The Intended Audience for my Work

The imagined audience would be an educated bourgeoisie. After the experience of the Media Technologies and Public Spheres unit this may seem to be a somewhat limited aim.

Current Developments: 4

Max Ernst once described how he struggled to make pictures and with what he called his "Virgin complex" when faced with a blank canvas. The digital void of the blank page in a computer program offers similar challenges: the white page as much as the black one: voids, darkness, the empty spaces of a Malevich white on white painting or a black on black Rodchenko abstraction. To get round the digital blank "canvas" other materials can be scanned and manipulated. Is the black of a monitor screen the same as lamp black oil paint or acrylic?




This sequence of images were produced through the use of collage and painting. Here we see the use of mixed-media; card,glue and paper. The paint is a mix of lamp black and Prussian blue. The use of these colours are largely inspired by the work of Richard Diebenkorn. Other abstract painters are influencing this approach: notably the abstract expressionists and the early abstractions of Rauschenberg.




It does loosely resemble Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (above) by Whistler.In response to the picture Ruskin said that Whistler was “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face " .

The format of this piece developed like this and became a digital collage. The composition recalls the work of Ad Reinhardt, Motherwell, Guston and Newman.

Details disappear in an attempt to modulate brightness, contrast and colour.

The modulation of some of the areas of the picture result in the appearnce of orbs of light.



By creating a pooling of light the work suggests a connection between the various media being used. The light pools recall Vermeer’s pictures where he employed a camera obscure. It connects early lens and photographic technology in one space; one picture.

Current Developments: 3

The intention of this current project is to re-present visual mechanisms of hallucinations as described by M. H Keeler (1970). These examples seemed to be related to the descriptions of migraine auras which inspired a large body of my work. The aim is create a series of digital images that transform over a period of time to suggest a slowness of looking. The intention is to unify key interests: Collage/Digital Collage/Montage/Projections, Photographic material/found imagery, photogram imagery, with an idea of slow looking. Max Ernst is the catalyst for these ideas. His frottage pictures and the manner in which he observed his subjects serve as a kind of basis for experimentation and investigation. Ernst was partly inspired by the writing of Leonardo and his Treatise on painting and Max Ernt's own essay “Inspiration to Order” 1932.

Current Developments 2

My current work involves experimenting with technologies and materials. For the development of the digital collages and projections I have been photographing and scanning leaves, cellophane and various textures to try to find a visual languages that corresponds with the research into hallucinations and auras.




The above image, with its ghostly effect, has the texture of old film which is different from the chalky looking image below.




There is a clumsiness to these two works that I am unable as yet to control.



The inverted image seems to be more successful than the positive images.


It seems that the leaf only works when it is in negative and when there is textures being picked up in the bckground. Below is a more successful version:

Presentation

I am at last clarifying some ideas, but only some. I need to make far more work and actually produce a far better prepared presentation.

From Leonardo’s "Treatise on Painting"

“When you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes … or, again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes, or an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well-drawn forms. And these appear on such walls promiscuously, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine”.

Current Developments 1

My current practice, although mostly digital in form, are mixed media and hybridised montages or collages. These are a summary of my concerns:

• Mixed media
• Photographic Imagery
• Found Imagery
• Collage
• Montage
• Hybridity
• Hyperrealism
• Romanticiam
• Surrealism
• Metamorphosis
  

Max Ernst seems to be one of a number of influences. Here is a piece of his writing on one of the approaches that guided his development as an artist.

“Inspiration to Order” 1932:

“Being one fine rainy day… I found myself recalling how in childhood an imitation mahogany panel opposite my bed had served as optical excitant of a somnolence vision, and I was struck by the obsession now being imposed on my Irritated Gaze by the floor…”

Max Ernst is inspired here by the writings of Leonardo: his Treatise on Painting.