As anyone reading this will know we are living for the month in a small bedsit on the harbour in Scalloway on the Shetlands and its proper lovely as we Devon folk say. In fact when the sun shines (and we’ve more good days than not) it reminds one of how the West Country seemed to be when I was a child. Nowadays the crowds down in Devon & Cornwall make it harder to love but back then before motorways etc. Anyway enough of my misremembering as, apart from sitting staring out the window or visiting unspoilt and empty beaches, we are here to work.
But the rub is that you start to think about what you do and how you go about it. Yes I know one should be doing that all the time anyway…but holidays just exacerbate this…and added to which there are fewer materials and supports to hand…and ideas get stuck in your head in ways that just don’t happen at home. Its all rather confusing! So here I am rethinking, tinkering really, with both the Wonky Geometry and the notion I had arrived with (outlined a few weeks back) and fetching up with something that’s quite a departure. Should I be worried or concerned?
between different projects is often difficult to divine. There are times when the focus is clearer and times when its not. Its one of those not times. There’s a suite of small wonky geometries on the go. They are still at the early stage of ‘roughing out’ – the broad structure is in place (further variations on the 5/6/7 sided figure interactions) but the colour combinations and variations are, as yet, very unclear. They are amongst a group of panels to be offered for selection for a show entitled Colour Bliss so there’s a challenge!
Alongside these I’m playing with a collection of over 100 small paperworks – that are even more wacky variants of the same repertoire of basic regular sided shapes expanded to include 3/4 sided appearances and a host of other marks and forms. These are pretty much just for fun and to keep myself busy when the other project gets too tricky.
Somehow I have conspired to spend most of my adult life living as far from the coast as it is possible to get on this relatively small island. Of course because of this it isn’t actually that far away…but you know how it is with all that ‘stuff’ in the way. Nowadays we have enough space in our lives to get to the coast more regularly and its just about the most blissful thing I can think of. We’ve just been to Pembrokeshire and because it is less known to me all the more rewarding. I’d been once before but all too briefly and this time around, although it was all too short a visit we had the good sense to stay in one location and at least explore that space.
How these experiences feed into my painting practice I’ve no real idea, and I’m not sure I want to. But what I do know is my times away in these locations certainly do inform my thinking about my practice whether or not I have the intellectual or emotional capacity to understand why or how.
Another wall features a selection of paintings from yet another sequence, ongoing for two or three years now, entitled Wonky Geometry. These operate pretty much exclusively within the realm of ‘pure’ abstraction whereby a predetermined open structure is put through its paces by the intuitive operation of gesture and colour within it. In my mind its a kind of Mondriaan on acid(not that I take acid nor have any delusions that I’m in the same ball park as Piet)…I simply operate in the same manner!
