Tuesday, September 16, 2008

plane - forward looking painting

Plane 1998 (destroyed)

In amongst all this other work, strange but telling paintings appeared. This was small and rough, with sand in the paint (if in doubt do something - anything!). The circles are paper cut-outs stuck on with glue. It is the manifestation of ideas I would understand later.

It annoyed me but it seemed to work, I saw its roughness but couldn't throw it away. I had it in the studio space when a NY art critic and author came round doing tutorials. I was very frustrated and not able to make sense of all the other larger canvases I was mixing up different kinds of imagery on. She picked Plane out as "speaking to her" and told me basically that when I understood what I was trying to do, I'd find the way to do it. Within a few months I saw the airport terminal window and how its reflections compressed different layers into a meaningful image. It was 2004 before I'd finished with experiments with realist imagery and moved into my current work.

Could say this painting was a milestone.
Guess what? I burned it in my wood stove on the Isle of Mull in 2002 before coming to America. (Winters are cold and wet on the West coast of Scotland). It lives on in my current work. After all, it links to traditional creation of illusion, but also and obviously references a very contemporary experience of life. Once I finally learned to import shapes in more "industrial" ways, recognizable realism could be exchanged for direct connections. And therefore "cleaner" outcomes. (Less cluttered by preconceptions and assumptions.)

Karin Davie, showing at the Aldrich just now is described as "a leading artist in the current wave of painting practices that are transforming the legacy of high modernism in order to capture the dynamics of contemporary culture."
Way to go.

No comments: