LAND/MARKS

Land/Marks Project:

This project is a return to painting after considerable time exploring collage and printmaking, but a return to painting that would challenge my previous ventures while at art school studyiing for my BA (Hons) in Fine Art.

The title indicates a potential seperation in that it might well be that the paintings will depicting landmarks, but it is mostly about the marks of the painting as a focus and a way to assert the surface of the picture.  This presence of the art object does echo some of the concerns that I previously followed, but here with a new focus; one which explores abstract aspects including marks, proportions, sequences, structures, etc.  It is about 'how' the work is made as much as what it depicts..

Paintings of landscape looking at proportions, positions and painting marks.

The theme of the edge of fields often recures, along with the view through or obscured from a scene.

Distributions Series

This series explores the process and presence of the picture.  It is about the character and positioning of the marks a much as the depiction of the scene or the subjects.  The gesture of the hand depositing the paint and the implications of the interactions between each mark.  Sometimes aspects are coordinated and other times it is like a conversation as the accumulations build up.  Often the starting point is the distribution of spare paint from a previous painting, as a pre-existing impression, rather like the process of collage where pre-existing images are integrated together.  This echoes my art school approach to some extent, yet investigates new ways to incorporate contributory aspects together with different processes.  The process is a violation of painting traditions, as much of the time the drawing and painting aspects are in reverse.  The pre-existing set of marks are considered for the under-layer or substrate for a drawing to be imposed on top and then to integrate with further painting.  In this way it is about the integration within the painting and of the process as much as the scene depicted to create a presence to the picture that evokes or creates curiosity.  This series follows a process of building up or redistribution, and sometimes also a process of reduction, rather than just follow the prescriptive traditional format of the rectangle.  There is often an intention to 'break the rectangle' of the picture and follow the focus and expansion of our visual process as we see things, and leave evidence of that accumulating process.

Conjunctions Series

This series explores the presence of the art as object as well as image by combining the scene and subject depicted along with the structure of the Fabinacci sequence; a composition aspect apparent in pictures since the renaissance.

Conjunctions 1 The Presence Of Landscape, explores the editing processes adopted by film makers to engage and invite viewers to see the unraveling and motion into a scene and reveal the subject of interest within the story.

Conjunctions 2 Distant Opening, leads us to the pivital balance within the picture with its stucture prominent.

Conjunctions 3 Structures, coordinates the stuctures of nature with the physical fabinacci presence of the painted panels.

Conjunctions 4 Willy Lotts Cottage, echoes the the building in its scene with the presence of the panels painted on.

Contortions Series

This series explores the theme of form with a focus on trees looking at their structure and thier modifications and sometimes mutations.

Contortions 1, explores the confinement of nature in our sprawling urban world as the branches are retained within the picture format mirroring the reconfiguements we find around us.

Contortions 2, explores the animation of the structure as the branches reconfigure their spread as they grow, as interventions and incidents amend the course of progress.

Contortions 3, explores the empty scene of the season at rest.

Fallen Form, follows the Contortions theme into the decline of the form, and from an unusual perspective abstracting and focusing on the presence of its surface and form.

Land/Marks: The title anticipates the concept and approach for this project, in that it can be seperated in three ways to make a different statement.  It is as much about painting marks, as it is about subject matter or place.

Here are some of the pages from my project sketchbook, the observations and ideas that inform my ideas as I work on developments in the studio.