intention to say anything, but sometimes incidentally, the process or the work that I am left with, provokes thought or reflection in me. Maybe it can do that for others maybe not.
Most of the images are made using scanned images from my sketch books which are then digitally manipulated. My initial sketches are both made from life but also from sketches made in response to other artists work, both painters and photographers. They are past and present and in that sense do continue my interests in fragments, layering and sense of time.
June 2019
What happens when meaning becomes lost to us? Gradually we begin again to repeat familiar routines in the hope that we will find it again.
The paintings made since January 2019 continue the repeating cycles of randomness and intention. They are responses to a very small sketchbook of pencil drawings made as distractions at a time when life was difficult. An answer to how can I begin again.
2016
The work on fragments continues. Fragments of time, fragments of memory, fragments of objects, fragments of meaning.
There is no clear cohesive explanation.
The process of making continues, repeating its cycles of randomness and intention. Intentions that relate only to the thing that is created - e.g. how to make a line sharper, a tone darker, a colour more vibrant.
I have just begun working with a combination of etched metal and shellac coated card fragment. It is early days but I am optimistic.
In order to counterbalance this intuitive, unplanned process of image making I have joined an urban sketching group to address those aspects of "truth" that are possible to avoid in my non-figurative work.
2015
The New Year begins tomorrow. Presently I am involved in two strands of work, a series of etchings - a combination of drypoint and copper sulphate etch on aluminium plate which explore the passage of time and a sketchbook project Cover 2 Cover which is a group project by artists in West Berkshire.
In the prints time is explored in seconds and minutes as one observes the passage of a sunlight across the sitting room wall or the movement of a cloud scudding the sky and in years and centuries as one observes the patina of a surface, the marks laid down in history. The process still embraces the element of chance, the image is never carefully planned and then executed, it keeps changing through the making partly because I want the process of making to mirror the process of change and flux which stimulated me initially. The work is not an image of something, it is about something less tangible.
The sketchbook project is an opportunity to look at themes that others have decided, to try out new things , to avoid indulgence in my own habits. The sketchbooks are swapped every 2 weeks until 10 different artists have worked in each sketchbook on the ten different themes.
2014
The work continues in two directions.
The Fragment and Chance Encounter work is visually coming together, exploring the ways in which we make meanings from the past and the pluralistic ways in which the past becomes re-interpreted.
Simultaneously Winter Poems a series of paintings made between September 2013 and February 2014 is leading to a series of monoprints that allude to natural processes and rhythms. Presently the prints which are woodcuts are developments from number 8 in the Winter Poem series.
October 2013
As the year moves on those processes that developed during the fragments and chance encounters work become combined. There is a sense in which it is difficult to
maintain that the work is by chance once something which was accidentally encountered becomes an element that is actively sought. However by layering the different elements and maintaining an openness to what may or may not occur when different layers overlap a sense of exploration persists as does the possibility for surprise. I am using the ongoing changes in nature, specifically the trees in the garden as a starting point. The next step will be to see how the images that are occurring in the printing processes translate at a different scale in paint. I am going to use acrylic instead of oils.
Fragments
Fragments have been a recurring theme over many years. Mostly they have been as metaphor, but more recently I have also been "picking up the pieces" in a more literal sense as an essential part of the working process. Small pieces of card are cut into irregular shapes which are variously scored or marked with different tools, or sometimes covered in textures. They are then inked up using either intaglio or relief methods of inking, sometimes both, and printed onto damp paper using a press. Because of the nature of the inking process each print is never exactly repeated.
The work is exploring the ways in which we make meaning. It doesn't have any answers, in a literal or philosophical sense. Context seems important, the space in which a fragment is viewed, whether it is a single fragment or one of many. The small collograph plates are variously placed within the limits of the paper.
The processes of making continues, the repetitions, the rituals, the same questions differently phrased, similar marks differently organised.
The questions I asked myself in 2019 about how to begin again when meaning has been lost elicits the same answer as the question that all the world seems to be asking at this time of Covid 19, how to continue when meaning is challenged.
I just pick up a pencil, a paintbrush a torn piece of paper and begin with my usual meanders between randomness and intention. Randomness in the initial actions, intention in the way in which I dismiss one outcome and embrace another.
The decisions are made intuitively. Primarily I am exploring. Perhaps in time I will be able to articulate my findings but maybe I never will. It is not important, I just do what I need to do when I feel the need to do it.
There is no greater truth or philosophical explanation to be applied to my actions. The images have nothing to say in that I make no intention to say anything, but sometimes incidentally, the process or the work that I am left with, provokes thought or reflection in me. Maybe it can do that for others maybe not.
Most of the images are made using scanned images from my sketch books which are then digitally manipulated. My initial sketches are both made from life but also from sketches made in response to other artists work, both painters and photographers. They are past and present and in that sense do continue my interests in fragments, layering and sense of time.
June 2019
What happens when meaning becomes lost to us? Gradually we begin again to repeat familiar routines in the hope that we will find it again.
The paintings made since January 2019 continue the repeating cycles of randomness and intention. They are responses to a very small sketchbook of pencil drawings made as distractions at a time when life was difficult. An answer to how can I begin again.
2016
The work on fragments continues. Fragments of time, fragments of memory, fragments of objects, fragments of meaning.
There is no clear cohesive explanation.
The process of making continues, repeating its cycles of randomness and intention. Intentions that relate only to the thing that is created - e.g. how to make a line sharper, a tone darker, a colour more vibrant.
I have just begun working with a combination of etched metal and shellac coated card fragment. It is early days but I am optimistic.
In order to counterbalance this intuitive, unplanned process of image making I have joined an urban sketching group to address those aspects of "truth" that are possible to avoid in my non-figurative work.
2015
The New Year begins tomorrow. Presently I am involved in two strands of work, a series of etchings - a combination of drypoint and copper sulphate etch on aluminium plate which explore the passage of time and a sketchbook project Cover 2 Cover which is a group project by artists in West Berkshire.
In the prints time is explored in seconds and minutes as one observes the passage of a sunlight across the sitting room wall or the movement of a cloud scudding the sky and in years and centuries as one observes the patina of a surface, the marks laid down in history. The process still embraces the element of chance, the image is never carefully planned and then executed, it keeps changing through the making partly because I want the process of making to mirror the process of change and flux which stimulated me initially. The work is not an image of something, it is about something less tangible.
The sketchbook project is an opportunity to look at themes that others have decided, to try out new things , to avoid indulgence in my own habits. The sketchbooks are swapped every 2 weeks until 10 different artists have worked in each sketchbook on the ten different themes.
2014
The work continues in two directions.
The Fragment and Chance Encounter work is visually coming together, exploring the ways in which we make meanings from the past and the pluralistic ways in which the past becomes re-interpreted.
Simultaneously Winter Poems a series of paintings made between September 2013 and February 2014 is leading to a series of monoprints that allude to natural processes and rhythms. Presently the prints which are woodcuts are developments from number 8 in the Winter Poem series.
October 2013
As the year moves on those processes that developed during the fragments and chance encounters work become combined. There is a sense in which it is difficult to
maintain that the work is by chance once something which was accidentally encountered becomes an element that is actively sought. However by layering the different elements and maintaining an openness to what may or may not occur when different layers overlap a sense of exploration persists as does the possibility for surprise. I am using the ongoing changes in nature, specifically the trees in the garden as a starting point. The next step will be to see how the images that are occurring in the printing processes translate at a different scale in paint. I am going to use acrylic instead of oils.
Fragments
Fragments have been a recurring theme over many years. Mostly they have been as metaphor, but more recently I have also been "picking up the pieces" in a more literal sense as an essential part of the working process. Small pieces of card are cut into irregular shapes which are variously scored or marked with different tools, or sometimes covered in textures. They are then inked up using either intaglio or relief methods of inking, sometimes both, and printed onto damp paper using a press. Because of the nature of the inking process each print is never exactly repeated.
The work is exploring the ways in which we make meaning. It doesn't have any answers, in a literal or philosophical sense. Context seems important, the space in which a fragment is viewed, whether it is a single fragment or one of many. The small collograph plates are variously placed within the limits of the paper.
