The Opposite of Tomato

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The Road to Johnsville...

In a separate body of work to the still lifes of late, I've finally got around to using the previously-taken sets of photographs of local roadside 'double black lines' (see old posts in the dim & distant) as intended, as source material for investigations into modernist-type image-making, concentrating on process (explicity so, as an illustration of the temporal nature of both the 'work of the work of art' & also the act of looking), mark-making, surface, etc. Studying the excellent publication 'Jasper Johns: an Allegory of Painting 1955-1965' & in particular the wonderful & fulsome reproductions therein, I've been influenced & inspired by & thus attempted something along the lines of Johns's ever-fascinating mark-making endeavours using pre-existing, 'already known' images as the beginnings of such. Gradually, it's beginning to make more sense (from never having worked from photographic sources previously) & perhaps is a line of work it might be worth pursuing, possibly involving a return to the sources of the images to obtain more direct, immediate visceral information from which to work...

(all drawings 30x21cm, graphite &/or plastic & putty erasers - no.2 also utilises charcoal)

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

29th October

The same composition (well, almost, allowing for a little light tweaking of position) explored from another angle, as a variation on the habitual 'front-on' approach & removing one of the objects from the backdrop of the blue field.

graphite & watercolour/30x22cm

27th October

Exploring another composition of spatial relationships

graphite/30x21cm

21st October

Three new quinces, exploring the colour journey from green to gold

graphite & watercolour/30x22cm

14th October

graphite/30x21cm

11th October

Set up the quinces 'contre-jour' for a change - fascinating to observe their changing forms as the sun moved in the sky & to appreciate just how fugitive 'appearances' can be, just how magically light describes form. Impossible to successfully capture, however, even when such a drawing as this attempts some form of synthesis of progressive states of illumination.