Here are a few of the paintings I have been working on for my upcoming show at the Sarah Wiseman Gallery in Oxford.    That starts on 16th October 2021

https://www.wisegal.com

In a world of increasing information overload, I find the calm continuity of nature more and more compelling. The dance of light on water and through green leaves, provide sanctuary to the human spirit that goes deep into our subconscious, fulfilling a primal need to retreat to woods and river and cave.  Trees are endlessly mesmerising. They shape the world around us in such a beautiful, ever changing way, creating restorative and immersive environments that support an intricate web of abundant life, while marking time with the turn of the seasons. The exuberant vibrant green of a wood in spring moves into the heavier, oxygen laden experience of the darker summer forest,  the rustle and jink of falling leaves amongst a sea of yellow dots as autumn rolls round,  and the endless fractal like detail created by a mass of twigs and branches against a winter sky,  create a cycle of renewal that I find incredibly life affirming.

Walking and running through the local woods and surrounding countryside is where most of these paintings begin.  Despite repeated returns to the same spots, the constant shift of light, weather, season and the endorphin fuelled state I find myself in, mean that different details capture my attention on virtually every trip.

I get excited by small moments of transient light and shade, or the discovery of a new path with a childlike wonder that I never seem to have lost.

Recording some of these moments on my phone, I often use the pano feature, which has a fascinating way of expanding time and space. This works best when moving though the intricate complexity of the woods while taking the photo, so that it’s no longer a frozen moment but an unfurling stretched and sometimes fragmented narrative.  In this way, the images can take on an almost cubist, multifaceted quality which are both visually interesting and disorientating. I often accentuate this further by pushing the algorithms and colours of the photo, which can have the effect of fragmenting them even more. This digital ‘solarisation’ process can create startling colour combinations and almost jewel like artifices which hide in the minutiae of the noisy digital jungle.

These messed up images, combine with memory and imagination to provide the starting point for many of the larger paintings in the studio. In a process that is almost a mirror reverse of the photos, I start with an energy filled exuberant mess and gradually try to reveal the imagery and detail hidden within it. Happy accidents, mistakes and serendipity play a role and the painting often takes a divergent lurch away from the source material. Painting over completely different previous failed attempts can sometime provide surprisingly spontaneous juxtapositions, repurposing marks to create intriguing and ambiguous results. As the painting progresses, I often become preoccupied with a search for visual balance through colour and form – using rhythm and dots to push it one way then the other until a final mark can create the elusive state of equilibrium.  Throughout  all this protracted distillation, I still try to hold onto the initial energy of the first gestural marks made on a blank canvas, because I really want the paintings to imbue, and transmit, the shimmering life force of nature and the natural world that I love so much.

To Make sense of this You really need to read from the bottom – (is it finished yet?)

November 2014 – Black Swan Arts

So the show is up and I have had to draw a line under it all, although I could have kept working on it for another couple of months.

Black Swan Gallery left

Black Swan Gallery Right

This project hasnt gone the way I imagined. – What I imagined, was a pair of painterly, abstract images making a series of gradual changes, steps and progressions that would lead steadily towards a finishing point.  Instead there have been a series of lurches in new directions as I made compete changes of mind about the subject matter

I think I probably got a bit lost in the sea of possibility and have ended up in a completely different place to the planned route. Off course – here be monsters…

In the process I have effecively destroyed several paintings that were beginning to show some potential.  I have ened up retreating from unknown waters to firmer ground. Something a bit more tangible. But it still  just feels like a step along the way, and not the final destination.

There are ideas that remain unfulfilled , that I was sure would come into the story, but in the end just didnt fit, or were passed by because another path was taken.

The moment there was a fire it seemed to draw the attention and any uncertainty was relieved by moving closer to it. Zooming in seemed to resolve some problems but just created others.  I would like to end up going further in, and almost out the other side if you can follow what i mean.

I have always been really interested in the macro micro nature of the universe and the way that patterns and shapes seem to repeat themselves as one zooms in at greater and greater magnifications

There seems to me to be a cross over in the way that digital information is, or can be manipulated, and I have become fascinated with the patterns that can be created in the gamma corrections of photoshop at high magnification.

I ended up messing around with the photo of the abandoned quarry further in photoshop in a kind of parallel way to the paintings.

The Unconformity – limited edition high definition Sublimation print on Aluminuim

From it I produced many more images as I zoomed in and manipulated the colours. Of which I have printed up 5 using a new Sublimation technique onto aluminium that looks beautifully crisp and glossy.

The Children of the Unconformity 1

2

3

4

5

on the wall

Some of these have a visual relationship to maps and satellite imagery that then takes them back towards landscape but from a completely different angle,  I think this ties in with what I mean by though the other side.

I can talk alot about connections , but in the end they are just bits of random colour that just sing together in a beautiful way for me.  The serendipity of their discovery has a parallel with the creation of my pallet paintings which can be seen at happy accidents.  The moment to stop with these can become even more acute.  because they are so much smaller a single gestural mark can radically change the whole image, and there seems to be a fine line to walk between abstract marks and finding and picking out the imagined imagry in them.

Will post more images manana…

Here is the poster created by my neighbour Simon Attfield.  You can see more of his great work here :  http://www.simonattfield.co.uk/  He also suggested the title Flux. He said that it seemed to stand out as a well used word on the blog… I looked it up and it comes from the latin to flow;  I dont know how smoothly this whole project has flowed but it has kept moving.  It is mainly a scientific and mathematical term, but part of the wikipedia definition describes it as : “the flow of a physical property in space, frequently also with time variation.” which will do for me…

Poster

With 5 days till the show opens, I’m thinking about obliterating this one….   The Bird in the bush is singing a beautiful song of possibility.

Twist, Stick or Burn

Well I did it –  I think it was worth while because I really wasn’t that happy with the bonfire –  As I said before its not easy to paint something as live and constantly moving as fire.  So here is my final effort:  I think its achieved a much greater sense of shimmering heat.  You need to see it for real to appreciate this though – The paint is a lot thicker now, had some fun dragging it across the canvas with a long straight edge, and I had to end up mainly on the pallet knife which gives it a good variety of marks

Blaze

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Well time is almost up, but as ever I could do with another few weeks…  I think if I had them I would make another major compositional change, and zoom further into the the fire and the ashes.  But I will have to leave that idea, because I really don’t think I could turn both paintings around in a just over a week.  This is where I have got to at this point in time,  everything is still in a state of flux and I will be making more changes, but nothing too major.  The focus has shifted from day and night to the fire and all the loaded imagery that comes with it.

Stoke it up

I love fire, its consuming beauty is endlessly fascinating . It is such a potent symbol of mankind in so many different ways, and it stirs something primal in us all…   But its not easy to capture in a still image;  its all about movement, light, sound and the physical sense of heat. These are qualities that paint doesn’t have.  So I think whatever I try to do, it will always be missing something, but that no reason for not trying.  I want to try to get across the way it sucks in everything about it, consumes it,  and then radiates it back out.

What we are left with a few hours later is just a sense of what has been…  All that energy and all that remains is some light fluffy ash that can blow away in a gust of wind,  and the detritus and fragments of what escaped the conflagration.

Broken Circle

The fireplace has an almost henge like stillness.  Though it is still the focus, the energy has transferred to the grass,  and the periphery;  which fights for the viewers attention, drawing the eye out of frame and asking –  whats next?    Well, those are just a few of the thoughts that have come me as I look it. Might sound like I’m reading a bit much into it, but when you spend a long time with a large painting though the creative process, the mind does wander…

The scale on the screen doesn’t really get their full impact across so come along to the show at the Black Swan and see them for real.  It opens on the 30th October at 6pm and runs for most of November. There will also be a series of ‘pallet paintings’ that were a by-product of their creation, and I’m hoping – a series of limited edition prints, if I can get them printed in time.

Back Towards Colour Fields:

Here is the latest stage in this meandering journey,  I seem to be working my way back towards simple colour fields.  Maybe thats because of the loose and ambiguous nature of the subject matter.

The Heat of the Day

Impenetrable Darkness

I do feel a bit like I’m groping around in the dark here.  I’m beginning to think that I need something,  a more fixed and narrowed down idea to work around.  If you can go in any direction, you sometimes end up going nowhere.  So I’m beginning to think that I might make better progress if I had a clearer image to work towards.  All the time I have been working on these two paintings I have been seeing stuff that I really want to paint.  Should I hold my course and push on into the unknown, or take a turn and introduce some more literal imagery?