What We Did On Our Holidays

Today the opposite of tomato is more or less a wide slice of the action.

Beginning with a continuation of the ‘Spectral Stone Circles’ and featuring numbers 2 to 5 in that particular series, which, following the initial snowswept example, has taken a turn into misty environments that are best described as being not necessarily invented or generic but, rather, based on and adapted from observation of or sketches (sometimes historical) of actual locations, for example a local woodland. The circles themselves are composed of stone chippings approximately 8 - 10cm in height, collected on various perambulations, chosen for efficacy and arranged in circular form on the back lawn at home and photographed/sketched in situ, thus being both invented and real as, in effect, are the resulting paintings. Small in scale (all being 12” x 16”), the surfaces are all considerably more thinly painted than had become the norm with previous landscape/’woodscape’ subject matter although hopefully retain certain physical attributes that establish them as paintings.

'Spectral Stone Circle #2'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/June 2019

'Spectral Stone Circle #3'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

'Spectral Stone Circle #4'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

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'Spectral Stone Circle #5'

oil on canvas/16 x 12"/July 2019

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The next painting continues with the ‘invented’ stone circle theme but, following a short break in the Shropshire countryside, departs from the ‘spectral’ and instead presents something that might be said to tend towards the picturesque, in keeping with the bucolic setting, which is in fact a view of the approximately 15 miles-distant Wrekin from an empty field in the Pulverbatch area, sketched on the spot which then provided suitable reference for the painting to proceed once back in the studio at home.

'Imaginary Stone Circle: a Field in Shropshire'

oil on canvas10016 x 75cm/August 2019

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As summer began to dwindle, I then had the notion to begin a nostalgic project based on subject matter familiar from a 1970s British childhood, intended to encompass anything that might be redolent of the period, beginning with a couple of objects that are further grist to the Uglowian mill in providing different materials and surfaces to represent in the individual forms of a carved wooden antelope and one of the Homepride ‘Fred’ flour-grader figures that have made numerous appearances in paintings already this year. These again are small-format works with the objects being represented at more-or-less life size.

'Seventies Project 1: Wooden Antelope'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/August 2019

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'Seventies Project 2: Homepride Fred'

oil on canvas/35 x 25cm/August 2019

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Another Dip Into the Past...

Returning to the stone circle as subject matter, and another painting, after the recent 'Castlerigg' example, based on historical sketches and a particular photograph taken on location during a snowstorm.

The circle is not, like Castlerigg, an ancient monument, but, rather, a more modern structure, erected in the 1960s on the top field in Flint, North Wales, to commemorate the staging of the 'Eisteddfod' cultural festival - a feast movable all over Wales - in the town, and is composed of twelve standing stones arranged in circular form with a further collection of stone laid in the centre, in the style of a plinth with irregular 'steps' on all four sides. The tallest of the standing stones (probably the slightly most distant one as represented, at the left-hand edge of the plinth) is perhaps 6 feet in height.

Growing up there, and in the top end of town, it's something - a thing, an object, composed of objects, a static arrangement like a still life in the landscape - that I encountered on very many occasions, indeed daily over a period of years, more often in passing, sometimes to stop and contemplate. At various points, I photographed and drew the circle, and it is these records as they exist that inform this particular painted image, which thus embodies both specific and more general memories.

'Spectral Stone Circle #1: Snowstorm'

oil on canvas/16" x 20"/June 2019

The size of the painting is rather smaller on this occasion, a deliberate attempt at experimentation with questions of scale, and, whilst retaining evidence of its brush-marked, hand-made nature, has less thickly physical a surface than the larger Castlerigg predecessor, not least in an attempt to communicate something of a 'spectral' nature which is an idea that I'm considering exploring as a theme from an interest in the nebulous concept of 'hauntology', something introduced into my frame of reference via music and related artwork (primarily the wonders of the Moon Wiring Club and the Blank Workshop) about ten years ago and which continues to exercise a particular fascination.