Permanent Red....

'Permanent Red', oil on canvas, 45 x 60cms, 2023

In the last few weeks, I’ve been on and off busy in the studio working on some new paintings. 

Set at night, they all depict parked up Postal Vans parked at the kerbside outside the postal depot near to where I live. Their compositions are identical, with them all presenting a single darkened van, lit from above, placed in the centre, a verge in front, the orange road behind, and the indistinct shapes of the suburban houses and trees opposite acting as a backdrop against the sky. I am really attracted to the power in this repetition to serve the idea.

'Permanent Red II', oil on canvas, 45 x 60cms, 2023

As I describe them, they sound like they could be stage sets, but I think a great many of my paintings are like that, particularly the nocturnes. At 45 x 60cms they are all the same size, and although they are of single, individual vans, I saw them as part of a larger ‘collective’ group of vans and paintings. 

'Permanent Red III', oil on canvas, 45 x 60cms, 2023

I was motivated to start painting them as I passed them all lined up one evening outside the depot as I walked to town to meet my friend for a pint. They are always lined up like this, but this had been another day of postal strikes, so the view seemed to resonate more acutely as I walked by. I took some photographs on my phone and as I did, I reflected on the incredibly difficult struggle the postal workers are involved in for their jobs and conditions. And as we find ourselves into 2023, I’m thinking so much about the struggle all public sector and key workers are involved in, including myself as a teacher, against this dangerous, far-right, anti-democratic government for not only fair pay, but for the very services that underpin a fair society for all and our very democratic rights. 

'Permanent Red IV', oil on canvas, 45 x 60cms, 2023

Last week, like these Postal Workers, I withdrew my own labour from work and went on Strike. I stood on a cold Picket Line early in the morning with my other Union colleagues and then, as an NEU Rep, was a steward at a huge rally and march through the city, united and proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with other union members and make our voices heard. I see the postal vans, sitting with quiet dignity by the kerbside, as ciphers for the individual workers all over the country, standing collectively, laying down their tools, withdrawing their labour and finally saying ‘enough is enough’. 

'Permanent Red V', oil on canvas, 45 x 60cms, 2023

The title of this post and these paintings, ‘Permanent Red’, is lifted from the title of the book of the same name by art critic, John Berger, which in these ‘Essays in Seeing’ he explores ideas about art and society, democracy, mass demonstrations, cubism, Walt Disney vs Francis Bacon and more. I read it as an postgraduate student, and I still draw inspiration from it nearly 30 years later.

 

The Cut

Oil Study,  oil on panel 8" x 10", 2022

Last year, following my ‘Home Ground’ exhibition, I decided to take my camera to the canal over near West Bromwich, where I grew up, on a sunny Spring Saturday morning to see what I could find. I was hoping I may take some good photos that may serve to generate a few new compositional ideas. I was seeking to develop the formal ideas of 2 large paintings I had exhibited in ‘Home Ground’ which were based on the dynamic landscape beneath Spaghetti Junction. The intersecting lines and planes of the motorway, the canal and the bright winter light in this landscape had been a good vehicle to push some of my interest in creating landscape paintings that incorporated the language of abstract painting more aggressively. Think Richard Diebenkorn meets Ivon Hitchens meets Thomas Shiebitz. That’s what was in my mind at least! In visiting the canals in West Bromwich, I was hoping to find some more of those strong diagonal lines and geometric shapes that had excited me in the first 2 paintings.

'Winter Walk', oil on canvas, 120 x 150cms, 2021

However, the location proved much tamer and more rural this time around (how could I think it would not be compared to the crazy extremities of the landscape beneath Spaghetti Junction?), with the steep, grassy banks, towpaths and old arched bridges, and the fishermen along the bank waiting for the Saturday catch. And with the strong shadows and trees covered in bubbling hawthorn blossom it was all much more picturesque. Still, I enjoyed taking some photographs as I walked along the cut with my son and our dog, Buddy, and left with an open mind as to whether anything I had recorded might make its way into some new paintings.

'The Cut', oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2022

'The Cut II', oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2022

'The Cut III', oil on canvas, 60 x 80cms, 2022

I originally made 3 paintings quite quickly after my trip, not too large, of The Cut. I liked them, particularly the first one I made, where I felt I had captured an essence of the landscape in my paring down of any extraneous details. I was reminded a bit of Morandi’s Italian landscapes which I admire (and wish I could even come close to!), but at the same time I was a bit troubled about how traditional the other paintings looked compared to my original intentions, so I left things for a bit at that. 

During my recent time off work, I returned to the photos and made a small oil study (top of post) based on one of a young guy zipping along the canal towpath on his electric scooter against a glorious background of lush, hawthorn blossomed trees against the blue sky. I was excited by this lovely small study- it had a joy to it I seldom arrive at and there was something defiant and fun about the guy on his scooter that I really liked, so I decided to make a much larger painting based on it. It incorporated more detail, and I tried to capture the spirit of the small study, but I don’t think I did, but I do like it still. It had to become its own thing and ended up with quite a different character, one with a slightly melancholic undertow which is more familiar.  But I still prefer the small one. 

'The Cut IV', oil on canvas, 110 x 150cms, 2022

With both these paintings, however, I am excited to see in a less self-conscious way than other recent attempts, the re-introduction of the figure into some of my work. The figure just appeared without me even thinking about it during the period I spent making lots of small, experimental studies (30 in all). 

'The Cut V', oil on canvas, 50 x 60cms, 2023

As it did in this other new painting (above) of this man fishing on the canal bank with the factories behind him as a backdrop. The juxtaposition of this, the man against the factories, perhaps they are where he once worked but is now replaced by one of the huge transit depots that populate the former industrial sites of Black Country creates a tension and a quiet political dimension I like. 

Bubbling away in the background of my thoughts as I have made these paintings are two books set in the Black Country and written by Black Country authors that I have enjoyed. One, ‘Mercia’s Take’, the debut novel by Daniel Wiles, which I read last summer. It is set in 1879 in a mining town near Walsall, and despite its historical setting it has a very contemporary feel. A key part of the book is a long journey the main character makes on ‘The Cut’ by barge into Dudley. It is so vividly described in an almost, dreamlike, and hallucinatory way that it stayed with me long after I had finished the book. 

Author Daniel Wiles, from Walsall in the Black Country

The other book is ‘The Cut’ by Anthony Cartwright, whose series of novels set in the post-industrial Black Country I have enjoyed. This one is set in the post-Brexit, overwhelmingly leave voting Black Country and is a bleak look at the divisions between communities, towns, and communities that Brexit exacerbated. I don’t think we will ever recover from it as a nation. I would highly recommend both books.

'Winter Morning', oil on canvas, 90 x 120cms, 2022 (a personal fave)

There are a few other canal-based landscapes I’ve made, a large nocturne I’m not entirely sure about, and a winter landscape that I made last year that I love (but no one else comments on!). Slowly, I’m getting a sense of a more serious body of work that could be developing around the theme of, what we call it in the Black Country, the Cut….