Im currently applying to have my work shown in various online and real world exhibitions. The Artists Statement is usually central to this and it’s useful but very challenging to write. The nature of each competition or opportunity being different to any other, the artists statement often needs to be specific to each one. For example, as a sculptor and painter I can have one for my painting, one for sculpture and one that covers both. Also, there is the methodology statement describing tools, materials, techniques or processes, and there is the conceptual statement describing why one makes this stuff in the way one does and what does it mean? The first part is straightforward enough, though ones process can be highly alchemical and obscure, but the second part is less straightforward.

When trying to explain the whys and whats of my work I find myself going down a self-analysis rabbit hole and it’s very difficult to maintain coherence or even to find the words at all. Often one is limited to 200 words and is forced to over-simplify and one worries about the consequences of getting it wrong as there are so many rules for a statement and so it can come out grey, opaque and insipid. Also when writing this kind of a statement one should be brutally honest and that is not always easy. Maybe this is where one’s website or blog comes in. This territory is mine to do with as I please. And so here is my new Artists Statement.

I think a lot. I think about certain things more than others. I think about how the English language isn’t helpful when thinking about certain things like the nature of time. I think about how the Unconscious and Conscious minds communicate with each other. I think about whether or not Consciousness happens inside or outside of the brain. I think about the extent to which our observation of the universe and all it contains is different to the real universe. I think about how the journey into the vastness of the Universe is the same distance as the journey to the depths of the psyche. I think about how language is fairly useful in thinking about the externals of things but not the internals. I think about whether or not dreams stop when you wake up, or carry on. And there is also the part of me who thinks about man-made climate change, a Hyperobject of hyperobjects, and how every other object including all thought and all art now lies within its borders.

Now the temptation is to make connections between the thought and the art, for example by suggesting that the paintings are of a non-human universe where things are unobserved by consciousness and so remain unresolved. Or that they are of objects waiting in the future for the present to arrive, or they are objects in the future at the very instant where the present arrives. Or they are of objects known to Consciousness before they are dismantled by our senses and rebuilt in league with language. Or they are places one could visit on a journey to the centre of the Self or even the Soul. Or they represent my feelings about the future or the present and so on.

But I don’t intentionally make art about thoughts. That would be a narrative, illustrative art.

I am interested in making thoughtless new objects as far as is at all possible

Non-representational..

Non-illustrative..

Non-conceptual..

Non-metaphorical..

Why?

Because representing or trying to extract meaning from something that already has its own existence doesn’t excite me but trying to make a new object is a way of short-circuiting my thought processes and perception by sharing authorship with things, giving as much agency as possible to tools, materials and behaviour and shrinking the role of the intellect, of intention and of the mind and ego to at the most an equal share in authorship. It’s a kind of object-oriented ontology I guess. The new object is then one that has its own being, but no meaning. Until it re-enters the grinder and starts on its own journey.

Recent Methodology

I don’t make art a lot. I put a lot into it when i do. In order to make art I have to sneak up on myself and work fast. Instinctively. Perhaps ferociously. Anger can creep in. Things get messy. That’s why, when painting, I have developed the black border and the carbon ‘background’ – they help to contain the chaos. I have used Arches paper, unstretched canvas, stretched canvas and wood panels as a background. I make a border using masking tape and paint – grate compressed charcoal on the surface on the floor stapled to plywood if sheet canvas, agitate it by shaking, knocking it, throwing bits of carbon at it, sweep it with a broom over and over, apply the paint direct from the tube or, in the case of ‘Three’ for example, daub it on with a very full brush, overlay thin paper like tracing paper, disperse it using hands, trowels but especially Stanley knife blades, remove overlay paper, sometimes then intervene further as with ‘Raft’ for example, otherwise that’s it.

It’s the dispersal where things get intense, unpredictable, scary, upsetting. It’s the removal of overlay where things are presented as they are, like in a frantic out of control photographers dark room. I usually despair at this point. Fucking waste of time, energy, paint, canvas. Fucking give up. Useless. Maybe the next day it starts to speak a bit, maybe a week later. There’s something there. It has its own life. Relief. Exhaustion. Try to remember the exact method – how did that happen? Try to repeat. Fail. Stop making art. Wait.