(Oil) On the Road

‘Double Black Lines/Double Black Cans’

oil on canvas/40″ x 30″/September 2016

At last, after the intention having percolated for the better part of eight years, a larger scale oil painting (that I’d always felt would be more fitting of the subject matter) of the ‘double black lines’ corrected road markings, with a most appropriately liveried pair of flattened aluminium cans, found gifts indeed, in situ. The ground, representing a tarmacked road surface, and the lines, various stages of Payne’s Grey upon Cadmium Yellows, being thickly textured to suggest the physicality, for all its relatively low relief, of such, whilst the cans are also sketchily painted in order to convey something of the fleeting and fugitive passage of light over their two distinct reflective surface finishes.
However, for all the wait, and the work of art, there’s felt something not quite right about either the whole process or, eventually, the result – not a waste of time, as these things never are, but not perhaps a direction to pursue.

Tarry, Tarry Night...

‘Roadscape With Can (Study) #2’

oil on canvas/20″ x 16″/August 2016

Presenting a couple of images of the second study of a found flattened aluminium can (observed from life) upon/embedded within a thickly painted ‘roadscape’ based generally upon photographic evidence of the legendary ‘double black lines’ corrective road markings formerly to be seen gracing the streets of Flint. With acknowledgement of such a compositional device and source (the archive of photographs of being considered to be ‘found paintings’ of a modernist idiom) but liberties then taken, the materiality of the oil paint itself and its application becomes the subject. In this instance, what was the original ‘flecking’ of paint relating to the appearance and substance of tarmac (the lighter grey tonal areas) came to be considered as being perhaps a little too decorative or ‘Impressionist’, thus the brush was dragged over these marks in a series of horizontal and vertical movements to create more of a (very) loose grid structure, resulting in something grungier, possibly more befitting the subject matter and the source material.

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...?

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.

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.

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...