Galleries

I’m leaning more and more towards abstraction. I suppose because there’s too much to say. Reading art history & criticism and realizing all the things people thought and still think art should do or represent is slightly appalling. Turning to the news and seeing thousands of images I don’t know how to respond to, from political wrangling to vast, terrifying human tragedies, is kind of numbing. 

I suppose I could try to make art about the media age and oversaturation, but I’m pretty sure that’s what Lady Gaga said her song “Telephone” with Beyoncé was about so it’s okay, that’s been addressed. Girls got my back. 

In the meantime, I am arranging colours and textures that might suggest a place or evoke an emotion, if you’re lucky, mister. 

Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20".

A ridiculously large (6-foot) oil painting of some rocks, mainly. Still a work in progress and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The problem with working on a scale like this is that you can spend five solid hours working on it, step back, and it will not appear to have made the slightest damn difference.

My fixation on explorers may be wearing off. Still, this began as a fairly detailed portrait of a young Ernest Shackleton. But I’m really not comfortable with portraits – it feels rude, like staring directly into a stranger’s eyes for far too long. So I suppose I started pushing him back, under layers of hectic colour, til his face was almost completely abstracted. 

Acrylic on canvas, 16"x20".

My love of explorers isn’t completely pure; it’s not a sincere admiration of their achievements. It’s really a fascination with the contrast between their near-superhuman accomplishments and their painfully ordinary weaknesses. Like Shackleton: hailed as an heroic leader for keeping his team going in horrible circumstances, but chose men to join his polar expeditions on the basis that he ‘liked the look of them’ rather than their technical skills. Set various records and was awarded a knighthood for his explorations, but was obsessed with money and attempted many unsuccessful business schemes, including a run of collectible Antarctic-themed postage stamps. Had a serious heart condition but repeatedly refused treatment, even getting into an argument with his doctor about changing his lifestyle minutes before suffering a fatal heart attack. 

Messing with different techniques to try jolt myself out of a rut. Some lazy negative-image linocuts. I managed to take a few chunks out of my finger and remembered why I never pursued this technique more keenly. 

So painting hasn’t been going well lately and I’ve been trying to find other ways to make art. I’ve been thinking a lot about sculpture, but the problem with the world of three dimensions is that Nature got there first and totally owns the field. I keep finding these organic structures that are as beautiful and poetic and rich with the capacity for metaphor as any sculpture I’ve ever seen or could ever hope to make myself.

Like these…things. They’re essentially just knots of flotsam that got snagged on branches when the floods came: mostly dead leaves and grass, knitted together into these strange little nests that are strong enough to withstand the current but disintegrate when handled. I’m totally obsessed with them. I try to think of ways to photograph one or recreate it or just claim it like a Duchampian readymade and I can think of plenty of art-historical precedents that I could use to justify whatever I wanted to do. But then again, there’s a little voice in the back of my head saying: “Seriously, that is literally just a piece of crap." 

A couple of the least grievous of a series of preliminary sketches for a portrait; to the lovely model I’m afraid these do not in the least do justice. 

Pencil, cleaned up digitally.