YOUNGHUSBAND PROCLAIMS Acrylic on paper, 106 x 94 cm. 2019
I had a very deep pocket and access to a very large gallery! The Landscape & Memory series is now complete, not before time it must be said. After all the first tranche (the Wood section) began back in Spring 2016 with the first completed works dated that summer. the second (Water) dallied through 2017 and into last year with the final group (Rock) starting then and bringing us up to the beginning of autumn 2019. It is 54 works in all that I have always envisaged in three blocks of 18, most likely 2 up and 9 across (as was the case with the first section that I showed at Harrington Mill – though a tall space might suggest a more vertiginous arrangement?
As for the cash…I did show at HMS with the works (all on paper) pinned directly to the wall but the framing up of one piece from Wood courtesy of a purchase by friends and posted here a while back clearly showed up how much better they would look all done.
ALPINE REMARK OF JOHN DENNIS Acrylic on paper, 106 x 94 cm. 2019
This would likely require an outlay of upwards of twelve grand. Any takers for a bit of sponsorship then?!
Nowadays it seems to be one thing after another…with activity that follows hard on activity. Of course it’s nothing of the sort really, just the onset of age gives the appearance of time rushing by. And things that I used to have to do ‘on the hoof’ I can now take time over… So it is with the painting, I give even more time over to sitting and pondering than I did when younger, though I could lose hours to cogitation even back then. Following on from the completion of Rock Of Ages, the third and final grouping of the Landscape & Memory project, I’m still drawn to one aspect of that endeavour, viz. the inclusion, or rather the wraparound, of text on paintings.
Petrarch Reads Augustine, Mixed media on paper, 106 x 94 cm.
In other news the show I’m curating at Deda this autumn is rapidly approaching, much of the work for it is waiting patiently in my studio for delivery this coming weekend. The view is on Wednesday 11th September because before then we’re off to Venice for a few days to take in the Biennale though I’m imagining spending quite a bit of time in the Gorky, Frankenthaler, Scully shows about town too.
And finally I have a small painting, Cape Poem 3, in the upcoming East Midlands auction that is on show at the Djanogly Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centrefrom the 6th September.
I’ve said before that I often find lyric music difficult whilst painting…but I just took delivery of the latest Keith Christmas album…so it had to be first up today. Go to his website and buy a copy!
In any event I’m now onto finishing the final touches to Petrarch Reads Augustine the last of the Rock Of Ages so its that light headed feeling that sees some optimism in the gloom that I find when I look at what is going on outside my studio! And to a certain extent that pervades Keith’s latest album too. With a bunch of tracks celebrating life and relationships and a lighter hand on the tiller of anger and outrage that characterised a deal of the (nonetheless) excellent songs on his last album (Crazy Dancing Days -why not purchase that one too whilst you’re at it). I’m also having a bit of fun with another of my TFTLR pieces… that lighten up the mood too…
from my last post…goodness knows why really. It does get harder to have much to say other than that ‘events’ sometimes get in the way of the activity of both making and commentating on work. And does that matter much? As I get older I’m realising that productivity isn’t the only criterion – though its one I do put some store in. Hence my desire to see the completion of the Rock Of Ages, the third and final part of the Landscape & Memory trilogy. So here is the last but two of the eighteen that make up this group.
I mentioned Lawrence Carroll a few days back.And now I just took delivery of this very handsome monograph.Whenever people tell you, as they get older, that they have no regrets don’t believe them.Ok if you’ve lived a bit they may be modest ones but there will be some things that could have, may be should have, happened.
2:80 Mixed media on paper, mounted on glass fibre, 38 x 36″
Around about the late 1970’s my work seemed to me to be complicating itself to the point where I needed to step back and rethink.Over a year and a bit (from late 79 through 80) some very minimal pieces were made that – I hoped – had a certain ‘quiet authority’ and communicated through their simple presence in the world.Only one or two were ever exhibited (in group shows) and I never had a chance to see them in a decent space where their cumulative impact might have been greater.
They were large works, with minimal titles too.Made on big sheets of paper I backed them with glass fibre resin.Over the year the use of this, naturally with scant regard to health and safety back then, resulted in some extremely deleterious health issues. Coupled with a change of circumstances (work, home and studio) my dissatisfaction with this work led to an abandonment.When I settled into my new circumstances months later I began re-complicating my work and over several years this accelerated, culminating in a brief period of figuration in the mid-eighties (I wasn’t alone in this).Over the subsequent thirty plus years a certain seesawing between a more minimalist position and a complexity in my work has continued to this day…though I’ve rarely gone as far out as the 1980 works. One regret I have is that I never got a chance to see more of Carroll’s work. My other regret is that I’ve not been a wee bit more disciplined and plotted a more steady course over the years.Whether this would have produced better work, or I would have been happier who can say?
In any event activity continues…Rock Of Ages, the third (and final) part of my Landscape & Memory project is slowly drawing to a close. With three of the 18 that make up this section completed over the past couple days, only 11 to go now.
Pompous Ruskin, acrylic on paper, 106 x 94 cm., June 2019
or a series of such…Rock of Ages – the third and final part of the Landscape & Memory project. This one Savoy by Walpole is probably nearer the first part of the whole work, the Waldgeschichten part than most of the other seventeen (each of the three parts comprise 18 individual works).
At least for the moment as this one is only the fourth to be completed in this last group. Some kind of fundamental underpinning to what one does seems all the more important as the external world gets crazier by the day and appears to be spiralling towards nasty intolerance, authoritarianism and worse. On top of the rest of it came news today of the passing of Thomas Nozkowski – a painter for whom I have had immense fondness for over twenty five years. It’s nigh on impossible to figure out how to respond to these things for the best.
Contemplation by St. Francis, acrylic & collage on paper, 107 x 94 cms., March 2019
I’m a passed master at swapping horses in mid-stream…after all I’ve got three smallish canvases completed since Xmas with another seven, one a fair bit bigger (a metre square), underway. All of these are probably, even with my piddling about, quite near to completion so – just the moment to turn away from them and reconnect with something quite different! But that’s my M. O. as anyone following this blog will know. So back to the Landscape & Memory project and getting into the final stage – the Rock series. Here’s the second of the eighteen that will make up this group – Contemplation By St. Francis. Click on the relevant tag for some kind of explanation about this malarkey.
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