a blast from the past or a primer for an old timer?
2017-2020
2017-2020
Throughout this period, I generated work with roots back to a painting that I made in 1964. Oil on board (40"x40"), the 1964 work (below) was based on a photograph shot from above of a woman treading water in a swimming pool. Initially, my intention was to render a realistic image. But, as the painting developed, the image became flattened and abstracted with particular elements gained in significance. My attention was drawn to the edges of the form and to the lines around and across the swimsuit. The finished work featured edges of the swimmer's arms, legs and torso dividing the water into three similarly sized areas.
Through this process, I became interested by the idea and process of abstraction and this evolved into something of a preoccupation with purely abstract, undulating lines. Out of this experience came a series of small paintings evocative of movement. As with the swimmer, the format of each painting was square. I limited colours to three or four with compositions that were mere arrangements of lines generating distinct and, I hoped, interesting negative spaces (see example below). The series was acrylic paint on canvas, a medium more suited than oil to my particular process and a medium to which I have stayed loyal to this day.
(note: the paintings above are presented in monochrome as surviving colour slides had become so faded that, even after digitization and manipulation in Photoshop, true colour could not be resurrected).
Until around 1974, the move from imagery permeated both two and three dimensional work.
Much more recently, I realised that the representational content of early 2017 works had, somewhat unexpectedly, been haunted by these mid-sixties preoccupations. In essence I discovered that working with elements such as particular colour combinations still hold as much interest for me as they did fifty-plus years ago. The difference between then and now is that my experience with materials, mark making and surface development has evolved. No longer am I restricting myself to flat colour with surface content so minimal that the end product is without developmental history. By that, I mean that the earliest work was planned on paper to a point where all choices were finalised prior to construction. This new work is also planned, but in less precise terms. Surfaces evolve as colours, textures, edges, etc., overlay one another and undergo change throughout the making process. I have, however, restricted the primary elements of each work to circles and diamonds (squares displayed at 45 degrees), including some with an end format that is a simply a circle or a diamond.
Perhaps I should have seen the current approach coming when, in 2013, I revisited ideas from the late 1970s. In 2013, however, my interest was simply to recreate, in miniature, work from the 1970s. While the 2013 work used processes grounded in current interests - more responsive materials and surfaces - the surfaces of the 2013 work are even less predicted and, hopefully, less predictable.
I think of the technical development of these surfaces as being less a monologue and more a dialogue, perhaps it could even be considered a materials conversation. Also, I now recognise that the surface quality of the original oil 1964 painting has played forward as both real and simulated texture, real and simulated depth.
Final thoughts regarding the 'final' exhibition
Because these last few years have been reflective, assembling this body of work has been genuinely cathartic. When making the first piece in late 2017 I believed that, in all likelihood, this would be preparation for a final solo exhibition. I titled the previous solo exhibition ‘unfinished business’. The Last (Non) Picture Show continued the theme, albeit with different material sensibilities. Bringing process and content full circle makes sense to me, as did working with objects and formats that could be hung from a single point. Circles and diamonds accommodate my lazy side which warms to the notion of installation with a single hook.
The other condition I set, or was set for me by default, was that of limited access to the kind of tools upon which I had come to rely. By necessity, this constrained ambition to make large work or approaches that needed mechanized processing. Keeping things simple became an exercise in recycling, repurposing and re-imagining both materials and processes. As a result, I sought out circular and diamond-shaped wood objects and frames that could be used and manipulated in a variety of ways.
Most works in this series are acrylic on wood with a few pieces that are coloured pencil, chalk pastel and ink on mylar. In all cases both real and imagined texture is central to the quality of the surface and, yet again, colour selection privileges combinations that are complementary.
Finally, a link to the short statement that is included in the exhibition can be found here and, since composing this page, it now seems that another small solo exhibition is to be mounted in late July 2020 * at The Art Lab in Parrsboro. The Last (Non) Picture Show has become The Penultimate (Non) Picture Show.
* Courtesy of Covid, the exhibition was moved to July 2021.
The other condition I set, or was set for me by default, was that of limited access to the kind of tools upon which I had come to rely. By necessity, this constrained ambition to make large work or approaches that needed mechanized processing. Keeping things simple became an exercise in recycling, repurposing and re-imagining both materials and processes. As a result, I sought out circular and diamond-shaped wood objects and frames that could be used and manipulated in a variety of ways.
Most works in this series are acrylic on wood with a few pieces that are coloured pencil, chalk pastel and ink on mylar. In all cases both real and imagined texture is central to the quality of the surface and, yet again, colour selection privileges combinations that are complementary.
Finally, a link to the short statement that is included in the exhibition can be found here and, since composing this page, it now seems that another small solo exhibition is to be mounted in late July 2020 * at The Art Lab in Parrsboro. The Last (Non) Picture Show has become The Penultimate (Non) Picture Show.
* Courtesy of Covid, the exhibition was moved to July 2021.
