Completed Painting: 'Vestige 5'

'Vestige 5', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Emulsion, Ink, Spray Enamel, French Polish,
Pencil & Ballpoint Pen on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

Amongst things achieved over this academic break has been the completion of ‘Vestige 5’, - the latest in my ongoing series of paintings under that name.  My immediate impression is that it’s possibly the freshest-looking one so far, although I’m far too close (in space, time, and emotionally) to really make an objective assessment.

In reality, this undertaking is less about trying to achieve any kind of definitive statement, and far more about carrying out a potentially endless series of variations on the same theme - with each simply suggesting yet another way of making the same picture.  If/when this finally comes to an end, I’m sure it will be because I’ve become bored/tired of it, not because all the possibilities have been exhausted.  For now, I can only see more ways of addressing it.  In the knowledge of an impending exhibition later in the year, my main aim is to just pile up as many of these to select from as is physically possible over the coming months.  ‘6’ is already in progress.

The thematic rationale behind these pieces can be sought out here, and here.  As the joint show I’m planning with ShaunMorris and Andrew Smith, in September, moves ever closer – I’ll inevitably find myself trying to nail down exactly what the current work is all about in an even more formal manner.  However, for now, I think the posts I wrote at the genesis of this body of work still describe my thoughts pretty accurately.  Having already answered most of the ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ questions, it’s therefore unsurprising that the issues of ‘How?’ rise to the surface of my mind most obviously just now.  There are a few specifics possibly worth mentioning here.

'Vestige 4', Acrylics, Paper Collage, Spray Enamel, French Polish, Pencil
& Coloured Pencil on Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2016

Having been quite pleased with the fairly straightforward, dark frame/light interior format of ‘Vestige 4’, my fairly predictable impulse was to try to simply reverse that tonal scheme.  The tonal contrast is even starker here, (although we’re still far from pure black & white), and suddenly makes ‘4’ seem more subtly modulated than when I’d just completed it.  The way in which each piece can only really be seen in the context of the others is something that fascinates me about working within a tightly constrained series, like this.  What that tonal reverse did create, was another opportunity to indulge my perennial ambition to contribute to the noble, if slightly odd tradition of The White Painting.  Don’t ask me why I’m such a sucker for that, - I just am.  Clearly, ‘5’ isn’t technically a white painting at all - except in my mind, but that’s what really matters, when all’s said and done.

Another carry-over from the previous painting is my reliance on a regular grid as a sub-motif.  I’ve always loved that, both as a statement in it’s own right, and as an all-over compositional device, and I’ve noticed it coming to the fore again in recent work, (not least - in various photographs).  I guess it’s another clue that a significant portion of my visual sensibility remains rooted in formal Modernism.  If many of the philosophical underpinnings of Modernism have long since been abandoned, there’s no doubt that a memory of its general aesthetic still informs much contemporary culture - even now.  That does seem to chime with the themes of lost voices or revenant meanings haunting my current output.

In recent months I’ve talked about a certain move towards increasing painterliness in these pieces.  In reality, most of what I do tends towards hybridisation, and probably will for the foreseeable future.  Nevertheless, I have been consciously trying to throw the paint around a bit more freely in these ‘Vestige’ pieces, and to incorporate my collaged elements into a more fluid mulch of materiality, overall.  That was certainly the case in the earlier stages of ‘5’, although its final state actually reveals greater reliance on collage bobbing back up to the surface.  This doesn’t suggest any particular loss of belief, just that the glued-on letterforms, with which it concluded, seemed to supply an ideal support for its structural, geometric qualities.  Certainly, their edges may be another of the factors contributing to this piece’s (slightly) crisper aspect.

As already explained, the overall aspiration is that each of these should be ‘the-same-but-different’, each time.  I may have a general sense of what I might want for a painting when starting out, but inevitably, it’s really just a case of allowing the thing to emerge on its own terms, and of recognising when to stop.  Occasionally, that may be what was originally intended; more usually - it comes as a pleasurable surprise.

I’m not saying anything here that most creative artists (in whatever medium) wouldn’t take for granted - so I’d better stop spouting clichés, and just get on with it…