Ive made a lot of paintings since my last post and Ive been in India for a few months (not painting at all). Rather than try to go back and tell the story of each new painting I’m going to give more of an overview of where I am with painting now to help me organise my thinking around it.

The blank canvas lays on the floor in the basement for days. Days. Sometimes ignore it, sometimes afraid of it. resent it. hate it. Tell it to fuck off. Fuck. Off!! turned all old work around or stacked it so can’t see it – can’t be influenced by it. So don’t attempt a version of it. There’s a struggle going on. It’s not action vs inaction, it isn’t confidence vs doubt. it’s pure tension. Where’s the tension. in me or between me and the world. Subject and object. Human and material. being and becoming. Behaviour of painting vs behaviour of not-painting. crisis. At some point think fuck it just put some paint on as a foundation or something. DO SOMETHING. Pick up brush, open paint, Jesus that takes some doing. Like a roar. angry roar. just paint thats there. Leftover house paint. A brown white or sth. Perfect ground. Earth. Neutral. Plough it. Part poured on. Big brush. Fast. Was just going to do the ground but now pouring on iron filings and my body is asking “what are the fucking rules for this one then?”

Activate the material until it starts to lose or has lost its workability that is, its potential to be activated with a paintbrush

That is not to say that the material ceases to be active. That’s why i like the materials i include. They’re unpredictable and uncontrollable. Iron oxide explodes on contact with liquids. Iron filings will continue to oxidise, cement will continue to absorb carbon dioxide, all the materials will continue in relationship with eachother sometimes visually sometimes not. And there’s a time limit on brushability.

Authenticity. A particular kind of truth of object unto itself. A brief interlude of human-nonhuman relationship that has authenticity, that is, a not entirely anthropocentric be-ing with its own share of object-ness. A balanced-ness. Neither a Kantian thing-in-itself nor an illustration of human intent but also not an illustration of either. That is the problem i engage with.

Is it possible to produce a non-illustrative work of art or can it only be, at its most authentic, an illustration of the struggle to produce one? No I don’t think so and I think that my work is therefore tragic as all art is, because it cannot escape illustration. So I have to be interested in the tragedy. At best I can only make art that illustrates itself.

Why is it important to ask the question?

I don’t know, Im just a human being human.

Why am I interested in or motivated by the idea of non-illustrative art?

Because i am interested in the idea (and here an idea is also an object), that an object is an authentic object in itself if not within itself. This is one of those regions where human language and The Rest engages.

Ok so at a recent exhibition that I had a painting in someone asked me “what’s your painting about?” in a way that suggested she expected an immediate answer.

But a painting is not like a book, film or cartoon. Its primary objectness is not of a narrative nature or purpose. To begin with it is static and immediate. It’s all there right now on the canvas. Yes there is context. My context while painting it for example or its socio-economic and temporal context. I don’t work in a vacuum and often anger for example can be an energising coefficient in the process. Sometimes this spills over into illustration. But it’s still only an illustration of the act of painting whilst angry, not a painting of the thing that i am angry about.

Part of me hates these situations to the point of mind-goes-blank. “What’s your art about?” What kind of fucking question is that!? Fuck I’m going to have to use words like ‘ineffable’ and ‘materials’ and ‘discourse’ or ‘narrative’, ‘context’, ‘migratory’…or ‘trauma’, ‘borders’, ‘landscape’, ‘relationship’!

So i mumbled something like “it’s about the materials”.

Occasionally, rarely, you meet someone who draws out of you through careful questioning what you’re all about. Can I be that person to myself?

With an exhibition coming up i need to at least try to organise my thinking. Why? Because I’m offering my work to another and the viewer needs an in. I am also a viewer of art and i know that one can view art as an object in itself as oneself with a viewers context, and as an object in the world with its own context. The problem is having to verbalise complex internal and external processes in a conversational way because viewers, that is to say consumers, myself included, benefit on a certain from accessibility

And yes, this has been up to now, an exercise in avoiding answering the question

“What is your art about?”

Because the answer is of course

Hopefully it’s not about anything.

And here’s a paradox. By being honest and saying these paintings are not about anything other than what they contain and the activity that they resulted from, a viewer, not being offered a narrative, a story behind the painting, feels excluded even though its an open invitation for the viewer to experience their own narrative.

And that imagined intuitive interviewer might ask

“Then do you make paintings for the pleasure of presenting them to viewers for them to have their own experience?”

Answer No. I make them in order for me to be presented with them and for them to be things in themselves in relation to eachother.

So am I excused from writing an artist statement?

No. So fucking get on with it.