More Nostalgia

'Seventies Project 3: Death Disco 7-inch Picture Sleeve'

oil on canvas/25 x 25cm/September 2019

More from the 1970s-themed project, with another object from the decade providing grist to the painting mill. On this occasion, the source material is, in effect, an item of packaging material, being the cardboard ‘picture sleeve’ housing an object within, a seven-inch vinyl 45rpm ‘single’ featuring Public Image Ltd’s ‘Death Disco’ as its A-side, coupled with ‘No Birds Do Sing’ on the reverse. Dating from 1979, this item thus signifies and encapsulates that latter part of the designated period when I’d reached my nascent post-punk music-obsessive stage that has endured and remained influential since, not least in the current circumstance.

Back in the day, as an aspiring artist/graphic designer and as something I’d started to do often, given the source material I was being attracted to, acquiring and becoming familiar with, this is undoubtedly a record cover I would have copied in drawing form, both the strange, compellingly gruesome image and the text, probably on a number of occasions, so the present painting as made constitutes an update of this process, this time presenting an object of a certain time-worn vintage that happens to feature an image and text upon its surface as a still life. Both the image, which research has unfortunately failed to establish an original artist to give credit to, and the music contained within, particularly ‘Death Disco’ itself, remain, forty years on, striking, harsh and uncompromising, suitably complementary in appearance and sound, and they provide a potent link back to their time.

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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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Return of the Crucial Three

Returning to the subject matter of the ‘Homepride Fred-the flour-grader’ compositions, this one again featuring an arrangement of all three of the iconic figures in the collection, arranged against a ground of a hand-drawn-and-painted approximation of a Dekoplus fabric design of 1960s vintage that might be said to make a nod toward the similar device of the representation of bold wallpaper patterns employed by Patrick Caulfield as an element of the complex visual language of his paintings: the ghost of Euan Uglow always haunts the painting of the ‘Freds’, of course.

As always, the play of natural light over the plastic surfaces of the objects and the manner in which fleeting little ‘pings’ of reflected colour occur, with the challenge of recording them, is a constant delight in the process and reason enough to continue mining this particular seam of pictorial interest.  Additionally, a little light research has unearthed the discovery that the Homepride ‘Fred’ character – advertising icon to-be – was ‘born’, being the idea of Bobs Geers and Gross, in 1964, the very year of my own birth, so that feels like another connection, however tenuous and arbitrary.

‘Three Homepride Freds and Dekoplus Design’

oil and graphite on canvas/16″ x 20″/April 2019

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The finished painting on the easel in front of the composition,

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And Then There Were Two...

Following the previous entry, the latest painting to be brought to a conclusion features a different composition of the same subject matter and context, with but two of the collected 'Homepride Fred' figures rather than three and a slightly more  'measured'/geometrical approach applied to the representation of the patterned wallpaper and consideration of the placement of the objects in relation to (the figure to the left might be observed to be 'pinned' at the shoulders within the confines of an aspect of the pattern, for example), all being a bit more 'Uglowian' in conception, perhaps, which returns us to the original image to feature the Freds dating from almost two years ago.

Again, the active observation of the play of natural light upon the surface of the objects, those fleeting, momentary 'flashes' that enliven the whole set-up, describing aspects of their form and nature, is the motivating factor in engaging with such a challenge and the hoped-for result is a convincing pictorial representation of such, a record of the environmental activity, the time spent looking and painting.

'Two Freds and Retro Wallpaper'

oil on canvas/16 x 20"/March - April 2019

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The finished painting on the easel, in position as observed and painted

During a little light workplace research, hoping to find suitable examples of wallpaper design that might provide grist to the creative mill and extend the project, it was something of a delight to find an example of a ‘Fred’ amongst the pages of a rather fine book:

Revisiting Old Friends

'Three Freds and Retro Wallpaper'

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

Returning to previous-visited subject/object-matter in the form of the Homepride ‘Fred’ plastic figures (please see here), this time incorporating a third and more recently-acquired member of the team, its facial features more weather-worn and thus offering a more ambiguous expression than the other broadly-smiling pair.

The objects were actively observed as placed upon a horizontal shelf against a backdrop of boldly-patterned wallpaper of recent vintage referencing a Sixties-Seventies’ design trope.

The use of both the ‘Freds’ and the patterned ground are influenced by Euan Uglow, a frequent visitor to these parts, of course, encouraging a ‘measured’ approach to proceedings, in the interest of a convincing verité up to a certain point at the same time as an ‘all-over’ approach to the picture surface, with a degree of licence taken in the pursuit of creating a picture in its own right, the wallpaper offering the opportunity to represent a painterly equivalent to itself.

The light-reflective surfaces of the plastic figures, each subtly or a little more obviously different from the others, as ever present the opportunity of responding to and recording any fleeting moments as observed under the mercurial conditions of natural daylight, and engaging specifically with that Uglowian challenge of depicting (the appearance of) plastic, within the general concern of representing form.

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The finished painting on the easel in front of the composition, as painted

Familiar Ground

Following the short interlude of the most recent pair of paintings (those based on the vintage Pifco electric hair trimmers packaging), we return to the familiar ground of the ongoing compositional exploration of selections from the stock of sawn cylinders of silver birch – again looking to the work of Edmund de Waal for a little inspiration – and the ‘homely’ environment of the still life.

The particular objects selected on this occasion were from a batch not previously utilised and contemplated, being a little slimmer and in some cases shorter than those used up until now, thus more have been accommodated within the relatively compact dimensions of the 20″ x 16″ canvas, which represents a more-or-less life-sized arrangement of shelves and objects.

Again, the in the observation and translation of the scene, the materiality of the medium and the manner of its manual application is of equal importance in the resolution of the picture-as-object, depicting objects in space (and here, these objects and their visual and physical qualities are rather user-friendly, it might be said)- as with Ivon Hitchens, the intention is that “the tree is paint and the paint is tree”.

'Silver Birch Still Life #5'

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

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