Après-tea

A break in yesterday afternoon's drawing process for the making & taking of tea & accompanying sustenance resulted, subsequently, post-refreshments, in a return not to the work in hand but, rather, a digression & surprising departure into something of what might be considered to be object-centred narrative territory, the nature of which goes beyond the mere appearance of that which is depicted (in the moments of the particular immediate aftermath), in a multi-layered referencing manner. As such, the drawing also becomes another form of correspondence. An intriguing development, at least to self...


graphite & watercolour/20x30cm

At the more familiar level of process, this drawing is a a very rare instance of one featuring objects made under the source of an overhead artificial light, as one might notice,'obviously' given the nature of the sharply cast shadows, of a number of Euan Uglow's still life compositions, for example. Given the habitual personal preference for observing objects' form &, particularly, colour in natural light, however frustratingly fugitive & limited that might often prove to be, I've always marvelled at the subtlety of effect of colour & tone, the masterly control of such, Uglow managed to achieve under such conditions as artificial light.

A certain integrity in relation to the many previous drawings of 'roadkill' aluminium cans & also the few subsequent examples of those sourced from folded & crumpled sheets of paper might be claimed by the representation here of the folded-back tin foil covering of the halva container.

Soundtrack:

Pontone 'Spectral Cassette' #4

It's an Ad World #4

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Continuing the current sequence of drawings processed from the source material of archive print media advertisements, taking a step away from the subject matter-so-far of shoes here but, of course, featuring very much another object of consumer desire within the stylistic idiom of the Sixties (all very much the glamour of 'Mad Men' & Betty Draper, one might (re)contextualize, 'retro-contemporarily' if such a designation might exist).

Part of the re-mediation process on this particular occasion involved the draining of the image of its colour, not last the vivid red of the original's background, cooling things down to the monochrome of graphite & creating a more 'tactile, mark-made space'.

Consideration was given to combining another image into the composition, specifically as 'showing' on the TV screen, which is blank in the original, as some form of comment perhaps, but then it seemed most appropriate somehow that 'the medium is the message' - the medium in this instance being embodied by the (desirable) object, of course.

Soundtrack:


Jesus and Mary Chain 'Psychocandy'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
The Delgados 'The Great Eastern'

'Opposite' Attracts...

The Boxing Day constitutional - mercifully at this stage nearing its conclusion, having, in the relentlessly enduring freezing temperatures, been taken 'by mistake' - brought a curious encounter with a most particular found object, a solitary tomato at rest upon the locally persisting snow (fortunately on the pavement, perhaps, rather than risk venturing out onto the road & ending as 'kill')...


captured also from the opposite side...


Most coincidentally peculiar, given the post of the 23rd's talk of Surrealism.

It's an Ad World #3

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

A third drawing in the sequence as processed from the source material of 1960s' print media advertisements, again featuring the subject/object matter-of-desire of women's shoes, although on this occasion not manufactured by 'Palizzio' but, rather, 'Gamins'.

Whatever, the de-/re-contextualization of the re-mediating drawing process, erasing the textual content that 'explains' the composition, renders the image perhaps more surreal yet (the disembodied shod foot 'floating' in the black spatial 'void' recalling, possibly, the stocking-clad lower leg suspended within Joan Miro's 'Poetic Object' assemblage of 1936), a reciprocal comment, as by-product, on the tendency of advertising, historically, to appropriate or invent its own form of surreal imagery for its own ends of manufacturing desire in the potential consumer, in this instance suggested by the playful eroticism of the feather lightly coming into contact with, brushing, teasing, the area of sensitive, ticklish flesh (which response the original ad's 'copy' unsubtly, unimaginatively makes explicit), that erogenous zone, bared by the shoe's particular 'cut-out' design: such desire was very much an essential element of much Surrealist art, of course, making manifest those aspects of sexual desire, object-centred, hidden within the human subconscious, or unconscious.

By way of what might be a little 'seasonally-affected' departure, TOoT would like to dedicate this particular drawing to the transcendent 'Dotty', whose unfortunate footwear-related predicament, so entertainingly relayed over the course of a sequence of text messages, suffused the afternoon's subsequent drawing process with recurring thoughts of both the situation (which, happily &, one imagines, with considerable relief, resolved itself satisfactorily) &, more generally, the victim.

Soundtrack:

Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'

It's an Ad World Again

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

Following on from the previous example, this drawing was processed, re-mediated, from reference to the source of a second 1960s' print media advertisement for 'Palizzio' shoes...

Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset 'The Bairns'
Pontone Autumn Mix

It's an Ad World (a Reprise)

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

It's quite possible that 'Mad Men' withdrawal symptoms (the fourth season of the uber-stylish & compelling period drama recently having ended on BBC TV, as fellow aficionados will be sadly aware) have provided the inspiration & motivation for an otherwise random-seeming search for vintage advertising material which in turn has resulted in the processing of this particular drawing, otherwise I'm at somewhat of a loss to explain its existence.

With precedents occuring during 2008's Project of drawing from existing media image sources, one reason for a return to such is, of course, a strategy of side-stepping the 'seasonally affected disorder' of a lack of natural daylight in which to draw the familiar objects-as-described-by-light, the representationally-challenging play of light across their surfaces & forms, whatever subject/object matter that might at any particular time happen to be, the excuse offered for the falling-off of recent drawing activities.

Thus the drawing represents the intriguingly-composed visual content of a 1960s' magazine advertisement for Palizzio shoes - obviously a desirable item then &, it seems, rather collectible now - divested of any accompanying text, decontextualized & recontextualized within a re-mediated manual mark-making endeavour.

Such mark-making in this specific instance includes the inaugural use of one of the recently invested-in Tombow 'Mono Zero' eraser pens, rather stylish, Japanese manufactured objects as they in themselves are, brought to my attention via Marie Harnett's enthusiastic recommendation of such as essential elements of her materials in the realization of her exquisite & compelling drawings (which practice, as sourced from film stills, would perhaps provide suitable subject for consideration within the scope of the re-mediation explorations).



Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
Pontone Autumn Mix

Another Year...

Given the recent lull in proceedings, what seems, alas, to have become a familiar ‘seasonally-affected disorder’ slowing down the drawing & blogging process at this time of year, it doesn’t seem necessarily to be appropriate to celebrate, but at least one might acknowledge the fact that today marks the fifth anniversary of contributing, through the medium of this particular resource, more unsolicited, unedited stuff & gubbins & general inconsequentiality to the vast caverns of cyberspace.

In the spirit of such occasions, it just so happens, by way of another of those serendipitous circularities, those hauntological ‘having-been-here-befores’, which seem to be something of a house speciality (& to an increasing extent) hereabouts at TOoT, that we’re able to affect a reminiscent return to the very first post & a particular aspect of the eclectic range of its content, in the form of another encounter, at Liverpool’s fine Walker Art Gallery, with the work of The Little Artists, or at least a pair of examples of, which, for whatever reason, were/are included amongst the work & supporting archive material (fascinating photographs from the 50s & 60s of selection panels & openings, for example) in the ‘historical’ exhibition accompanying the main John Moores Painting Prize 2010 show.

Here, as mentioned previously back in those fresh-faced, pioneering days, are The Little Artists’ witty Lego representations of Tracey Emin’s (in)famous bed & Damien Hirst’s vitrined shark, pictured together & then in a little more individual detail: what larks, Pip - that also, of course, transport one further back in time, to memories of one’s own childhood creative investigations into the potential of those inspirational plastic bricks.




This being the second occasion upon which tentative mention has been made of the 2010 Moores but with the intended extended musing-upon destined once again not to materialize yet (well, we still have until the new year whilst the exhibition remains current), it might be appropriate to mention, at least, the first-prize-winning-worthiness of Keith Coventry’s ‘Spectrum Christ’, an object that extends the possibilities of painting & certainly achieves its stated aim of slowing down the viewing process, the ‘consumption’ of the image.
Housed within a glass-fronted simple box frame, this reflective surface &, obviously, the manner in which it is lit, provides a significant amount of ‘interference’ between the spectator & their reception of the image, the icon, which only gradually & with no little effort reveals itself to be a lusciously oil-painted blue monochrome of a heavy-lidded & pensive, melancholic Christ (which the website & catalogue reproduction - thus a poor substitute for the actual empirical experience - shows clearly, instantly): before one sees this, one is confronted by one’s own image reflected in the glass, superimposed upon the elusive subject beneath, & then observes the activity of other gallery-goers & the space itself, the vaulted ceiling of which might suggest something ecclesiastical in architectural terms & also subsequently creates a visual dialogue, through the ages, with the interior space depicted within such an historical painting as Hendrik Cornelisz van Vliet’s ‘The New Church at Delft’, as may be observed in one of the galleries leading off from the main Moores exhibition space.
Further & more localized dialogue exists with other of the Moores’ exhibits displaying reflective surfaces (a minor sub-theme), but, of all such examples, Coventry’s provides the most complex & compelling perceptual experience through its successful resolution of a painting-as-image/object strategy.

Drawing a Blank #6

graphite & watercolour/30x20cm

Being the latest in the slowly-evolving sequence of drawings representing, on an exact, measured 1:1 scale, the subject/object matter of folded, creased & crumpled sheets of A4 paper.

On this particular occasion, the object was subjected to a light crumpling in its folded state, resulting, when subsequently unfolded, in the formation of something of the nature of repeating & 'mirrored' patterns occurring upon & across the textured surface, within & in addition to the regular cells of the grid into which the folded paper becomes creased, an inadvertent 'decorative' element further compromising, as described tonally by the action of observed natural light, the 'blankness' of the white sheet.

This accidental complexity of the low-relief surface resulted in a most laboriously- & slowly-processed drawing, realised during the course of the sessions on the 6 available working days within an extended, 'compromised' total of 13, due to the prevailing available natural light conditions of the season: such a working process seems untenable, & therefore thought is required as to exactly what might now be feasible in terms of continuing work at this dark & 'inefficient' time of year - the 'blanks', one fears, are very much on hold as the days draw inexorably in yet further...

Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'An Audience of Art Deco Eyes', 'Shoes Off and Chairs Away', 'Striped Paint for the Last Post', 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding' & 'A Field Full of Sunken Horses'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
Leonard Cohen 'The Essential..'
Pontone Autumn Mix

Drawing a Blank #5

graphite & watercolour/30x20cm

Being the latest in the sequence of watercolour drawings processed from the subject-object matter of folded, creased & lightly crumpled blank sheets of standard A4 paper, represented on exact 1:1 scale (laboriously plotted), the image, with its all-over surface of non-hierarchical incidental visual detail, thus coinciding with the physical limits of the picture plane.
Once again, there’s that play, the employment of the device, of the flat representation of what was originally a flat plane subsequently transformed into something of a low-relief three-dimensional object, the drawing being a record of the fugitive action of natural light upon the undulations of its surface, of the subtle tonal gradations of the marks made upon the once uninflected sheet by the folding & crumpling process.

Becoming more deeply involved in this particular body of work, as it seems to be in the process of becoming, however slowly-evolving (taking into account specific seasonal factors, pertaining to the limited availability of natural daylight in which to work) & thus far production-light, certain art-historical correspondences emerge in which context(s) the drawings might be situated, even if only coincidentally &, not unusually, superficially.
In the interests of a certain integrity, at least of overriding personal aesthetics, all such artists & their work have featured previously, either specifically ‘in relation’ or otherwise as being of interest.

Other than an aforementioned similarity, at least, particularly, at the outset of the project, to some of Vija Celmins' wonderful drawings, of enveloped letters, photographs & images torn from magazines, & the historical tradition of the realistic representation of fabrics folded & draped, the first such example with which to consider something of an affinity is that of Kees Goudzwaard, & the artist’s paintings based on the subject-object matter of various paper & masking tape constructions of a variety of dimensions, all of which are represented, in oil on canvas, on a 1:1 scale, & include numerous subtly modulated grey & ‘white’ examples of.
Many of Goudwaard’s images, which maintain a compelling tension between trompe l’oeil realism & abstract design, also feature something of a grid structure, to whatever fairly rigorous or looser degree, by virtue of the use of the linear element of the strips of tape, another compositional device which links them in some manner to the drawings of creased & crumpled paper, the original objects upon which such are based are initially folded into such a formal pattern, of course.

The horizontal & vertical structure provide by the purposeful creases, & other accidental incidental diagonals & ‘facets’ of the crumple-inflected surfaces, might be considered as being not-too distant from aspects of archetypal Cubist composition, of course, a feature which generally haunts proceeding here, whilst the use of paper as subject-object matter also bears a relation to collage.

Obviously there’s something about any work utilizing the grid & surface modulations of whites & greys that might recall, generally & a number of particular examples of, the work of the familiar figure of Jasper Johns & also Robert Ryman’s ‘white paintings’ (although both are more usually associated with the palpable physicality & sensuousness of their surfaces, even Ryman's smooth ones) but, it occurred, ‘riffingly’, that there also might be something of a distant echo of Vilhelm Hammershoi, whose contemplative compositions are characterized by an habitual, exquisitely-realised muted tonality & overall ‘greyness’, & frequently include the cell-like details of domestic interior architectural features such as windows, doors, etc.

As ever, there’s such a richness to & wealth of art history that the occurrence of contextualizing correspondences are inevitable & unavoidable, but such are always welcome & more often than not informative & instructive.


Soundtrack:


She & Him 'Volume Two'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Sparklehorse 'It's a Wonderful Life'
Jesca Hoop 'Hunting My Dress'

And so the new Moon Wiring Club release - the CD but one aspect of the 'Tabby bundle' that constitutes its whole - arrived, ahead of expectations, to be discovered sheltering, by something of a spooky coincidence although not, perhaps, particularly unusually for something of a feline nature, underneath the car...


More will surely follow upon the subject of the richness of the sonic & visual wonders to experienced within this cornucopia of delights, suffice for now to report that the first hearing of the CD during a misty, damp & darkening autumn afternoon provided much of the anticipated entertainment & more developments besides...

Drawing Another Blank...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'a schism with an ism'


graphite & watercolour/20x30cm

Once again a sheet of A4 paper, purposely folded & creased into a grid format & lightly, randomly crumpled (the subsequent top left corner, indeed, being already so, upon finding-choosing the sheet), drawn from life, in as-habitual natural light conditions, on 1:1 scale, the 'allover' image thus coinciding with the limits of the flat picture plane, this time observed & processed in landscape format, as presented.

During a break in the proceedings of the course of the drawing, a trip to Liverpool to visit the John Moores Painting Prize 2010 exhibition also afforded the opportunity to have a welcome potter amongst some of the Walker Art Gallery's other rooms, of paintings, sculpture, furniture & other objets d'art, to indulge oneself in time travel back through the history of art, from the twentieth century to medieval times, a privilege indeed, not least when encountering, for example, in the Late Italian Renaissance room, a Titian such as this illustrated:


Titian 'Supper at Emmaus'
oil on wood panel, c.1531-33

Under the circumstances of the drawings being processed at present, & the particular subject-object matter of, my attention was not unsurprisingly captured by a certain feature of the painting - an unfolded, sharply-creased, 'grid-formatted' white cloth draped over the supper table at which the figures are present, projected to the front of the scene, into the spectator's imaginative space, towards, indeed, the flatness of the picture plane, where there its apparent tactility might engage in contradictory visual dialogue with...


One of the many compelling features of any number of the historical paintings on view is, of course, the attention lavished upon the convincingly 'realistic' depiction of drapery & cloths, the rendering in paint of the surface qualities & textures of various fabrics, as might be appreciated from this second illustrated example (occupying a corner across from a wall featuring, amongst others, an early Rembrandt self portrait), from the 17th century Dutch tradition (thus traversing also considerable geographical distance in one's amblings from room to room):


detail from 'Portrait of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia' Studio of Van Dyck
oil on canvas, c.1630-33

Obviously, it is the area of white cloth, & the subtle tonal variations upon the creases, crumples & undulations of, tucked-in at the throat & flowing down over the bosom of Isabella, 'The Governess of the Netherlands', which was & is my particular focus in the picture, but admire also the gold thread woven into & highlighting the sombre drapery to the left of the portrait.

Soundtrack:


K-Punk 'The Metaphysics of Crackle'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
Moon Wiring Club 'Shoes Off and Chairs Away'
Mark Mulcahy 'Fathering'

Enjoyed the delights of the easy, Sixties-inflected, countrified pop charms of She & Him regularly & a great deal over the course of processing this particular drawing, such lovely songs well sung (by Zooey Deschanel, also their author, more familiar as an actress, not least as appearing in 'Weeds'), arranged & played, chanced-upon & loaned from the local public 'li-berry' (& how much quieter & civilized the environment there, properly in keeping with the finest traditions of such institutions, than prevails at the site of the day job, one might note...), having some time ago been informed of the album's existence via a suitably intriguing Guardian review of.

Also, & most appropriate to the approach of Hallowe'en, almost upon us, rumours emanate, like autumn mist, from Clinkskell of the impending threat of more bumps-in-the-night issuing forth from the collective efforts of the various mysterious members of the Moon Wiring Club...the anticipation is tremendous - indeed, tremulous, & palpable.