The Road to Johnsville...

In a separate body of work to the still lifes of late, I've finally got around to using the previously-taken sets of photographs of local roadside 'double black lines' (see old posts in the dim & distant) as intended, as source material for investigations into modernist-type image-making, concentrating on process (explicity so, as an illustration of the temporal nature of both the 'work of the work of art' & also the act of looking), mark-making, surface, etc. Studying the excellent publication 'Jasper Johns: an Allegory of Painting 1955-1965' & in particular the wonderful & fulsome reproductions therein, I've been influenced & inspired by & thus attempted something along the lines of Johns's ever-fascinating mark-making endeavours using pre-existing, 'already known' images as the beginnings of such. Gradually, it's beginning to make more sense (from never having worked from photographic sources previously) & perhaps is a line of work it might be worth pursuing, possibly involving a return to the sources of the images to obtain more direct, immediate visceral information from which to work...

(all drawings 30x21cm, graphite &/or plastic & putty erasers - no.2 also utilises charcoal)