'Save The Arts' and David Shrigley

I love David Shrigley’s art, and this image from his website made me laugh out loud. It would be even funnier if so much current art practise wasn’t sadly reminiscent of what these artists have to say….but I digress….

If you follow the link below you will come across a great animation that Shrigley has made for a current campaign called ‘Save The Arts’, which has emerged as a response to the terrible and devastating cuts this horrible government are currently making. Other artists are also contributing different pieces each month. These are very worrying times. Sign the petition.

http://savethearts-uk.blogspot.com/

www.davidshrigley.com

10pm in August...

'Stolen Car', oil on canvas, 29 x 37cms, 2010

I completed this new oil painting last week. It’s based on my recent nocturnal pastel study underneath the motorway. It’s only small, but it’s intimate scale seemed to work for the image. I’m pretty pleased with it, and seeing it now it seems to capture a real sense of time and place more specifically than I could have imagined. It’s at 10pm in August.

I’m already working on developing the next one.

'Hey Teacher...Leave Those Kids Alone'

Jake and Dinos Chapman

Whilst searching the net the other day I tripped over the name of artist Lawrie Quigley (below) I hadn’t heard the name in a long, long time. Lawrie was one of my lecturers on my Foundation Course at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design way back in 1988. He taught painting and was the first tutor that actually took an interest in my work at a time when I was really struggling to find my legs on the course. His words of encouragement, spoken in his soft Liverpudlian brogue, gave me the much needed confidence to actually think maybe I could do something in this area. I love these paintings I found by him below. He taught me a lot about some of the basic principles of handling colour and composition.

Another seemingly unlikely voice of support further down the line was Dinos Chapman, one half of the Chapman Brothers. I was studying for my MA in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design in 1995, and having a very difficult time, lacking all confidence in my painting. I was booked in to have a tutorial with Dinos, and was dreading it. They were relatively unknown then, but the previous week I had been to a presentation by him on his work which had shocked a lot of the students. I thought he would hate my ‘expressionist’ paintings, as all the course tutors seemed to. But no, the quietly spoken but intense Dinos, made no such judgements. Instead he took my work much more on face value than anyone else, and for the first time that year encouraged my expressionist tendencies further. He was the first person to say ‘this is great’ about some of my drawings. ‘but this isn’t’, about other things and why. ‘Who cares if you are expressionist’, he stated,’ that’s who you are- just do it and push it much further’. To put it simply he was the first person to actually encourage my work all year. (he also told me I should take more drugs and listen to more music while I painted, some of which was useful too). It gave me the confidence to get out of a hole, and create some of the best paintings I’ve ever made.

The Chapman Brothers (Dinos left)

I’ve been thinking about some of these issues as I sit at my desk at College enrolling a new cohort of students at the start of September. I’ve been an art lecturer for nearly fifteen years now, and much of my approach to teaching is based in opposition to some of the terrible art teaching I received over the years: the lecturers that talk to you more about their practise than yours; not a word of encouragement, as a pose of studied cool aloofness is adopted; a real lack of ability to engage more meaningfully and objectively with your work; and as to passing on any technical skills.. It’s a really difficult thing to be studying, and I really believe in the idea of using encouragement as a tool and focussing on the glimmers of potential in a student’s work. I know from experience what an empowering thing it can be and how we all need a bit of it. It’s not so cool to be cool.

I have also been fortunate to have some great teaching encounters which have equally inspired me, particularly from the Visiting Lecturers at Universty. I’ve been lucky enough to have tutorials with some terrific painters and artists over the years, including Denzil Forrestor, Ansul Krut, Graham Crowley, June Redfern and Roger Ackling.

Denzil Forrestor, 'Blue Night', oil on canvas

Ansul Krut, 'St Thomas of Patamos'

There has been an interesting discussion recently in Artist’s Newsletter magazine about lecturing. One artist/lecturer was complaining about the many new art graduates that go into teaching without any professional experience, and the rigid structures of some vocational courses. He wanted to see the return of more artist-lecturers who come in from their studios to teach. I think this is important to some extent, and essential at University. I think my own artistic practise is important to my role as a teacher, but how many of these people can actually teach is another question. I don’t teach to subsidise my income as an artist (there are much easier ways to do this), I teach because I love teaching. But it is a craft and skill that I’m qualified in that is forever being reflexively developed to enable the student to get their ideas off the ground, not mine. I also think modern vocational courses offer students the chance to develop good transferable skills that were not so available when I was a student.

It’s also a very difficult job these days with many pressures, and not that easy option it once was deemed to be to subsidise a career in painting etc. Every September I say to myself, ‘I just want to be a better teacher than last year’, and don’t think I ever will be. But I think that’s part of the territory of being an artist and trying to teach. I just hope to try my best. I still get nervous going into the class.

Barry Hirst, 'Hawthorn Trees', watercolour

The best teacher I never had was my friend’s at Sunderland University. Professor Barry Hirst was her tutor and would visit the studio space we shared and just discuss the fundamentals of picture making, being wholly focussed on the current painting in progress. His attention was totally on your work. He was very formalist in his approach and particularly interested in colour. He was not interested in your ideas, just whether the painting worked. His ideas and views had a big influence on me and have informed my own practise ever since.

'Stolen Car'...

I was out drawing on location last night. I was working in a spot I’ve been returning to on and off for years just under the M5 motorway outside West Bromwich. It’s interesting for all sorts of reasons, including the way the road, river, and rail all cross over each other there. It’s quite a bleak spot, and the railway crossing has seen a number of suicides over the years, and not the safest place to draw (I was firmly locked in the car with my sketchbook).

I’m fascinated by the huge structures that form the underneath of the motorway and the atmosphere of the place . Last night I was trying to develop some drawings I’ve made of these for an idea I’ve had about doing some nocturnes of this particular landscape. These are partly inspired by my memories of walking under these structures as a shortcut on my way home in the dead of night as a teenager from a night out or band practise. It was always a foolish thing to do, and drawing there last night I relived some of these feelings, but was really excited by the light and colour and my attempts to capture these.

I was listening to Springsteen’s ‘The River’, as I drove over. I particularly love the track ‘Stolen Car’, and have often imagined that the words of the character in the song are whispered from a location similar to this one. What a beautifully sad song…

Joan Mitchell

I found the coverage of the Joan Mitchell retrospective exhibition at Inverleith House in Edinburgh on last night’s Culture Show really interesting (although that presenter is a bit irritating).

Joan Mitchell, 'Cypress', oil on canvas

I’ve been a bit of an admirer of Mitchell’s paintings for a few years and always really enjoyed them whenever I’ve seen them (they have a great one at Tate Modern), but have never known much about her and neglected to look further. Which apparently is not surprising according to last night’s feature. She is often overlooked when the Abstract Expressionists of which she belonged, and more than held her own in the notorious Cedar Bar fights and drinking bouts, are discussed. She was also, it is said, terrible at discussing her painting (but isn’t everybody? And those who can do all the talking are often the ones that can’t do any of the making in my experience…).

And yet I’ve often had a sly eye on these wonderful paintings, and certainly held them in my mind, when I’ve been developing my more painterly nature paintings in the last couple of years. Mitchell’s work, although almost entirely abstract, based a lot of it’s inspiration on her relationship with the natural world and used this a s a vehicle to express a range of different psychological states.

Joan Mitchell, 'Chord VII', oil on canvas

I’ve found myself doing this too, but one I’ve found surprising to be exploring as I’ve tried to avoid psychological readings in my work, claiming the ideas in them are purely visual ideas. It’s only in retrospect that I’ve realized how deeply psychological some of the recent work I’ve created is, and how richer the work is for this. The Joan Mitchell paintings in their power and beauty have invigorated in me an underlying desire to push this aspect further across all my work. I think I’ve been afraid of this in the last ten years as I’ve tried to create some distance with my previously heavily narrative paintings which had lost all meaning for me. But changes have crept in without me being too conscious of them, which it is time to take further… I think I’m ready to get out of my comfort zone and some of the corners I’ve painted myself in….

'Crispy Realisation...'

I went for a walk in the Wyre Forest today with my wife, Diane and our son, Isaac. Despite the rain, it was great to get out. We all love the outdoors. I was glad of the opportunity to clear my head, after an intense day painting yesterday amongst the turps, linseed and oil paint of the studio. I completed a new portrait, ‘Rayhana’, that is a follow on from the previous one, ‘Safeera’. Again it depicts a young Muslim woman, and was an attempt to develop the formal ideas explored in ‘Safeera’. I’m going to try and develop these into a bigger, more unified, series over the next few months. This is something I haven’t done in a long time. The next painting won’t be part of this though. I’ve got something else in mind based on some mono and relief prints I’ve been playing around with in the evenings this week.

‘Crispy Realisation’ is a line that comes from one of the songs on Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, which I've obsessively played in the studio for over a year now at the start of a day’s work. I love it, and that phrase jumped out and stuck in my head yesterday. I also listened to Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’, which must be one of the greatest collection of songs ever recorded. I’ve previously blogged about rituals and superstitions, and yesterday when listening to this I was reminded how a few years ago I painted a series of ten portraits where I found myself ritualistically playing this album at the start of each painting session. It was the start of a much deeper relationship with Bob’s music, that I’ll probably blog about more at some point. I’ve spared you this so far…

'Art In Empty Spaces' with Dave the Butcher

I’ve been in Queens Square, West Bromwich today installing a selection of my ‘Seek My Face’ portraits in a series of empty shops there. It’s part of an initiative by Sandwell Arts called ‘Art in Empty Spaces’. The shop fronts have been re-fitted, together with another unit which has been turned more into a ‘white cube’ gallery space, with the aim to exhibit artist’s work in the region and do something more creative with these once busy retail units. My paintings have been used with the hope that they may raise some interest by local artists in putting proposals forward for exhibitions and projects.

I enjoyed seeing the work in such a different context such as the old butcher’s window, after some initial uncertainties about the idea, particularly after the paintings have already been shown twice in the town at the Town Hall and The Public. The portraits are all based on people from West Bromwich though, and I have a firm conviction that they should be more widely seen in the community they reflect. This seems like a great opportunity in this regard, and they certainly attracted a lot of interest from passers-by.

Before hanging, I had all 30-odd paintings spread out along the arcade to help me select. They looked great, and I’m kicking myself for not photographing this. I eventually chose nine, and am hoping to go along each week in the two months they will be up to change one or two of them. I think it help keep the installation a bit more active with this passing audience.

It looks almost like a West End Gallery in the picture above...!

I stored all the unused paintings in the empty butcher’s behind the exhibition walls. It’s a fascinating and eerie space, with it’s bloody history indelibly printed in the walls. My nephew Luke, who helped me hang the work, said it was like something out of the ‘Saw’ movies. Creepy….