Same book, different page....

'Join Hands', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cms, 2023

I’ve completed two large paintings based on similar, but not the same, observations of people, largely retired, coming together at local parks and playing fields to exercise, but, more importantly, to be with other people. They are an attempt to look at some of the ongoing interests I have in the social and political that underpin many of my paintings through a different, more positive lens.

The unpeopled landscape paintings tend towards the weary and melancholy in feel, sighing under the weight of it all. They depict post-industrial ruins, overlooked spaces on the edges and quiet suburban streets explored on night walks by the stressed insomniac. 

I sometimes think that it can be easier to make a more overt social or political statement in art that can, on the surface, appear more serious, and I think some of my landscape paintings can possess this quality. But I believe these new paintings are just as serious a message about the strength in community, grass roots activism and socialism, and above all the love and understanding we seek and need in life found in friends and the companionship of others. There were lots of groups like this set up by ordinary people post-Covid that I find inspiring. They are also signs of what we are all in our own way looking for-the opportunity to connect with others…

'The Last Days of Disco', oil on canvas, 150 x 200cms, 2023

I called the largest painting ‘The Last Days of Disco’ after a Yo La Tengo song from the album ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Out’ which, with the aged figures appearing in some sort of dance, seemed to fit as a title, but I’m wary of it seeming like a mickey-take, which it certainly isn’t. I hoped it appears a more gentle and affectionate title. Interestingly it seems to hark back to my old paintings set in nightclubs made 25 years ago. Still in the same book but on a different page, or even just a bit further down the same one. The other painting, ‘Join Hands’, with the sunlight dappled grass in the large foreground, also seemed to echo the revolving light from the mirrored disco ball. 

'The Polish Rider'...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

'The Polish Rider', oil on canvas, 90 x 80cms, 2023

As I come to the end of an interesting and experimental (but when is my painting not experimental?) year for my work, I’m pleased to announce that a recent portrait painting, ‘The Polish Rider’, has been selected for an exhibition on the theme of ‘People’ at The Open Gallery in Halifax, West Yorkshire in January 2024. 

The painting depicts a ‘rider’ for one of the many fast-food delivery companies- Deliveroo, Uber, Just-Eat, you name’em- on the pavement on his electric motorbike as he prepares to head towards his next job. The title references Rembrandt’s famous ‘Polish Rider’ painting, painted in the 1650s, of an unknown horse rider battling the harsh elements and terrain of a somewhat murky landscape. 

'The Polish Rider', Rembrandt, c1650s (a bit better than my painting...)

It’s an idealised, ambiguous figure painted in a much sketchier manner than Rembrandt is known for, but my own painting is an attempt to ironically counterpoint the older painting’s romantic idealism, with my rider painted without any ambiguity about the subject. The subject being in this case a low-paid worker from an ethnic minority background in insecure work and a perilous capital realist social situation. The manner in which it is painted, which is somewhat flat-footed and lacking the bravura brushwork of the Dutch Master, is also important. The only shared ambiguity is in the background, but instead of the mountains and romantic terrain of the original, my painting suggests a backdrop of banal shop-fronts and architecture and industrial sized bins in the inner city. 

My favourite part of my painting is that small area of green bin between and beneath the purply lilac sleeve on the left. That’s an exciting area right there!

It’s nice to get this figurative painting selected as I’ve been trying to reintroduce the figure in various ways back into my work this year and extend out from my landscape work. I’ve been exploring various ways to do this in terms of the painterly language, and how to paint the figure again, with some paintings being more successful than others. I’m not sure if ‘The Polish Rider’ is entirely successful (so it’s nice that someone else i.e the Open Gallery, thinks it is), but I think the idea behind the portrait is interesting, although perhaps a little cliched, but I’m beginning to firm up some ideas of ways of making things work better. 

Nicole Eisenman, 'The Triumph of Poverty', 2009

It seems necessary to shed some ways of working I’ve held onto for a long time, particularly the idea that my work must always come from direct observation. Although I still want to root the work in observations of the world around me I need to be more flexible about how I construct the paintings.  This was confirmed by a visit to the Nicole Eisenman exhibition at The Whitechapel Gallery I visited last week, which blew my mind. It was the best exhibition I had seen in a very long time; full of original ideas about representing the figure and taking more playful risks with narrative and the language of painting, all pooled from a vast well of different primary and secondary source material, culture, and art history. 

I returned from London wanting to get on with a new portrait I’ve been developing for some time now, and hopefully loosen things up a bit.