Back to the Future (?)

 

‘Roadscape With Can #1’

oil on canvas/12″ x 16″/August 2016

 

Presenting today a first tentative exploration in oils of what might have the potential to become an evolving body of work, drawing on subject and object matter that’s long held a fascination and has, on occasions and considerable stretches of time over the past, provided substantial grist to the creative mill, with evidence having been photographically documented extensively and many objects collected to subsequently serve as the source material for a large number of drawings, which, along with the photos, populate the archives of TOoT.

 

Beginning with a wealth of images of what at the time (they’ve since been physically removed, scored-out) were the legendary ‘double black lines’ corrective road markings that were a feature upon numerous of the streets of Flint, North Wales (taken and blogged during February and March of 2006), and then developing into a series of drawings based on the found flattened ‘roadkill’ cans (over the period from March 2009 to September 2010), with also much more photographic evidence of such objects as discovered and observed in situ, these idiosyncratic road surfaces, ‘roadscapes’, and specific items of the discarded matter littered upon them have continued to percolate on the old mental back-burner until this point, when the recent finding and collection of a couple of suitable objects (discovered in close proximity to Wrexham FC‘s Racecourse Ground, thus incorporating a little football link-up to proceedings too) to serve as physical subject matter enabled this most recent oil painting to come into existence. The thickly painted ground is based generally on the appearance of the double black lined tarmac-surfaced roads, with flashes of the originally painted yellow lines beneath the corrective over-painting showing through in places, the can from observed reality, the whole being but a small study into the possibility of pursuing such a line of aesthetic enquiry.



The Road's Gone Out...

Today the opposite of tomato will tell you things to make your hair Straighten Out

A short afternoon visit back to the town of former residence, for the purposes of aural wellbeing, resulted in a most shocking discovery today. Gone, it appears, are the legendary double black lines, at least from the couple of locations where it was possible to ascertain evidence of this unfortunate development whilst perambulating prior to my appointment.

All that remains in some places is a certain ‘scarification’ of the road surface, the painted lines obviously scoured away by some process, appearing darker in tone than the adjacent, untouched tarmac, with perhaps a speck or two of the original yellow paint (over which the black had been layered, correctively) remaining & visible, otherwise wholesale resurfacing & complete obliteration seems to have taken place.

As anyone who might have visited this blog over its course (&, upon writing, we’re within two weeks of the 7th anniversary of its inception), this particular roadside/surface attraction has featured on many an occasion, from the early days to what has come to be the last appearance on May 14th of this year, primarily in documentary photographic form but also having been processed from such sources into drawing, initially in & for the many examples of itself & also, as aesthetic interests developed, as the scene for the visual recording of those numerous finds of discarded aluminium can ‘roadkill’ that have also littered (ahem) the passage of the blog.

To see it gone, therefore, results in an undoubted sense of loss. This, after all, was (to be) the primary subject matter for the ever-deferred Masters project, the intended site & opportunity for an exploration of the visual subject matter in whatever media might prove to be appropriate, not least drawing of course, and associated theoretical concepts: even though any such project would be based upon the photographic evidence amassed, still, it always felt & feels now, particularly acutely, that the source needed to exist in physical form, to be there, to be consulted &, probably, provide further, continued empirical reference material (material, perhaps, being the essential word).
What & where to now, one wonders, somewhat stunned in the immediate aftermath...?

Keeping Up With Developments

Yesterday afforded another opportunity for a stroll alongside the ‘double black lines’ corrective road markings, & another encounter, photographically documented, with an example of aluminium can ‘roadkill’ found thereupon, this still life object particularly compressed to a state of flatness that allows for a little Greenbergian play, & consideration, as habitual, of the grey two-closely-toned ground upon which it rests as something of a Modernist Minimalist monochrome, painterly-textured picture plane.
In one of those serendipitous occurrences, those pleasing correspondences, the stripe that forms part of branded design upon the surface of the can relates rather well to the parallel stripes of the road markings.

On the football front, how jolly it was that Manchester City should become Premiership champions with two goals in added time clawing a necessary 3-2 victory over QPR from the very verge of calamitous defeat, allowing City to pip to the honour the neighbouring club who have made a deflating habit of such brinkmanship over a period of too many years. Such enjoyment was severely compromised, though, by Gainsborough Trinity’s defeat in the Blue Square Conference North play-off final & consequent failure to gain promotion: absolutely gutted.

Back on Track...

Taking a break from the football, at least after bringing the processing of the Bob Gough drawing to a close during the morning (& not counting the reading of 'Tor!’, Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger's illuminating history of the game & its development in Germany), yesterday afternoon offered the opportunity for another pedestrian journey along the double black lined routes of the old, pre-relocation stamping grounds, & thus, with a certain inevitability, the accompanying finding besides &/or upon examples of discarded & subsequently inadvertently flattened aluminium can ‘roadkill’.

In the interests of the continuation of the visual documentary project recording such findings for posterity & also with the intention, still, that they might one day provide the source images for a substantial development into drawing &/or painting, photographs were duly taken of what proved to be not the anticipated one or two finds of ‘roadkill’ but an incredible eight instances to be found along a relatively few yards of the course of the same stretch of corrective road markings, with the evidence (re)presented below.

The usual & once-familiar features of the various scenes can be observed in place: the modernist monochrome of the textured tarmac road surface with those horizontally-traversing ‘zips’ of the closely-hued & -toned pair of parallel lines laid over the original, erroneously applied double yellow lines of paint (in fact, the topmost lines present a second layer of ‘black’, the various, separate layers visible in ‘archaeological’ traces in places where surface deterioration & erosion has occurred) & of course the still life objects of the cans flattened onto the road surface & embedded into the picture plane as photographically framed.

Note too how some of the cans’ painted, branded surfaces have been subject to wear & tear & rusting, presenting a closer visual analogy to the abraded ‘double black lines’, & also the presence of fallen yellow blossom eddying around or nearby some of the cans, very close in colour to the visible yellow of the original lines, another visual echo, & somewhat poignant too in its discarded nature.

The Gift That Keeps Giving...

A Mother’s Day walk along familiar, once almost daily-trod routes offered the opportunity for a re-acquaintance with some of the instances of the local phenomenon of the ‘double black lines’ corrective road markings specific to the place, with hopes that perhaps an example of discarded aluminium can ‘roadkill’ might be found alongside, in the manner of yore & often photographically documented accordingly. Such hopes were delightfully realised not once but twice in quick succession, with such objects being found mere yards apart.

The first example is a particularly fine one of the genre, with the can-as-was (transformed now into little more than a compressed sliver) positioned upon one of the painted lines & flattened onto in a manner that suggests, especially as its surface has become abraded of some of the paint of its branded livery (note, though, that the logo endures), that it has become embedded into the scene, the picture plane of the modernist-minimalist monochrome of the textured tarmac surface with its pair of superimposed horizontal bands.



The second ‘roadkill’ can was then encountered at rest beside an area of the double black lines exhibiting substantial surface erosion & thus significant evidence of the underlying yellow paint as originally applied upon the tarmac: note how the revealed yellow shape above the flattened can & the object itself display a coincidental similarity of form & size.

Back to Black...

A visit in the company of A to the old haunt of Cheltenham brought a find, not of double black lines but, rather, an interesting variation on the subject of black overpainted road markings upon the tarmac surface, including something of a diamond grid pattern & some text, well worth photographically documenting for posterity.


We also found quite a striking ‘still life’ composition on another stretch of residential road & kerbside (in fact just along the way from in front of the house & flat in which I once lived & painted), of a discarded disposable cigarette lighter, orange clad, juxtaposed with a pair of painted stripes of road markings upon the textured ground of the tarmac.

Another Technical Hitch

Another drawing made with the digital pen, on this occasion an original creation after the sequence of tracings of existing artists' drawings, &, alas, another technical hitch resulting in the failure to record the drawing in anything other than its physical form: not user error this time, in forgetting to switch the receiver on, but rather, for whatever reason, the process wasn’t registered by the device.


biro/30x20cm

The drawing as it exists, then, in its state of splendid isolation, is a biro interpretation based loosely on a general combination of aspects of that collection of photographs taken of the instance of ‘double black lines’ road markings found amongst the back streets of Chester in September of last year (already), using the tool to employ a broad & intensive mark-making approach to the familiar subject matter, constructing an active & substantial (although not necessarily as satisfactorily a subtly-modulated) tonal surface with & from such means.

The Writing on the Road...

Another sunny Sunday afternoon stroll around the locality, again in the excellent company of A, part of the journey alongside the main road, its surface decorated at intervals with coloured zones signifying bus stopping areas, within & whereupon one of which was found an example of the familiar flattened, reformed, aluminium can ‘roadkill’, thus photographically documented in the interests of the ongoing project recording such findings.
In this particular instance, the position of the object in relation to certain striking & significant features such as the painted lettering on the road, & the desire & endeavour to include these within the composition, led to the picture frame being rotated from the habitual horizontal ‘landscape’ to portrait format.

Once again, processes of surface erosion & deterioration, resulting in a form of craquelure upon/within the lower yellow line & the revelation of patches of the original tarmac surface beneath the subsequent overlays, provide both a physical texture to the scene as experienced & a visual texture to the picture plane as represented/reproduced, in the manner, it might be suggested, of the techniques & traditions of painting in oils or acrylics, with accumulations of layers, marks & scrapings-back contributing to the creation of the pictorial surface & its formal design: the embedded still life object of course adds to the overall ‘art’ credentials...

Still Grounded...

A sunny afternoon constitutional presented the opportunity for a couple of encounters with flattened 'roadkill' aluminium cans found nestling, firstly, nearby & then within designated 'bus stop' areas upon the road surface, photographically documented for posterity & the continuation of the project recording such findings of 'roadkill' amidst the particularities of the still newishly local environs.

As previously, the coloured paint & tarmac of the bus stop bays, laid upon the original tarmac road surface - which is revealed where deterioration & erosion of such applications has occurred, extensively in places - adds both compositional & textural incident upon & to the ground of the 'still life' arrangement as found. Also, in these particular examples, there is the presence of strong vertical & horizontal linear structure, with these lines, running parallel to as they do, asserting the edges, the limitations, of the picture plane, in best modernist tradition.

A Measured Approach

In the context of the recently reactivated engagement with found flattened & suitably reformed aluminium can ‘roadkill’, here is presented another drawing to be processed from such subject/object matter as acquired, again employing the more active surface-‘ground’ mark-making development that characterized the previous example, inspired by the swiping brushmarks that were to be found featuring in the set of photographs of the occurrence of ‘double black lines’ road markings as painted & encountered amongst the back streets of Chester, & blogged here.


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

Focussing on a specific detail of the drawing, there was something about the appearance of the visible strip of barcode printed upon the surface of the found object, as reformed, with a sequence of numerals & related short lines (printed above but appearing here, as viewed upside-down, below), that somehow brought to mind that of the measurements upon a ruler, which in turn recalled those examples of the work of Jasper Johns where he incorporates &/or represents just such a device-object into the composition, with but three examples of such, featuring drawing & painting, illustrated below.
As ever, only the slightest pretext is required to indulge in an appreciation of the sensuous surfaces of Johns’, with their explicit mark-making & wealth of visual incident, to which the drawing itself & the nature of its processing makes intentional reference.


Jasper Johns 'No' 1964
graphite, charcoal & tempera on paper/51.4x44.5cm


Jasper Johns 'Passage' 1962
encaustic & collage on canvas, with objects/137.2x101.6cm


Jasper Johns 'Wilderness II' 1963-70
charcoal, pastel & collage on paper, with objects/108.6x65.4cm

Of course, there's that particular aspect of such an instrument of measurement thus (re)presented in these & others of Johns' works that automatically & obviously communicates (its) 'actual size', & this also relates to the representations of the 'roadkill' cans, with all such objects habitually being represented on a 1:1 'life size' scale in the drawings.

Another of TOoT's favoured & much-referenced artists to have incorporated the representation of a measuring device into a painting was Euan Uglow, in such an example as that pictured below, where the inclusion of the strip at the bottom of the picture, with its regular divisions, gives an indication of the size & scale of the represented object.


Euan Uglow 'Nectarine' c.1998
oil on board/13.4x10cm

Further to the subject of Jasper Johns, the latest essential addition to the library was taken delivery of last week, being the sumptuous catalogue to the 2008 ‘Gray’ exhibition, obviously concentrating upon that specific monochromatic aspect of the artists’ extensive body of work across the variety of media associated with his practice.
In addition to the illustrations of the exhibited work, there are included a number of what appear to be intriguing essays, which will hopefully, over the near future, provide much interest & sufficient grist to the mill of thought.
For now, here is presented a photograph of the book as physical object, enveloped in its translucent tracing paper cover, a rather beautiful thing:


The use of such a material in the packaging process returned me to thoughts of the cover of New Order’s ‘low-life’ LP, originally issued in 1985, a copy invested-in then & carefully kept since, as an example of one of the few too-precious-to-part-with (because of this very manner in which it was so exquisitely presented, in common with most of the Peter Savile-designed Joy Division & New Order record sleeves for Factory Records) vinyl LPs & singles to survive the great cull of the collection of such objects. Glowing mention of this artefact, & its qualities, has already occurred on TOoT, back here, whilst the CD version of the ‘low-life’ album, presented with, mercifully, at least some relation to the original packaging (although being not the same thing at all, of course), has also featured in the past. Here then is pictured the LP’s cover, semi-transparently cloaked, along with the inner sleeve to properly illustrate the different material properties:


Such use of tracing paper of course refers one back to works of art & such examples of the paintings of Kees Goudzwaard, & the constructed models upon which they are based, such as the recently mentioned ‘Transit’.

Retromania on the Road

Today the opposite of tomato is 'a man who's nostalgically prone'

There seems no escaping the lure of the ‘retromania’ pervading the atmosphere & operations at TOoT at the moment, considering the latest drawing(s) to be processed, bittily, & then reassessed & reworked into a second ‘final’ state (which somehow feels less so & secure than its predecessor now appears, in retrospect…), over the course of the last few days.

Based initially with recourse to one of the recent photographs taken of the instances of ‘double black lines’ road markings located & found amongst the back streets of Chester & then developed, refined formally, to include an aspect of a second such image, this drawing (in two states) then & thus refers back to a short sequence of five others made, from the source of photographs of the original previously-local double black lines, almost four years ago & blogged at the time here.

As then, the pre-existing image content, the formal structure, subject to reformation, is utilized as the vehicle with which to explicitly foreground the process of drawing, the marks made & surface(s) (& effects) achieved through the medium of graphite (& the erasure of, as positive action) on paper.

Version 1


Version 2


graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm


Soundtrack:


The Chameleons Peel Sessions
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding' (vinyl LP)
Echo & the Bunnymen 'Ocean Rain' (vinyl LP)

More musical retromania too, inspired directly by dipping into ‘The Peel Sessions’ at random points of interest in addition to reading through thoroughly, savouring every word & anecdote. The Chameleons proved to be one of those bands’ names that did indeed inspire recollections of the recording & broadcast of a ‘classic session’ as the book has it, recalled as being much enthused about with a like-minded friend back in the day, & recourse to a downloadable digital source (alas the original cassette on which the session would have been recorded from the radio has not survived, either relocations, de-clutterings or possibly over-tapings: one wonders how the music might sound thus experienced, much more directly present & palpable via its original physical form) enabled a nostalgic re-acquaintance with the music itself.
Although my musical tastes might have moved on from such as The Chameleons’ aesthetic specifically (which chimed with any number of the other bands I listened to at the time & beyond, that much is obvious), being long-since unlistened-to (not least through unavailability), still the session & especially other songs from two subsequent such recordings for the Peel show (also part of the particular download) proved not without charm & interest, & a certain frisson of recognition, of pleasant reminiscence of youthful passions: the book itself is overflowing with such irresistible seductions to indulge in nostalgia, inevitably of course. Further to this last point, & by way of coincidence, that first ‘classic’ Chameleons’ session was originally broadcast in June 1981, in the midst of taking ‘O’Level exams, the night before attending the Bauhaus gig mentioned recently: we really are on a roll, backwards.

The remainder of the soundtrack was then experienced through the medium of old technology in the form of the Sixties' record player purchased during the ‘summer’, with, first, the delights of the vinyl version of the Moon Wiring Club’s ‘A Spare Tabby at the Cat’s Wedding’ - a companion to the contemporaneous CD release (indeed being purchased together in the ‘bundle’, as recorded here, although I failed to include the LP sleeve in the photograph so there's no visual evidence of its existence) but quite different in content whatever the coincidence of some of the tracks’ titles, & equally excellent & compelling: when one factors in the related artwork, & the online presentation, the whole package/experience is profoundly rich & complex, but the music alone is a particularly rewarding accompaniment to the process of drawing.

Then, whilst reworking the drawing into its second incarnation, a re-acquaintance (probably 20 years since the last such encounter) with Echo & the Bunnymen’s mighty & magnificent masterpiece ‘Ocean Rain’ (toured & performed in its entirety during September, in the contemporary fashion for such concerts, a full 27 years after the album’s original release) in all its grandiose glory in vinyl, analogue form, the orchestral strings which constitute such an essential element of the music’s texture much richer, warmer, deeper in ‘colour’ & tone, simply more vibrant as they should be & be felt, an altogether more organic sound somehow, better suited to a fuller appreciation of the overall, encompassing sonic aesthetic. A similar thought occurred whilst experiencing the chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian’s wonderful, adored ‘Tigermilk’ on vinyl (again, as such an album surely should be), for the very first time, recently too: good vibrations indeed.

Brand New, You're Retro

Today the opposite of tomato is all a tremulous heart requires

graphite, putty eraser, watercolour & collage/20x30cm

A return today to a major theme of the relatively recent past here at TOoT, with the confluence of the recent finds of a suitably intriguing ‘roadkilled’ can &the occurrence of those ‘new’ double black lines in Chester providing the stimulation (note the word, as present on the surface of the object & the photocopied reproduction of this collaged onto/into the drawing) to compose & process a drawing featuring both of these elements in a something of a style that harks back to that last employed in June of last year, since when the process & appearance of the body of work evolved into a more watercoloury realm before such subject/object matter went into a prolonged hibernation amidst the general slowing-down/spacing-out of instances of creative operations.

Pertaining to the drawing, in the interests of aesthetic integrity the broad strokes of the darker-toned aspects of the surface/‘ground’ relate directly to, being inspired by, those 'active' swipes of the brush that characterize some of the painting of the double black lines in the previously-posted photographs of such the feature as found.

Whether this drawing heralds a renaissance or might otherwise be but a fleeting example (of an abiding 'retromania' as documented over recent months) remains to be seen, but there’s obviously something about the subject/object matter that keeps demanding attention & some form of documentary engagement with, as the drawing provides tangible evidence of.


Soundtrack:

The Smiths John Peel session 09/08/84
Cocteau Twins John Peel session 05/09/84
Cornershop ‘When I Was Born for the 7th Time’
(here featuring the album's cassette-format artwork in all its cinematic scope)

Further to the retromania, TOoT finds itself in something of a Peel-fest at the moment & the soundtrack reflects such a fact, comprising a couple of archive recordings from the John Peel radio show & a reacquaintance with an album by a band associated with such source. This circumstance has arisen from A’s kind presentation of Ken Garner’s ‘The Peel Sessions’ book, a must-be-read-immediately volume that features a fascinating history of the show (historically contextualized within the tradition of the 'live' recordings of music for broadcast by/on the BBC) &, obviously, the ‘sessions’ that formed a particular focus for the programme & contributed in no small measure to its legendary status, including, also, an exhaustive chronicle of the facts of those sessions, lists of the bands who were invited to record them, the songs featured, dates transmitted, etc – a wealth of detail to delight those of us nostalgically prone to succumbing to fond memories of the intense musical passions inspired by Peel the man & the show, many of which have endured to this day & provided the template for an appreciation of all manner of artists & sounds.

In common with many a listener, it was my practice to listen to the Peel show with eager anticipation, a tape in the radio-cassette player, finger poised over the ‘Pause’ button in readiness to release it & record whatever delights might be broadcast on a particular night, & a selection of such cassettes have remained stored as precious relics of my own music-listening history: the specially-recorded sessions of course, featuring alternative renditions of familiar songs, differing from the versions available on vinyl or, later, CD, or those recorded uniquely for the Occasion (for that it oft was), are the jewels of the surviving collection &, for all that many of such recordings might subsequently have been granted an official release in whatever format, still those original tapes, as objects, containing the source material in what feels its purest form (however time-worn & diminished in sound quality), recorded as it was at the time of broadcast, have a special, priceless quality, a palpable, physical connection with those times.

It might also be opined that many a Peel session recording proved to be in some way superior to previous or subsequent recorded versions, the Cocteau Twins’ ‘Pepper Tree’ here providing an exemplary case in point, with the Peel version having a thrilling resonance & clarity to the guitar sound, imbuing the song with a tension & dynamic that was entirely absent on its official released incarnation, in languid form on the B-side of the band’s self-produced ‘Spangle Maker’ EP. Indeed, there remains a charm to this particular session, also including the prototypically titled ‘Whisht’ & ‘Peep Bo’ prior to their featuring in different guise, as ‘Beatrix’ & ‘Ivo’ on the ‘Treasure’ album.

In a most appropriate & poignant (for full nostalgic effect) piece of design, the contents page of the book features the list of chapters as they would be appear written of the spines of the card inlays of just such cassettes as I habitually used myself, mostly the TDK brand with an occasional Memorex or Sony, displaying subtle alterations in design as this aspect evolved down the years.

The book is also noteworthy for featuring this particular photograph of PJ Harvey, very much a Peel & show favourite, & of course a much-admired artist at TOoT, here looking very Sixties:

Back to (Double) Black...

A grand day out indeed, this afternoon, as it concluded with the most delightful discovery, upon the surface of one of the back streets of Chester, of an example of what had become, over the course of the years & numerous documentings, TOoT's signature 'double black lines' road markings, formerly thought to have been consigned to the past (& another place) but brought vividly into the now in a new location.

In addition to both the sense of novelty & the renewing of acquaintance with a familiar subject, there is an exciting development too in the form in which these particular lines (corrective black over original yellow) appear - not mechanically applied like the previous examples, but, in numerous instances (these synechdocally suggesting the whole), quite obviously hand-made, altogether more 'painterly' as they record the passage through time & space of the brush in the dried marks of the discrete strokes.

As with the subject matter generally, the photographs taken thus picture mostly grey monochrome surfaces of a variety of tones & textures, apart from where, as in the first example below, some of the original yellow lines remain (as a compostional element, amongst others, of the whole):




The following corrections in particular - the sequence of images describing a course from left to right - display a wonderful, explicit brush-marked quality, applied, swiped at, mostly, diagonals to the horizontal of the underlying lines, the pale yellow of which is evident in traces beneath the black paint: such a process, as apparent, might well be considered to be a certain kind of 'action painting', such is the flurry of activity fixed in the form of the dried brush strokes.



In the following example, the evidence of the repaired road surface provides a further element of linear & compositional interest, with tonal & textural subtleties, at an angle to the double black lines. Also vividly apparent is the small section of yellow line left uncovered, uncorrected: what could such signify? Is it purely an aesthetic statement perhaps, devoid of any practical informational function?




By way of serendipity, the moments prior to the encounter with these double black lines had been spent having a welcome sit down in Waterstones', indulging in a relaxed & leisurely read of Bertrand Russell's 'In Praise of Idleness' in the Philosophy section, from the shelves of which A picked an edition of the 'Basic Writings' of Heidegger sporting the cover design illustrated below, with an image most appropriately of a tarmac-surfaced & paint-marked nature.


If ever there was an inducement, a sign indeed, to engage, after much procrastination & delay, with the ideas of Heidegger, which has been the intention for far too long now, then surely such must be it.