why a compulsion to document?
Having recently documented what I expected would be my final solo exhibition, I found myself thinking about the first time I presumed to photograph my work. It was May 1965 on the roof of Beechfield House, the men’s residence at Corsham (Bath Academy of Art). Why the roof? Because that was where the light was.
Up until that time, the college’s educational dictum - You are still learning. Process is paramount. It's too soon get precious about end products - meant that everything was an exercise en route to a time when something may be produced that would be worth keeping. For would-be artists, it was a pretty effective ego-suppressor but I accepted this philosophy then and I still do now. Student progress is better served when preciousness about a finished product is not an overarching concern. But, in 1965, I decided to record the half dozen or so paintings that would be part of my final assessment exhibition. It was time to seal the ‘moment’ as I knew that none of those paintings would accompany me when I left Corsham. It felt appropriate to begin a visual record and 35mm slides were the best medium.
Once away from college and no longer making paintings that were essentially exercises, I began to keep detailed records in the form of colour slides and file cards. The model for this came when, at the London Public Library & Art Museum, I was assigned to work with Tony Urquhart for his retrospective exhibition. Tony maintained a complete record of each work's vital statistics: title, size, medium, where it was exhibited, who owned it, etc.
In 1982, my file cards gave way to a rudimentary digital database. But slides were still required as my computer was low-resolution, black and white. The digital database had one advantage over file cards in that fields could be sorted from which lists could be printed. I recall being impressed by the fact that it would only take fifteen minutes to sort and print a few dozen records. However, any perceived efficiency disappeared when compatibility became the issue. I switched platforms and that effectively trashed the existing database, a condition that was never a problem when file cards were used. My Radio Shack TRS 80 had served me well for about five years but the transition to a Mac Classic proved to be the kiss of death to the initial database.
Early on in my record keeping, I also discovered the advantage of taking multiple slides of each painting as opposed to relying on having copies made from a single original slide. Multiple originals were cheaper and the colour quality was more reliable than were copies. Up on the roof in 1965, I had thought that one shot of each piece was sufficient. However when it came time to submit applications for exhibitions and grants, I understood the value of multiple originals.
Years on and several Macs later, the opportunity to digitize and store images on the computer opened significant possibilities for more efficient documentation. I was even able to stop moving binders full of duplicate slides from one home to the next. A small number of slides had moved with me from England to Canada; a larger number from London to North Bay, and more folders than I care to think of en route to Nova Scotia: the solution, digitizing each slide and storing images on discs.
Finally and with the magic of Photoshop that can be used to restore faded colour, a website provided relief from disc storage. It also provided the means to orchestrate viewing. However, one problem that I discovered was that 1990 scanning advice had not served me well. In keeping with the capability, storage and delivery systems at the time, early scans were low-resolution. My first computer had just 16k of RAM which I upgraded at great cost to 48k. The Mac Classic was not much better and, while the bulk of the scanning came much later, the computer I had at the time would not have handled a MB let alone a KB file. As a result and by today's standards, most of the early images on this website are relatively poor quality. That said, revisiting, editing, upgrading and organizing images previously stored in slide sheets, as contact sheets, or on ZIP and floppy discs has allowed me to assemble a comprehensive and representative archive of fifty plus years of activity.
Note: since writing this page, I accepted the offer of a solo exhibition in 2021 at the Art Lab in Parrsboro so a need for documentation persisted.
Up until that time, the college’s educational dictum - You are still learning. Process is paramount. It's too soon get precious about end products - meant that everything was an exercise en route to a time when something may be produced that would be worth keeping. For would-be artists, it was a pretty effective ego-suppressor but I accepted this philosophy then and I still do now. Student progress is better served when preciousness about a finished product is not an overarching concern. But, in 1965, I decided to record the half dozen or so paintings that would be part of my final assessment exhibition. It was time to seal the ‘moment’ as I knew that none of those paintings would accompany me when I left Corsham. It felt appropriate to begin a visual record and 35mm slides were the best medium.
Once away from college and no longer making paintings that were essentially exercises, I began to keep detailed records in the form of colour slides and file cards. The model for this came when, at the London Public Library & Art Museum, I was assigned to work with Tony Urquhart for his retrospective exhibition. Tony maintained a complete record of each work's vital statistics: title, size, medium, where it was exhibited, who owned it, etc.
In 1982, my file cards gave way to a rudimentary digital database. But slides were still required as my computer was low-resolution, black and white. The digital database had one advantage over file cards in that fields could be sorted from which lists could be printed. I recall being impressed by the fact that it would only take fifteen minutes to sort and print a few dozen records. However, any perceived efficiency disappeared when compatibility became the issue. I switched platforms and that effectively trashed the existing database, a condition that was never a problem when file cards were used. My Radio Shack TRS 80 had served me well for about five years but the transition to a Mac Classic proved to be the kiss of death to the initial database.
Early on in my record keeping, I also discovered the advantage of taking multiple slides of each painting as opposed to relying on having copies made from a single original slide. Multiple originals were cheaper and the colour quality was more reliable than were copies. Up on the roof in 1965, I had thought that one shot of each piece was sufficient. However when it came time to submit applications for exhibitions and grants, I understood the value of multiple originals.
Years on and several Macs later, the opportunity to digitize and store images on the computer opened significant possibilities for more efficient documentation. I was even able to stop moving binders full of duplicate slides from one home to the next. A small number of slides had moved with me from England to Canada; a larger number from London to North Bay, and more folders than I care to think of en route to Nova Scotia: the solution, digitizing each slide and storing images on discs.
Finally and with the magic of Photoshop that can be used to restore faded colour, a website provided relief from disc storage. It also provided the means to orchestrate viewing. However, one problem that I discovered was that 1990 scanning advice had not served me well. In keeping with the capability, storage and delivery systems at the time, early scans were low-resolution. My first computer had just 16k of RAM which I upgraded at great cost to 48k. The Mac Classic was not much better and, while the bulk of the scanning came much later, the computer I had at the time would not have handled a MB let alone a KB file. As a result and by today's standards, most of the early images on this website are relatively poor quality. That said, revisiting, editing, upgrading and organizing images previously stored in slide sheets, as contact sheets, or on ZIP and floppy discs has allowed me to assemble a comprehensive and representative archive of fifty plus years of activity.
Note: since writing this page, I accepted the offer of a solo exhibition in 2021 at the Art Lab in Parrsboro so a need for documentation persisted.
February 2020