November 2021
oil paint on ( found) warped wood panel
Night jungle was the first entirely abstract work I produced. I found the support and approached it with the principles I had been taught since primary school level; an idea based totally on figurative representation. It was the support that acted as a point of departure into abstraction. It was the wood grain; the pattern produced by the arrangement of wood fibres during its growth as a tree, that interrupted my approach to cover a surface rather than derive work out of it. When looking at an object through consideration of its life and history, the individuality of objects which seem at first rather banal, become foundational to developing a perspective rooted firmly in physical laws.
Method:
This work was a breakthrough moment in terms of building confidence with handling materials. My method was to pour paint onto the surface with one hand and slowly manoeuvre the piece of warped wood panel with the other so that pigments could interact at different speeds, with different momentums. Creating this work became a meditation on colour, fluidity, force and time.
Materials & techniques:
The physical attributes of the wood panel, its wood grain and its warped shape, dictated the approach and application of materials oil and pigment.
The versatility of Oil for use cross so many industries including food, medicine, fuel and plastic production. Understanding the nature of the material itself, its origins and its myriad application is a main objective of my experimentation.
Modern pigments whether obtained from natural or synthetic sources all behave differently under the same conditions. They bear different weights, particle structures and viscosities. Gaining control and understanding of how to work with the physicality of pigment and the aesthetic associations of colour and form to human experience is a main objective of my experimentation.
Mapping is a data visualisation technique that uses colour and form to represent physical phenomenon. Mapping as it relates to the generation of real-time representations of a phenomenon whether natural or artificially constructed is a practice I am focussed on developing. Representing the nature and behaviour of materials as they exist constrained by physical laws such as fluid mechanics is central to my material-based approach to art making.
Analysis
During the making process of night jungle I began to understand space and time as relative to various natural forces, many of which involve chance. I began to perceive of the surface as an active rather than latent element in a work of art. Paint became the agent of colour that could also hold texture and take on qualities of an object. It held possibilities of different consistencies given vibrancy.
Art making as material intervention over a period of time requires that the artist hold focus on a result that is inconceivable until it has been conceived. Finality does not come before its time. And when it arrives, the representative quality of the object relies on materials settling into a whole which maps the passage of time as it acted upon a combination of materials under specific atmospheric conditions.
exhibited at the Holy Art Gallery, London.
The life of the work was unsettled. Before it was dry, it was selected to exhibit at a group show at the Holy Art Gallery in London, shown above. I did this by improvising a frame which would keep the work balanced on a certain angle so that its uneven sides could settle into a decided position so that the surface might dry over-time outside my intervention and involvement with it. I used black gravel to create a seat for the warped wood and coated them in linseed oil so that the blackness of the gravel could be illuminated. The work was transported across London in a taxi, held face up at elbow height to try avoid impact. On the hour long drive I considered every stop, turn and corner, an uncontrolled intervention that witnessed the variables associated with moving through an urban landscape. I felt the true capacity for art as representative of experience that eludes singularity or individualisation; art that incorporates the infinity of simply being.
Conclusions:
Night jungle was created by manoeuvring a surface relative to the movement of oil infused with pigment, across its surface. Still, despite progress made in my use of materials and perceiving of form in my work, I am hesitant to declare an orientation as this narrows down the pool of possible interpretations, the ambiguity and multiplicity of human perception being an equally important aspect of my work, explored further in the series Anthropomorphisms.