Roadkill & I...

Today the opposite of tomato is a 'clean white shirt in another new exploit'

Having left the scene of yesterday's photographs of the double black lined roadside, the question occurred why I hadn't flipped some of the found 'roadkill' cans over in order to investigate & appreciate their reverse, so this morning prompted a return to the site for just such a purpose, in somewhat gloomier & wetter conditions, the documentary images thus featuring the presence of the taker in shadowy reflected form...



Interesting to note & record that two of the objects had been washed by the flow of coursing rainwater into closer proximity, thus allowing the capture of a more complex composition than previously...


There's something about the livery of the 'Vimto' can, whenever encountered thus, catching one's eye for momentary consideration & contemplation, that somehow suggests the violets & pinks of Cezanne's later palette...
Ah, art & its wonderful, ever-fascinating history is all & always around us...

Sunny Saturday Serendipity

Today the opposite of tomato is "alone and macarooned inside your biscuit head"
(and Mark Mulcahy's many-splendoured 'In Pursuit of Your Pleasure' generally)

A sunny Saturday morning stroll alongside a section of one the local double black lined roads revealed much evidence of aluminium can 'roadkill' in the gutter, most serendipitously found subject/object matter, shot on site/sight once again...




(with a plastic bottle, suitably flattened, thrown in for good measure...)




Later, I had a mind to try a little experiment, using a selection of the not inconsiderable store of found & collected 'roadkill' cans as the underlying base texture of quickly processed rubbings-drawings on A5 scale, wondering if there might be any mileage (excuse the pun) in utilizing such source material to suggest the tarmacked road surface upon which they are found...


then adding a collaged element of torn strips of paper to represent the double black lines...


graphite on paper collage/21x14cm

As with previous recent examples, the use of photography attempts to communicate something of the nature of the textural surface quality of the drawings, achieved through the process of frottage...




graphite on paper collage/21x14cm




For the third attempt in the series, another element was incorporated into the collaged surface in the form of newsprint, in the interests of further textural (& textual) incident, with reference made to previous examples of the 'roadkill diptych' sequence of drawings &, playfully, also to art history (as ever)...


graphite on newsprint & paper collage/21x14cm




The first two drawings seem to achieve a modicum of success in at least suggesting the road surface with its lines, fissures & raised stony 'highlights' (actually occurring in reverse), the general texture & composite nature, & might be something that has potential for further development, allied to more considered processing, perhaps. At least they have a certain pleasing 'object quality', in the manner of the source 'roadkill' cans, with the network of slightly raised textural details producing silvery highlights upon the dense graphite surface.

You're the One for Me, 'Flatty'...

graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/30x20cm

The latest 'Pop Art roadkill' diptych drawing to be processed featuring an example of found 'Readymade Cubism', this particular subject/object having been compressed, reformed, into a state of low relief, the nature of such evoking, once again, the ghost of Clement Greenberg & his once-influential interpretation of the progress of the practice of Modernist painting, via a compelling, persuasive (but rather exclusive) linear narrative from Cezanne to Cubist painting & collage to Mondrian - the godfather of grids! - to Abstract Expressionism & ultimately the 'colour field' stains of 'post-painterly' abstraction. Greenberg proposed the theory of painting defining itself through its medium-specific quality of 'flatness', referring to the limiting conditions of the physical support upon which the activity is performed (i.e. the area of canvas defined by its horizontal & vertical edges, which of course the formal device of the grid in particular reiterates), a self-critical condition (adapted from Kant's philosophy) through which painting could assert its autonomy, 'competence' & purpose as a visual, aesthetic experience, whilst acknowledging that the first mark upon the canvas subverts its absolute flatness, that, even if no attempt is made at pictorial tonal 'modelling' with light & shade, some form of optical illusion occurs at this point.

However flat the subject/object of the drawings might have been accidentally compressed, though, still they retain a certain three-dimensional object quality, even in such 'reduced circumstances', & one of the (perverse?!) endeavours of the mark-making process (which includes erasure as an equally positive activity to the stroking of graphite) is to represent the variety of surface incident as experienced empirically, those ridges & depressions of highlights & shadows into which the (unflat) object forms itself (& continually reforms, with the play of natural light & one's subtly ever-changing position in relation to that of the object).
As most recently previously mentioned & photographically illustrated, the mark-making process itself destroys the purity of the flatness of the surface of the paper upon which the drawing is performed, creating a graphite-covered 'object' that seeks to establish some form of dialogue with the object represented within the picture plane.

Soundtrack:


Gomez 'Bring It On'
Talking Heads 'Best of'
Morrissey 'Vauxhall & I'
Lambchop 'Is a Woman'

A first-time-in-x-years listen to Gomez, 'Bring It On' proving to be something of a Proustian vehicle, transporting one back to pleasant recollections of the graduation summer (during which the sun still seemed to shine), relaxing with a sense of having achieved something worthwhile (at last, for once).
Good to have a reminder too of just how wonderful Talking Heads were capable of being, most particularly during the period of their creative zenith, in collaboration with Brian Eno, the man & whose work provided the subject matter of a pair of excellent BBC4 TV programmes over last weekend, the first a fascinating documentary portrait, the second a compilation of musical 'greatest hits', encompassing the timeline from Roxy Music to the present, which would have been worth watching just for (but by no meeans only) the inclusion of Devo's still astonishing sonic & visual aesthetic as condensed into a video performance of their 'introductory' classic 'Jocko Homo', fabulously lo-fi & minimalist, nothing quite of the like seen or heard before or since, amusing, entertaining & unsettling in equal measure, true art-rock in the very best challenging sense. And familiarity does nothing to blunt the charge of Bowie's exhilarating 'Heroes'.

The Object of Drawing...

Today the opposite of tomato is (are) 'loafing oafs and all-night chemists'

Frustrated by the lack of daylight hours available due to the commitments of the day job, & also by the compromised nature of the natural ‘light’ (when available) due to the all-enveloping, life-sapping bleakness of the post-snow season, I took the radical step of attempting to draw, during a weekday evening, under artificial light, only to be thwarted by the satiny-metallic & thus reflective surface of the graphite-covered paper: it was near-impossible to see what one was drawing, where the pencil point was landing & the marks it was making. Factoring-in also the deadening effect of the artificial light upon the surface of the source object, said attempt was abandoned.

This situation then prompted thoughts of how the drawings as (re)presented via this portal (i.e. in the form of scans) fail to communicate a fundamental aspect of their being, their own surface-object quality, textured & light-reflective in the manner of the compressed objects depicted within the picture plane, which photography is able reveal...



By way of comparative illustration, here is another of the 'Pop Art Roadkill' diptych drawings-as-scanned-image as it appears in the context of its original posting, a faithful two-dimensional representation of the mark-making process, recording the various familiar overlays (which seem to reproduce particularly well) & erasures, etc.


This 'pure image', however, offers no information as regards the 'object' surface quality of the drawing, notably its sheen & also the 'workings-into' the paper caused by the physical pressure applied during the mark-making process & the consequent indentations resulting from such, which ‘distress’ & buckle the surface of the drawing, producing incidents of highlight & shadow, in a manner that creates something of a dialogue with the physical nature of the depicted object with its own metallic, uneven surface & crumpled (reformed) form.

The drawings-as-photographed thus allow a fuller representation of the experience of the drawing-as-object, in their physical manifestation, three-dimensional albeit in very low relief, with ‘tactile’ surfaces subject to the play of light...

Red & Dead Again

graphite & putty eraser,with watercolour/30x20cm

Being the latest drawing to be processed, slowly against the prevailing natural 'light' conditions of the lingering & enervating seasonal gloom, from the subject/object matter of found roadkill 'Readymade Cubism', pleasingly compressed, crumpled & folded into a flatter reformed state than its previous in-the-round three-dimensionality, & displaying sufficient of a synechdochal fragment of its familiar brand name & design to allow a positive ID, along with another nod towards the naming-of-colours practice of Mr Jasper Johns, also more generally present in referential terms.

Soundtrack:


Low 'Things We Lost in the Fire'
The Woodentops 'Giant'
Elliott Smith 'Either/Or'
The Triffids 'Born Sandy Devotional'
Cat Power 'The Covers Record'

A soundtrack tending mostly towards the sombre (enlivened by a shot of Rolo McGinty's manic energy), much of that rather subdued too, befitting the seasonal atmosphere of cold, damp mists, everything deadened.

Venturing out into the chill embrace of such unwelcoming atmospheric conditions necessitates the appropriate insulation against, not least woollen headgear, woven – in the interests of aesthetic integrity (note the combination of style & substance!) – into a grid pattern, TOoT’s good old modernist friend & favourite...


Pleasing textural detail too, in the interests of both visual & physical tactility...


Not unlike, it may be observed, the grounds of a number of still life oil paintings-as-objects from the archives, of which this is but one example (circa 2001)...

Shot On Sight, On Site

Presenting today a photographic record of one of those perfectly serendipitous occurrences when a fine example of aluminium can 'roadkill' (also of a brand not encountered thus previously) is found alongside a stretch of the local 'double black lines' corrective road markings, the scene bathed in the most welcome morning sunshine...




In the context of photography, the last week saw the broadcast on BBC4 of the wonderful TV documentary 'The Man Who Shot the Sixties', featuring the life & work, rehabilitated, of Brian Duffy.
Towards the end of the programme, the man himself - whilst contemplating a pair of electric plug sockets set low into a wall of the gallery where a retrospective exhibition of his work was being hung, & declaring the object to be art, 'if one says it is' - was of the the opinion, self-inclusively, that such & the thoughts of artists should not be given any credence, given that artists, habitually, are 'liars' & express nothing but drivel when speaking, writing of their work (&, presumably, art generally), & that the work, the visual evidence, is 'the statement' (definitive).
Quite where that might leave this particular blog & its like..?!

More Empty Vessels...

graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/30x20cm

The subject/object matter of this relatively quick still life drawing is a small selection from the accumulated remnants of the pistachios that have regularly been accompanying the evening wine-drinking process since Xmas, thus linked, however tenuously, to the 'roadkill' drinks cans in being empty containers.

White/Stripes

Here follows a sequence of photographs edited from the number taken over the course of a couple of ventures out into the snowy wastes of last week, thus constituting what we might call 'the white album'.
The first four examples include instances of 'drawing' in the form of tracks, human & animal footprints, & other marks made in the snow & also shadows cast upon its surface by objects in the blanketed landscape, not least the stones of a local ornamental circle...





Whilst taking care to pick one's safe-as-possible way across & through the snow, one might also notice the texture of the stuff; its complex, delicate & beautiful formal constitution, which, framed & contained within the photographic image, could be considered as having something of an analogy with, for instance, the textured white paintings of Robert Ryman's enduring practice...




Coincidentally, Ryman is also mentioned in today's entry in Jazz Green's artist's journal, largely devoted to the subject of examples of the white 'non-colour' monochrome in artistic practice, most thoughtful, & elegantly elucidated as usual, & also very interestingly including reference to the 'lost paintings' of the early, texture-building process of her own paintings.
For the second time recently, thanks are again due to Jazz, on this occasion for the recommendation & kind words she wrote about this very blog & its contents. Reciprocal respect & admiration have been expressed previously, here reiterated.

The following four images might be considered to have a certain relationship to Jazz Green's 'found paintings' (noticing the world through the influence of someone else's vision) - photographs of the visual evidence as encountered, appropriated & represented, recontextualized, of processes of surface & material decay, corrosion, erosion, or natural colonization, & the compelling aesthetic qualities of such, fascinating & beautiful in both texture & colour.

Brought to my visual attention, in passing, by being highlighted, spotlit, by the rays of the setting afternoon sun, the photographs here feature 'archaeological' evidence of the life of a section of a school's iron railings, a history of the various layers of paint - revealed by the weathering process of flaking & peeling - which have, over time, been successively applied to them. Featuring various combinations of complementaries of red, blue, green & rust, the colours appeared particularly vivid against the white backdrop of the snow-covered ground before & beyond their immediate location, with the sunlight also emphasizing the textural details evident...





Such an encounter subsequently recalled memories of the 'stringed paintings' on which I had tentatively embarked in exploratory fashion some years ago now, but which in fact constitute the last serious engagement with the medium of oil paint. The intention of these works is that they should in some way combine painting & drawing, rigorous formal structural design & chance (in the application of paint upon the canvas-thread strings), & embodied process in three-dimensional object form , also incorporating the wall behind (upon which cast shadows play) & the spectator's space in front of the work as an active element of & in its physical, temporal realization (see this archive post for a fuller 'contemporary' theoretical explanation)...



Which painted threads then in turn suggested a certain visual analogy with the remaining, visible edges of the otherwise (not quite completely) overpainted yellow lines of the 'double black' series of original photographs (here cut up & recombined to like effect for the purposes of illustration) & subsequently processed drawings...


Everything is connected...