Between Drawing and Painting

Vivienne, 2009
Oil on Board, 30 x 30"


Sam in Chris's Kitchen, 2010
9 x 12", Oil on canvas

Even in the most "representational" pictures I feel like I am dealing with strategies of abstraction. The arrangement of a coat or a slipper is a device for moving the viewer's eye around the canvas.

Line making within painting: from the overlay of blocks, to the use of gestural strokes...It is a kind of negotiation on the ground. The eye plays around that negotiation. But the eye is bound within the image.

Review of artist Sam Branton

http://www.sambranton.com/Sam1/Review.htm

scroll down, my review is at the bottom...

sort of a mini essay...!

After the Raft of the Medusa - Varieties of Kitsch?

This is the last in the series. The raft became obscured by the skull but then I brought it back in shapes. This painting is satisfying in its composition but I am somewhat mistrustful of it. It is too obvious with the skull. But really it isn't about skulls at all as much as perhaps why they got so popular in fashion over the last few years but then it is also about my own adolescent art practice when I painted lots of skulls (and this is a skull from another painting of a skull I did when I was 16 or so...) so maybe it is about the dredging of adolescent emotions or how they refuse being laid to rest. Or the prolongation of adolescence into adulthood which I seem to witness everywhere. This is indescribably cheesy. Paradoxically, I quite like it for this reason. But this is why I can't really trust it.



Album cover for a great band lost at sea.

From Peep3000

Recent Paintings

Dead Goose and Paper Plate in Canal

in Progress (?)

The first is trying to look as close to the original on a small scale as possible although in fact all the figures have been substituted for the members of the band The Captain Pyrates.

The second is abstracted look at planes in the composition with what I am calling acid-house colours. Now it looks like global warmings, but not in this photo. I do not know why I turn things into abstract shapes (but I have always liked Picasso). Attempting figurative-ness in the first one (still working on) feels worthwhile too. They are both very Kitsch-y. In future will experiment more with materials and methods of application. I seem to have this tendency to rub the paint on in very thin layers and then take bits off again. Perhaps I am trying to be economical with paint. But it might also be fear.

WENDY HOUSE - 3rd AUG 5pm Onwards

WENDY HOUSE
a group show of friends' art, in my garden shed,
set to a scintillating soundtrack of Wendy Carlos and "House" Music.

bring art to hang fri 31st, sat 1st, sun 2nd

(call me to make sure I'm in)

Private View will be Monday 3rd Aug, 5pm onwards!!!