Friday 4 June 2010

Work in progress...

I guess it's about time I wrote a little bit here about my own work and what best to start with that my current work in progress...

These are three photos from the painting which I am currently working on. To give you an idea of scale it is 130 x 100 cm and as you can see it is painted in sections; irregular shaped interlocking generally squarish rectangularish blocky ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle like sections. This is the general process behind most of my recent paintings and with each piece I have photographed every stage of their development so at the end I have almost a readymade animation of the build-up of the image. This current piece is being painted on a pale green acrylic gesso ground which gives a nice balance to the tonal range of the image and also plays nicely with the types of digital glitches and interference that were in the original photo.

The original photo was found on a photo sharing website. Like all with all my recent work the source was someone else's photograph, found online while searching and surfing. I collect photos on an ongoing basis and categorise and catalogue them. When I find one that I wish to work with I attempt to make contact with the original photographer and request their permission to use their photo for my work. This is often met with complete surprise because I tend not to be asking for their "best" photos, in fact often they think I am asking for their worst. When each painting is completed I make a point of sending a photo of the painting back to the original photographer, and in some cases this brings the image back to its source in a way, see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chandramarsono/2987396471/

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Neel and Pray


I've just put Alice Neel into Top 10 Paintings, and then remembered that Elizabeth Neel is her grandaughter. V.good also.....and this month's Art Review (p.32) has it just right when it says "..might spell bad news for young practitioners of slantwise figuration: it'll outgun them in ways they can't easily learn from while making them look like throwbacks." Opens July 8th at Whitechapel Gallery in London.