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.