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...