Concluding some paintings

      When a painting is reaching its conclusion I think very carefully of how to title it. Untitled does not work for me. In making the paintings I have become absorbed into their wordless worlds, making naming not an easy matter but titling is a way to clarify the work further in my […]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: poems on poetry-making and paintings

(header image of one of the paintings currently in progress) Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15) BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI Constantly risking absurdity                                              and death             whenever he performs                                         above the heads                                                             of his audience    the poet like an acrobat                                  climbs on rime                                           to a high wire of his own making and balancing on eyebeams                                      above a sea […]

The future as a matter of the continuously evolving past

The painting above (125 x 127 cm) is one I have been working on today as I would like to complete it for the Summer show. It has been suspended for a year having been started early on in the MA. Here is a reminder of how it began and its story so far:

A Poem

During the London residency, I receive online from far away a poem by Fernando Pessoa, reminding me of home and the painting back there waiting for me to return (source): The Herdsman BY ALBERTO CAEIRO (FERNANDO PESSOA) TRANSLATED BY EDOUARD RODITI I’m herdsman of a flock. The sheep are my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. […]

For every atom belonging to me

image: collage of the Six Persimmons at its current stage, four different orientations and below, animation across the picture plane rather than into it: The painting’s atoms-like look makes me think of Whitman’s opening line for Song of Myself: I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom […]

And then it struck me…

  I took the photo of the cage with a background of the surface of the table on which I do my paintings. For no other reason than that is was convenient to do so, or was there actually another reason? –  in the form of an awareness which made me feel that this was […]

The blind spot

I am thinking that in this article is correspondence with an essential principle underlying pictopoiesis: that the material reality of the painting and its beginnings with the fundamental building blocks (the black dot “atom”), is what the painting all works back to, and traceably so.  In fact, how closely this principle of pictopoiesis, of material connection with source and origin, […]

Cloud

Painting in progress, and without it being predetermined, a cloud suggests itself. I orientate the work in different ways. The cloud, like the thought of it itself, subject to constant reformation. Its behaviour governed by conditions around it, near and far, of atmosphere, weather and climate. Everyone knows clouds.     I have already journeyed from the earthed […]

Origin always has echo

The art of our earliest ancestors is compelling, so I was interested to look through an article (see notes at end of post) in my inbox, which has triggered the following post: Some time ago I did a series of paintings in which, amongst other matters, I was interested in trying to commune and reconnect […]