Untitled 11-m

Untitled 11-m

Oil on Linen

2011

I spent about three weeks worth of broken work on this painting - I think I've discovered quite a bit in doing so however, I can feel the way I manipulate the paint has changed

Diptych Study 11

Diptych Study 11

16" x 11"

2011

Untitled 11-j/k

Untitled 11-j (Top) and its partner Untitled 11-k (Bottom)

Oil on Linen 

2011

Diptych lake sketches

Last year I had a photo up on my wall and I kept staring at it as I do, wondering what to do about it. Its a photograph of a lake, and right in the middle is a mans head hovering over the waterline, I'd not looked at it in months and as I have two small canvas stretchers I thought I'd do a diptych.

I've spent part of today making up some rabbit skin glue to size these, and I'm planning on getting to work on them tomorrow, for now though I'll leave you with two more pictures of the two sketches and I'll be sure to keep you posted in the coming weeks.

Untitled 11-i

For the past four weeks I've been working on a rather large painting at least by my standards, what is now Untitled 11-i. The painting measures 47" x 37" and at times as is usual when I find myself painting it has been incredibly trying, dreadful even.

Today though rather unexpectedly, I set to work and stood back from it after a few hours work and felt content with it for the first time, a detail of the second figures face and a full view of the painting are included after the jump.

Marching Band

You remember that steak we ate just now? Well, that's how it is. We live off one another. The shadow of dead meat is cast as soon as we are born.

- Francis Bacon in conversation with Michael Peppiatt

I've had this photo for a while, sitting in the album I keep of anonymous photographs - a marching band in full swing, its very dark and no one has any visible features other than their feet and the instruments which cover their faces. I often look at it and wonder how I might use it, and there is something in the shadows cast which spoke to me today - this might even turn into a painting, I've not decided quite yet.

A sneak peak

It's been a while since I've posted, its been a rather busy time with my Dad getting married, having manflu but more importantly - the past few weeks have been spent working on a new painting, which is currently residing in a makeshift studio I've set up at my Grandparents house.

It's not quite finished yet, but I've provided you with a sneak peak which may be found above. The full piece, which measures 47" x 37" is one of my more ambitious works which I've undertaken, something which Ruth, who was my tutor for two years during my time at DMU, constantly told me I had in me.

Watch this space, you wont be disappointed.

Live for what you love

I was walking to a local park last week and I saw this just around the corner from where I am right now and it sums up, truly what I believe people must do in their lives. If you have ambitions, and aspirations - and I firmly think everyone should have those, then it is your duty to make sure you carry those ambitions out.

Live for what you love.

Dreams are there to lift you up, to give you something to focus on - you must defy the belief that you can't reach for the sky, it can be done.

People are only brilliant because of their resolve to find solutions to problems, and indeed everyone you admire will have achieved this in their lifetime, with their own willpower and desire. You must propel yourself with your dreams because no one else will do that for you - be the person who said I did, not I will.

Why Tom, are you rambling on about this? Read on, I'll explain!

Preliminary works

An update on my drawing - a preliminary sketch, for a painting I'm planning - I've several larger scales works in my mind at this moment in time, the lack of a studio space is becoming increasingly frustrating.

A small study for another planned painting which will be four figures perched on some steps, this is the uppermost one. Interestingly the original photo shows a group of about 20 men - all of whom have the most fantastic moustaches. I was lucky enough for my Grandparents to buy me a radial easel for my degree results, it came just yesterday - so I will be making up some stretchers and sizing my canvas very soon!

Unnamed woman

One of the many anonymous people who ended up indadvertedly getting caught in my lens during the airshow - I particularly enjoyed the way the light fell, with the strong shadow cast upon her neck, and the familiar trend of the subjects eyes being hidden from view - just where is she looking?

I've been turning my hand to my pencils and paper again, so expect to see another post later in the week of the progress.

Fairford, Borremans and Hale

A couple of weeks ago I went to the RAF Fairford, to see the Air Tattoo airshow. I had my DSLR with me - it was a perfect opportunity to take some good shots. 

What I've found though, curiously (or perhaps not so), is that after looking at them I'm drawn not to the planes but to the figures, which were caught in the line of sight at the time and of course their blurred nature appealed. I've selected a few photos which I feel have the most potential out of the whole, which you can see above and of course after the jump.

Resonance

A little heads up for those of you who may be unaware - my work, along with three fellow graduates (Antonia Eleftheriou, Gokulna Joshi and Daniel Proud), are taking part in an exhibition entitled 'Resonance', which is curated by Khush Nubian. She has arranged for it to be shown at the Nine Bar, 74 Narborough Road, Leicester.

All of the work is for sale and any inquires may be sent to either the bar itself, or directly through the artists.

It opened earlier this week, and will be running for a good two months, so don't miss it!

Bacon and his incunabula

Every movement of the brush on the canvas alters the shape and implications of the image. That is why real painting is a mysterious and continuous struggle with chance - mysterious because the very substance of the paint, when used in this way, can make such a direct assault upon the nervous system; continuous because the medium is so fluid and subtle that every change that is made loses what is already there in the hope of making a fresh gain.

The quote you see above originates from a 1953 interview with Francis Bacon, which has more recently surfaced in a book entitled Incunabula. The volume serves as a sort of visual record of Bacon's working practice, and his source images which were most influential to him. It's most enlightening for those of you who may be familiar with his work, simply because covers everything from wartime photos, to newspaper clippings, with instances of his own personal photography as well as personal sketches. 

The sketch in the photo is from my own personal journal, and depicts a painting which Bacon executed in 1982 - Study of the Human Body.

First Class Honours

The results are in and even Doc Brown can't believe it. After three years of studying, I've been awarded a first, wait whats that? 'Great Scott!' - ok, calm down!

I thought I should also post some images of my work as well as the space which it was located in for the degree show itself, to give you an idea of how my work was hung (the sparsity shocked a few tutors!), check it out after the jump.

Riddle Me This...

I assure you, I've murdered the 1954 poster for Godzilla for an entirely logical reason

 Answers on the back of a postcard

The Degree Show

The above photo is a dramatisation of events, which may have occurred in a parallel universe 

The text below refers to the actual events, in our universe

So Don never did show up, and Kirk might not have beamed down from the Enterprise to seduce Betty, however alot of other people did turn up - I can say with great certainty I've never seen so many people mill about the studio floors. Initially I was running around, incredibly nervous - trying to make sure no disasters were occurring (I suspect to distract myself from working myself up), saving wine glasses and other pressing matters any self respecting gentleman would jump to in an occasion such as this.

So just how was it? Find out after the jump.

Preview to the Degree Show

If you've not heard about it by now, where have you been and how did you stumble across this blog? The De Montfort University Fine Art Degree Show will be opening tomorrow!

The dates are as follows,

The Preview

Friday 17th June

5.30pm - 8.30pm

The Main Show

Saturday 18th June - Thursday 23rd June

Weekends

11.00am - 4.00pm

Weekdays

10.00am - 5.00pm

Whilst there is a chance Don might not being coming, (he hasnt got back to me yet) you can be sure that I'll be there. You'd better be too, otherwise you'll be square (in some cases its actually hip to be square, not this instance however).

'Operation: Door Paint!'

You may (or may not) have noticed a lull in the exciting and usually oh so lively TomRob blog, however do not fear!

My promised second part of the previous post is on its way, just postponed slightly, for now I'll run you through this past week. There was much confusion over the schedule, which meant from the original provisional committee, only three of the members (myself, Antonia and Callum) actually showed up on the Monday- then there were the ones who came for the next meeting a day early. As a result we took immediate action, Justice League style; timetables were drawn up, including a rota sheet, as well as a price list.

Things seemed to be going swimmingly - until we came up against our very own deadly Kryptonite, what I dub 'Operation: Door Paint!'.

I hear you cry 'Tom! You sad bastard!', but please bear with me. The entire team of third years gladly and dutifully painted the floors and doors during the assessments, a few weeks ago, little did we know what a farce it would turn out to be.

So why am I complaining about it, and just what is William Shatner doing in my post?

Final year Assessments, and the upcoming Degree show

Many, many weeks ago now perhaps even before we broke up for Easter, we had to produce a completed proposal form, for our upcoming Degree show.

So, I give you Exhibit A - one completed proposal;

Now, admittedly I dont actually remember scanning this in and yet, I found it lying around, gathering (pretend) dust in my final year folder on my Mac. There was a wonderfully scrawled sketch showing the  desired space on the back - however I dont seem to have scanned that in sadly, but what you may notice is that I asked for two walls, which were situated opposite each other - in essence a bay. This was for my planned triptych and (finished) diptych to sit. 

Things didnt go quite according to plan however and so instead of hanging the triptych, I painted and hung a tetraptych. A tetraptych, is basically four panels instead of the original three, found in a triptych. 

A wonderfully elaborate plan of its layout may be found after the jump, along with the trials of prepping the studio itself.

The Sublime & Beautiful

I've just discovered the joy of Google eBooks, now I'm no stranger to rummaging through the Internet Archive to see what incredible things are held in there, but it can often be difficult to find relevant articles, if you only have a vague idea of what you want to look for.

The eBookstore, is as you would imagine being from Google, considerably more polished and so, much easier to find things of relevance. It's here came across A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, a little extract of which may be found here;

So far then as Taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the degree there is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer attention to the object.

If thats whetted your appetite at all, you can find the full version here

The journal adventure unfolds

I decided that it might prove fruitful to keep a journal of sorts, I'm used to having something similar with the logbook we keep at Uni. I wanted something more compact however, something which I would be able to have with me at all times. 

I like the idea of having a codex of sorts, to look back through in order to perhaps fire off ideas, as the pages reveal themselves to me. I'm not yet even a quarter of the way through, and because of my habit of trying to shove as much visual information I possibly can into it, its led me to carefully fold ridiculously large papers, (in comparison) into the journal - I'm struggling to keep it closed!

I'll be sure to keep you posted on this little adventure of mine, and just how much of an inspiration it proves to be.

The younger brother

I thought I'd take the time today to write briefly about what perhaps may not immediately seem connected with my practice, but in a certain light it is indeed along a similar route.

Last year I was made aware of something of an oddity whilst I was searching through my Grandparents collection of family photos. In several of them there appeared a young lad, who I had no prior knowledge of. It came to light that he infact, was my Grandads younger brother, strangely he had disappeared about 25 years ago, and no one had heard anything from him before late last year, when he finally got back in contact with my Grandparents. 

I spent the better half today sitting, and talking with this man (and his wife), a man, who was entirely strange to my brother and I, and yet my Dad, and of course my Grandparents knew him. It was an incredibly odd sensation, and though I'm well acquainted with my Grandads sisters, to see another example of an older male figure in the family was strange. He is quite familiar in personality, tone and apparently temperament to his older brother and it was nice to have that sense of connection from the word go.

I found it a great source of personal fascination that when my practice revolves around the severance of connections in mysterious manners, that I should find myself in a situation where connections are both forged and reforged in such a way as today.

Triptych (or not)

I had spent several weeks in late March and early April toying with the idea of a triptych, from a rather grand photograph I had of german origin (Which I plan to elaborate on in a future post).

My main reason for this was to try to branch out compositionally, as very often I include only one or two figures in any given panel. Though lately many are paired off to form a series of diptychs, and currently my work in progress is a tetraptych (thats four panels!).

What I've found is that I can work more freely over a selection of spaces, rather than being contained over purely the one, however, the middle and right panels to this proposed triptych were hell, and I lack the time to really correct my work, so the left panel I now consider a standalone piece, Untitled 11-g.

The power of the photograph

I think, in the age of digital photography, we often take for granted the curious ability to instantly capture images, and see whether its desirable or not. Facebook has transformed (to an extent) the way which we see ourselves documented in the world, people upload photos, the good, the bad and sometimes just the plain ugly.

To this end then, I think the power of the photographic image has been lessened, though in the right hands it can still provide a powerful polarising image. Eadweard Muybridge provided an invaluable source of extensive photos of animals, and humans in motion. These wonderful images go through  a complete range of actions and articulations and are a truly fascinating study.

My practice relies upon relics, the forgotten and abandoned images of our past, though this wasnt always so.

Last years work, revolved around the use of photos which had a personal connection to myself. They are, of course my Grandparents moments, their memories contained within a series of small processed sheets dating from the late 1950s, to the early part of the 1960s one example of which you can see above. I imagine in another 50 years time their delicate nature will seem absolutely absurd, as increasingly as I mentioned earlier, Facebook and its prevalence amongst my generation means we have little need for a hard copy, everything is stored digitally [More after the jump].

Yesterday afternoon in the studio

I spent part of yesterday packing my paint up so I could continue working over easter, the odd thing was I really struggled in doing it. There was something very final about boxing brushes, bottles and tubes that have sat continuously on those two palettes I have which, in reality are simply desks. 

I felt a pang of remorse in removing them, its their home and yet now with the tail end of the semester fast approaching, I know they wont return. 

Its incredibly odd when you spend so much time in the studio working, its a social experience - as frustrating as that can be at times, especially when crits and assessments were approaching, its something which becomes so ingrained into your psyche. The warmth I get from seeing those brilliant white boards, and the slate blue industrial floorpaint, coupled with the usual suspects (someone once referred to us as furniture) to be found, always in their paint splattered overalls is something I enjoy greatly.

Hiatus/Return

My lack of activity since November has really been down to the fact that the past year, in terms of uni has been incredibly crazy. I've gone through periods where I feel like my work has progressed tenfold, and then times where I just fight with the canvas as if I'm banging my head against a wall.

As it stands, our degree show is coming up incredibly fast and it seems as though everyone has yet to finalise what we'll be showing.