Existential crisis?

                                                 Painting and poetic thoughts .

Years ago a good friend of mine, who in a past life was prominent journalist, were talking about writing. I said to him that I was terrible writer primarily because I trended to think in short snippets thus not really capable of writing anything like a coherent story. He was polite enough not to absolutely concur my self assessment and being a passionate exponent of his chosen art said that I should write down whatever came to mind anyway, so on occasion when the impulse has struck me I have. The results are these 'poetic thoughts' and just lately I felt perhaps I could incorporate them in my paintings. So as part of my desire to be more adventurous with my painting I prepared these tiny (12 x 15cm) panels and transferred text on to which I will later superimpose a painting or drawing which will actually obscure much of the text. In that way the text will have no significance to the viewer except as a decorative device but the fact it is there may add a subconscious emotional weight to the piece. Well that is the theory!    

 

The first panel to the left was the first of this little series of experimental grounds I have undertaken. Its a lovely surface which I am looking forward to working on. The first layer was a heritage red, then on went some crackle medium, then a beige over that. Once all that had dried I smothered the surface with a gesso and then scraped that back so the different layers were revealed. I feel the results were great but when I transferred the text I was a bit heavy handed with the paint and so the writing wasn't as crisp as would have liked it to be, so I did it again on a another little panel the second image shown  and the result were closer to the desired effect I was after. The text says:

‘Jovial’

If I could wrap my arms around you like that last time I would not hesitate, I would hold you as close I could, I would press my chest against yours, I would press my cheek against yours and if I could not kiss you maybe the beat of my heart would tell you “Please let me see you again”, 

I didn’t do any of those things, our farewell was jovial and manly, I took   the prospect that we may never meet again as a challenge, that public facade numbed only then a wound scored across my ribs that now aches within me as if it were a hideous infection,

My reason can not be complete, if a decade has not dimmed my tender thoughts of you and it’s now the simplest questions that are now the most urgent, ‘Are you well?’ ‘Are you happy?’ ‘Do you remember me?’ If so, ‘Can I see you again?’ 

The third panel shown here was all so good fun to prepare. Firstly I adhered a gold alloy leaf roughly to the panel surface, then I used a silk screen with water-soluble pastels and a gel medium I transferred colours over the top on the gold. I was very happy with this because it toned down the brilliance of the gold exactly to the degree I wanted. I think one the hardest things to do is use gold leaf in painting in a way where it feels tastefully  integrated in to whole composition and not like a flashy novelty. The text I then transferred in what is called Australian red gold it says in this case: 

   

‘Bright colours’

I saw a face like yours the other day, lovely friendly eyes like dark pools of molasses matched with a easy smile, that never left their face, it was as if they had never known a moments unhappiness,

I remember yours was like that only I knew better, you knew unhappiness, risked terrible consequences, felt the pressure of secret pain, though it never marked your countenance, 

Rather you covered yourself in bright colours and moved hither and thither with charming purpose, always seeming to know how others felt about you and revelling in it,

But what is your real secret? I felt it was there, the unspoken answer to a question I never asked that makes me see your face in those of strangers.  

The fourth panel is for me an experiment to see how well colour photocopies can transfer. It is a handy little technique I used to do all time in college. The process is rather simple you take a photocopy of an image, paint the image side and the surface you going to glue in it on to with wood glue or in the case impasto gel medium and then press them together carefully leaving no air bubbles. Leave it to dry for a good while personally I think at least three days to a week. Then with a wet cloth or sponge scrub off the paper and the image is left behind. The text is in a Cab orange and it says:

 My secret is not that I have photographs of you its how often I look at them.

I hope you enjoyed this blog entry looking back at the nature of the text I had been writing it would appear that I have been battling with emotional difficulties or some sort existential crisis which is alas not the case I am afraid I am not that interesting!

Playing around

I like what I have been doing in a technical sense but I feel that I certainly be more adventurous with the imagery itself. A few years ago whilst I was studying I did these little experiments, I really enjoyed trying to make coherent pictures out rather disparate subject matter. I photocopied some ukiyo-e prints from Edo era artists such as Isoda Koryusai, Hashiguchi Goyo, Kitagawa Utamaro, some images of Michelangelo's 'David' and scientific illustrations of local wildflowers of my home town of Stanthorpe and put them to together in the pictures below.

It is an enjoyable and helpful creative process but I wouldn't present the results as my own art. Personally I have never really enjoyed seeing the work of skilled artists cut and pasted by generally less skilled artists to subvert the original conceptional intention. Often these things are done for comic effect which I must say I don't all together mind as I have, one hopes, a sense of humour. However there seems to be many serious artists today who make a career reformulating the works of real genius to who then present terribly clever artist statements which invariably at some point use phases like; 'shake the audience out of their complacent....' or 'to bring in to question the notion...' or any of the hundred variations there are on the theme.
 I remember what Robert Hughes once beautifully articulated about Hans Holbein. 'Holbein was a completely international man: he worked in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and, especially England. His work, despite its integrity of style, was open to all kinds of influence: portrait prototypes ranging from Leonardo to Titian, the work of Fontainebleau mannerists, Quentin Massys, English court miniaturists, Durer and Matthias Grunewald. 'It seems to range backward and forward in time, a web of allusions that seldom rise to open quotation.'
And in spite of the fact I find myself often find my views at odds with Mr. Hughes's many assertions this statement strikes me as a brilliant aspiration. The history of painting is full of excellent examples of intelligent, subtle quotations artists made in respond to the works of other masters. Rapheal of Michelangelo, Manet of Rapheal, Kokoschka of Klimt and so on. With these contemporary cut and paste painting I sometimes wonder if the artist does it not only for the shock value but all so because they don't expect much from the audience. Of course I love nuance in artistic affairs and prefer understatement to brash declarations.