10.10.2025
the emergence of thingness (für Deutsch bitte scrollen)
Almost a year ago I exhibited seven new abstract paintings alongside older work selected from the previous six years of my artistic dialogue with abstraction.
Although not intended as such, the show would with hindsight come to mark the conclusion of that dialogue - at least for the foreseeable future. For no sooner was it over than I was painting and drawing figurative images drawn from an entirely new source of inspiration.
Harbingers of this shift in direction had been there to see over the previous two years even if I hadn't picked up on them myself.
One early sign came in March 2023 on a four week road trip through Patagonia as I explored its varied climates and stunning landscapes. Up until that trip my abstract art had been inspired by the shapes and forms of the natural world alone.
But the further I travelled down Chile's Carretera Austral the more I was as much intrigued and inspired by the local people and by the juxtaposition of their everyday lives with the beauty of the natural landscapes around them.
Later in the studio it felt natural for my abstract art to evolve by now combining angles, curves and lines I had seen in man-made things with organic shapes and forms I had admired in nature. I felt my work should acknowledge that man and nature co-exist.
As I looked through my road trip photos for ideas I returned again and again to one particular photo.
The photo showed nothing special or outlandish: just the remains of a humble grilled-chicken meal eaten at a makeshift table in a back yard. Yet the image wouldn't leave me alone and so I included it in one of my initial studies (the pastel drawing shown here).
As I looked back over the finished drawing it struck me how the scene in the photo had come alive. One element in particular - a bottle of water on a table - seemed transformed in the process. I was immediately struck by the idea that the bottle was me. I saw myself as the bottle. The drawing had made it a proxy. A stand-in.
My rucksack - also in the photo, slumped at the table on a seat - was equally transformed in the drawing. There was now a tension - a frisson - between bottle and rucksack, the latter watching, perhaps even judging, the former. The rucksack was now a lurking presence and a proxy for the “other” in relation to my proxy self.
That tension set something off in my imagination and I began to picture interactions between bottle, rucksack and other items in the photo/drawing.
I thrilled at how I might develop the idea of the bottle as a proxy character. That backyard was no longer a chicken grill-joint but a stage filled with actors. This idea had taken me by surprise yet seemed to have come from somewhere deep inside me. I was gripped by an intoxicating and empowering sense of authenticity.
As I reflected on the above I recalled two things. Firstly, a conversation at art school about Adorno and what follows when human beings are objectified. Secondly, the fascination of 20th century philosophers with the idea of thingness. I saw my art in this context - giving “mere things” the respect and attention morality expects between humans but which is often found wanting in humans' treatment of their fellow “living things”. I wanted my images of objects to locate this quality of thingness.
All the same I parked these exciting ideas for a later date. My focus was still abstraction and my priority to produce seven new paintings for my show at basis Frankfurt the following year. For the first time three paintings were to combine abstractions from man-made settings with those from nature.
Further travelling kept me out of the studio but in December 2023 I caught up with a Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern, twenty years after my first, captivating encounter with his work.
Seeing his late work again not only recalled and reignited those ideas I'd had earlier that year; it broadened their scope as - in a cold studio in January 2024 - I began to paint and draw some of the objects around me; not as “still” lives but as “living things”.
The subject matter felt strange at first. But the mood changed as I felt increasingly energised and empowered by the studio objects' lack of pretention. Once again, this felt authentic.
Even then, I continued to see my art as a dialogue with abstraction and that the drawings of studio objects were shapes “abstracted” from the world around them. I called them “extractions”.
Looking to generate ideas for abstract images I turned again to the road trip photos, picking out man-made shapes and forms.
I looked in the photos for subject matter and composition to reduce, pare down and abstract and then translate into shapes and outlines in my sketch book. To my mind their linear sparseness made the sketches abstract rather than figurative.
Two of these sketches stood out to me. Inevitably it was two derived from that photo: the grilled-chicken joint. The simplicity of these two sketches brought out even more that tension between bottle and rucksack with the backyard now like a theatrical stage.
Meanwhile I was working on those three canvasses - my so-called "geometric abstractions” - right-angles and lines of man-made objects with random organic forms and textures from nature.
Once the basis Frankfurt show was behind me in November 2024 I started to attack the ideas inspired by that photograph and the pastel drawing.
But then drawing the around me objects is something I've done throughout my life. Drawing has always been at the core of my being and at the heart of my art. I look at the world around me as though the objects could literally come to life as characters with their own moods, their own agendas, their own dramas.
And so a bottle, or a brush in a jar, these things are never neutral to me. That bottle - that thing - is looking back at me.
Once the conceit of the bottle and rucksack as characters had occurred to me it was perhaps inevitable I should run with it. It’s utterly instinctive and feels like a circle has been closed.
A bottle can be me, a rucksack can be the outside world or simply an other, an observer. A paint brush in a jar can suddenly bear the weight of the world. Such roles emerge instinctively and unexpectedly which makes it fun!
Like I said: the roles can and will shift. Nothing stays fixed. And that fluidity — ambiguity, even — is the space where I want my paintings to live.
Die Entstehung des Dinghaften (English above)
Vor fast einem Jahr zeigte ich sieben neue abstrakte Gemälde zusammen mit älteren Arbeiten aus den vorangegangenen sechs Jahren meines künstlerischen Dialogs mit der Abstraktion.
Auch wenn es nicht so beabsichtigt war, sollte sich diese Ausstellung im Rückblick als Abschluss eben dieses Dialogs erweisen – zumindest für absehbare Zeit. Denn kaum war sie vorbei, begann ich, figürliche Motive zu malen und zu zeichnen, inspiriert von einer völlig neuen Quelle.
Anzeichen für diesen Richtungswechsel hatte es in den zwei Jahren davor schon gegeben, auch wenn sie mir damals selbst nicht bewusst waren.
Ein frühes Signal kam im März 2023 während einer vierwöchigen Reise durch Patagonien, auf der ich die unterschiedlichsten Klimazonen und beeindruckenden Landschaften erkundete. Bis zu dieser Reise war meine abstrakte Kunst ausschließlich von den Formen und Strukturen der Natur inspiriert.
Doch je weiter ich auf der chilenischen Carretera Austral reiste, desto mehr faszinierten mich die Menschen und die Gegenüberstellung ihres Alltags mit der überwältigenden Schönheit der sie umgebenden Landschaften.
Zurück im Atelier erschien es mir nur folgerichtig, dass sich meine abstrakte Kunst weiterentwickelte – indem ich nun Winkel, Kurven und Linien, die ich in von Menschen geschaffenen Dingen gesehen hatte, mit den organischen Formen und Strukturen der Natur verband. Ich wollte, dass meine Arbeit anerkennt, dass Mensch und Natur koexistieren.
Beim Durchsehen der Fotos meiner Reise blieb ich immer wieder an einem bestimmten Bild hängen.
Das Foto zeigte nichts Besonderes oder Auffälliges: die Überreste einer einfachen Grillhähnchen-Mahlzeit auf einem provisorischen Tisch in einem Hinterhof. Doch das Bild ließ mich nicht los, und so bezog ich es in eine meiner ersten Studien ein – die hier gezeigte Pastellzeichnung.
Als ich die fertige Zeichnung betrachtete, fiel mir auf, wie die Szene auf dem Foto zum Leben erwacht war. Ein Element darin – eine Wasserflasche auf dem Tisch – hatte sich im Prozess besonders stark verwandelt. Plötzlich war mir klar: Diese Flasche war ich. Ich sah mich selbst in ihr. Die Zeichnung hatte sie zu einem Stellvertreter gemacht – einem Platzhalter meiner selbst.
Mein Rucksack – ebenfalls auf dem Foto, zusammengesunken auf einem Stuhl – hatte sich in der Zeichnung ebenfalls verwandelt. Zwischen Flasche und Rucksack entstand eine Spannung, ein feines Knistern: Der Rucksack schien zu beobachten, vielleicht sogar zu urteilen. Er war zur Präsenz des „Anderen“ geworden, im Verhältnis zu meinem stellvertretenden Ich.
Diese Spannung löste etwas in meiner Vorstellungskraft aus. Ich begann, mir Interaktionen zwischen Flasche, Rucksack und anderen Gegenständen aus Foto und Zeichnung vorzustellen.
Ich war begeistert von der Idee, die Flasche als Stellvertreter-Figur weiterzuentwickeln. Der Hinterhof war plötzlich keine Grillstation mehr, sondern eine Bühne voller Akteure. Diese Idee überraschte mich, fühlte sich aber gleichzeitig an, als käme sie aus meinem Innersten. Ein berauschendes Gefühl von Authentizität und Kraft überkam mich.
Während ich darüber nachdachte, fielen mir zwei Dinge ein. Erstens ein Gespräch im Kunststudium über Adorno und darüber, was geschieht, wenn Menschen zu Objekten gemacht werden. Zweitens die Faszination vieler Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts für das Konzept der Dinghaftigkeit. Ich sah meine Kunst nun in diesem Zusammenhang – als Versuch, den „bloßen Dingen“ die Aufmerksamkeit und den Respekt zu schenken, die moralisch eigentlich zwischen Menschen gefordert sind, im Umgang mit anderen „lebenden Dingen“ aber oft fehlen. Meine Bilder von Gegenständen sollten diese Qualität des Dinghaften erfahrbar machen.
Trotzdem legte ich diese spannenden Gedanken zunächst beiseite. Mein Fokus galt weiterhin der Abstraktion und der Vorbereitung von sieben neuen Gemälden für meine Ausstellung bei basis Frankfurt im folgenden Jahr. Zum ersten Mal sollten drei dieser Arbeiten sowohl Anleihen aus menschengemachten als auch aus natürlichen Formen vereinen.
Reisen hielten mich eine Zeit lang vom Atelier fern, doch im Dezember 2023 besuchte ich eine Ausstellung von Philip Guston in der Tate Modern – zwanzig Jahre nach meiner ersten, prägenden Begegnung mit seinem Werk.
Das Wiedersehen mit seinen späten Arbeiten entfachte nicht nur jene Ideen aus dem Frühjahr aufs Neue, sondern erweiterte ihren Horizont. In einem kalten Atelier im Januar 2024 begann ich, die Gegenstände um mich herum zu malen und zu zeichnen – nicht als „Stillleben“, sondern als „lebende Dinge“ (auf Englisch, living things).
Das Thema erschien mir anfangs fremd. Doch bald änderte sich die Stimmung: Ich fühlte mich zunehmend belebt und bestärkt durch die Unprätentiosität dieser Alltagsobjekte. Wieder spürte ich dieses Gefühl von Stimmigkeit.
Trotzdem sah ich meine Kunst noch immer als Dialog mit der Abstraktion – die Zeichnungen der Atelierobjekte als Formen, die „abstraktiert“ aus ihrer Umgebung hervorgegangen waren. Ich nannte sie „Extrationen“.
Um neue Ideen für abstrakte Bilder zu finden, griff ich erneut auf die Fotos meiner Reise zurück und suchte dort nach menschengemachten Formen.
Ich suchte nach Motiven und Kompositionen, die ich reduzieren, vereinfachen und abstrahieren konnte, um sie dann als Linien und Umrisse in mein Skizzenbuch zu übertragen. In meiner Vorstellung machte gerade diese lineare Reduktion die Skizzen abstrakt statt figurativ.
Zwei dieser Skizzen sind mir besonders aufgefallen. Es waren natürlich die beiden, die von diesem Foto abgeleitet waren: die Grillhähnchenbude. Denn ihre Schlichtheit brachte die Spannung zwischen Flasche und Rucksack noch stärker zum Ausdruck; der Hinterhof wurde nun endgültig zur Bühne.
Parallel arbeitete ich weiter an den drei Leinwänden – meinen sogenannten „geometrischen Abstraktionen“ – in denen rechte Winkel und Linien menschengemachter Objekte auf organische Formen und Texturen aus der Natur treffen sollten.
Als die Ausstellung bei basis Frankfurt im November 2024 vorbei war, begann ich sofort, die Ideen aus jenem Foto und der Pastellzeichnung gezielt weiterzuverfolgen.
Doch das Zeichnen der Dinge um mich herum begleitet mich schon mein ganzes Leben. Zeichnen war nämlich immer der Kern meines Daseins und das Herz meiner Kunst. Die Welt betrachte ich schon immer, als könnten die Objekte um mich herum zum Leben erwachen – mit eigenen Stimmungen, Absichten und Dramen.
Und so sind eine Flasche oder ein Pinsel im Glas für mich niemals neutral. Diese Flasche – dieses Ding – blickt zu mir zurück.
Als mir der Gedanke kam, Flasche und Rucksack als handelnde Figuren zu begreifen, war es wohl unausweichlich, ihm zu folgen. Es war völlig instinktiv – als hätte sich ein Kreis geschlossen.
Eine Flasche kann ich selbst sein, ein Rucksack kann die Außenwelt verkörpern oder schlicht das „Andere“, den Beobachter. Ein Pinsel im Glas kann plötzlich die Last der Welt tragen. Solche Rollen entstehen instinktiv und unerwartet – und genau das macht den Reiz aus.
Wie gesagt: Diese Rollen können und werden sich verschieben. Nichts bleibt festgelegt. Und genau in dieser Beweglichkeit – ja, in dieser Mehrdeutigkeit – möchte ich, dass meine Malerei lebt.
13.2.2025
Here are some sketches from the studio since the start of 2025.
11.12.2024
As this year draws to a close I have returned to the studio on a regular basis for the first time since October.
Working through an idea that I've had living “rent-free” in my head since the Spring, I spent the last week of November making around sixty small sketches of what I had in mind. It felt good to disgorge these ideas after carrying them around in my head for so long.
The sketches came out much more easily than I had feared which tells me that I was pushing on an open door and that the idea has potential. The challenge - my choice - is to take the idea a step further and express it in oil paint. If I did so, it would be a way of painting that, while not unfamiliar to me, is not one that I have maintained over any length of time.
The ideas work easily enough in pencil on paper because that way of working just comes naturally to me. I believe the ideas will work equally well in paint too but I need to overcome the usual inhibitions and pitfalls that painting in oils presents before I can achieve that.
It seems strange to say that this is a new way of working given that I have been messing about with oil paint since I was around twelve years old. I feel it would help if I had a colleague to exchange ideas with but for now I am on my own in the studio. The highs are fun but the lows are exhausting, as usual.
18.01.2024
Twenty Years Apart | A Tale of Two Exhibitions
Last month I visited the Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern.
My admiration for Guston's work and story began twenty years ago with the 2003 retrospective at the Royal Academy in London.
I fell in love with his late work and loved the way he could turn everyday things into charged presences — shoes, clocks, cigarettes, hoods. Not symbols exactly, but objects that had slipped into another life.
Although I have seen examples of Guston's work in galleries and museums since then the Tate show was the first time since 2003 that I had seen such a major review of his entire work.
It was especially interesting for me to "re-visit" Guston's work last month given the development of my artistic position since 2003.
Back in 2003 I had just taken up painting again seriously after a gap of many years. My painting was figurative which I saw as being out of step with the abstract painting of the mainstream art world.
I was impressed and inspired by Guston's work but at that time particularly by the fact that in later life he had switched from abstract painting to figurative painting.
I loved that Guston had risked a highly prestigious and lucrative career as an abstract artist in search of authenticity. I loved too that his late work had upset the art world orthodoxy and I loved that he had "chosen" figurative art.
Guston's life-long love of comics spoke to me in 2003 too.
On the foundation course in 1988/1989 I had enjoyed the introductory module on illustration. As a kid I'd loved comics and admired comic artists for their drawing technique. I saw my own drawing technique as not polished enough for such a career. All the same back in 1988 I was firmly set on being a painter and "fine artist" and not a "mere" illustrator.
These days the art world no longers makes that kind of distinction.
In the last twenty years I have learned not to see things in such "either-or" terms, figurative "or" abstract.
Only a few years ago my own work moved from figuration to abstraction, something that back in 2003 I would not have expected to happen even though a lot of my painting as an art student had been abstract.
Guston's late work was a revelation in 2003 because it spoke to me of an intoxicating artistic freedom and a monumental fearlessness. His bravery as an artist gave me hope.
Today, twenty years on, Guston remains a hero of mine but in a subtler way to 2003.
He is a hero because he was in large part self-taught even though he attended some art schools.
He is a hero too not because his late work validated figuration more than abstraction but because it proved that in the final analysis this was a false dichotomy. There is only ever painting.
29.12.2023
Twenty years ago
Twenty years ago I decided that finding my way as an artist was something from which I would no longer flee.
Driven by a desperate need for authenticity in my life and haunted by the fear I might have left it all too late I determined to set aside self-doubt once and for all and be true to myself.
A long and winding road
My artist's path up until 2003 had been a long and winding road. A last minute fear of failure back in 1982 had made me abandon plans to go to art school. With no Plan B I didn't know what else to do and so I took a job in banking. Five years later I abandoned a highly lucrative investment banking career to prepare an application to Kingston Polytechnic's foundation course.
But in 1989 just as that one-year course finished and a degree course beckoned a series of life-changing decisions and actions on my part found me with new priorities seemingly more pressing than the dream of being an artist.
New pressures followed and a creative block revived old insecurities; the artist's way suddenly seemed lost to me. Broke and with the rural family home still a derelict building site in 1990 I accepted the loss of my dream as fact and took a job back in London; this time a job without the high-flying career and salary of three years before.
Fast forward thirteen years later to 2003. By now I had not only let others down but had been untrue to myself for far too long. For better or worse, my art was something I no longer wished to run away from.
man with palette, standing 2003, oil on board 30 x 22.5 cm
13.12.2023
abstracting memories: an update
Let me say, first of all, that I'm enjoying painting.
There was a low moment back in October when I considered discarding the three paintings I had begun in early September. That moment passed, however, with the help of a conversation with a friend and colleague.
So what am I doing?
Or rather, what do I think I'm doing? For it is a cliché of the creative process that a painting will always assume a life and direction of its own, whatever cunning plans the artist may have laid out in advance.
What I think I'm doing is combining extracts of photographs to construct an abstract image in which shapes and forms sit in a space of their own.
Is there something different about this subject matter compared with recent work?
Yes. Each painting is in effect a collage of memories.
One of them (the canvas in the middle) sources memories from several different trips whereas the other two deal with one particular trip in March 2023. This was a 1 242 km road and ferry trip through Patagonian Chile.
These latter paintings aim to reflect how the natural and the man-made worlds inter-act to produce a unique landscape that fascinated me and inspires me.
The interaction between the man-made and the natural is, after all, what it comes down too, isn't it? How we interact with the natural world.
So how does this feed into my art?
My photographs record the beauty I saw in the shapes and forms of the man-made landscape and in the way the artificial sat within the natural landscape.
My artistic practice begins by taking figurative elements from a photograph, stripping these down to their basic abstract forms and then combining these shapes and forms with others, similarly abstracted from other photographic extracts.
My aim is for these things to escape their original identity within the photographic image and acquire a new identity within the painting's context as they interact with other shapes and forms I abstracted from other photographs.
How each "abstracted element" interacts with the one next to it in the painting is also key.
As the viewer's eye transitions from one shape to the next across the picture plane I aim to suggest a sense of space and depth that is ambiguous yet internally consistent.
Well, that's what I think I'm doing. Like I said above, the paintings are acquiring a life of their own.
It seems that my visceral love of recording and observing things that I find beautiful - be they man-made or natural - as I found them in natura seems to hold me back from turning the figurative images into non-recognisable abstract versions thereof.
It's as though these memories demand that I record them in all their glorious detail when what I am trying to do is (cruelly, perhaps) boil them down to anonymous abstract forms and shapes.
As I said above: I'm having fun.
Oil paint (a Freudian typo made me write oil pain) takes longer to dry at this time of year so that is slowing things down too.
I have no idea now how these paintings will turn out but I find their evolution exciting. With two of the canvasses it's been hard work sorting out their compositions. For I wrongly believed in September that my preparatory pastel drawings (see works on paper on this website) had done all the "heavy lifting".
Wrong. Utterly wrong.
So. Watch this space and in the meantime Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
16.11.2023
oil painting on raw, unprepared canvas
On my return to the studio this Summer after extensive travelling in the first half of the year I tried out something new: painting in oil colour on a piece of raw, unmediated canvas.
Why so?
Well, I'm always keen to explore new ways of manipulating oil colour in ways I can then deploy usefully in my work. This keenness dates back to 2007 when I first started learning about glazing techniques from internet pages.
So what happens when oil colour is applied straight from the tube - unmediated by any medium - on to a piece of raw, unprimed canvas stretched across a wooden frame?
Simple - at first. The raw fabric absorbs some of the oil and pigment of the tube colour as the barrier of acrylic sealant and gesso is not there to protect the fabric.
Some wonderful one-off effects can be achieved in this way. These effects cannot be corrected or repeated. The opportunity for this type of effect occurs when oil colour contacts the raw canvas.
Once the paint is properly dry it is possible to add a second layer of paint on to the first. Paint on paint will behave in ways similar to how paint behaves on a prepared canvas.
The canvas is not only raw but recycled: I use the reverse side of discarded paintings and stretch these anew. The recycled element of this project is not only exciting but liberating: somehow the fact that the fabric has already been used once before makes the blank canvas intimidate far less.
The physicality of the painting technique is also fun and liberating: the oil colour is pushed or forced into the weave of the raw canvas.
The first photo here is a studio view with three canvases: two shown after the first painting session and one work already completed. The dimensions are in each case 80 x 72 cm.
The second photo here is a detail from an early stage in the now complete work.
15.11.2023
translating ideas from one medium to another
since September I have been working on three paintings in oil on canvas (shown here in the photo)
each of the three paintings remains a work in progress and the composition of each oil painting began as an idea first sketched out in pastel on paper (see previous blog entry).
each of the three pastel sketches was in fact a collage of memories using elements of photographs as source material
my aim for each oil painting is to take a visual idea originally composed of figurative elements and reduce it (or abstract it) in such a way that the painting's final composition is a series of (hopefully interesting) shapes and forms that interlock and intertwine within some indeterminate pictorial space or series of spaces
in the photo shown here the paintings on the left and right have their corresponding compositions in pastel on paper illustrated in the previous blog entry
30.07.2023
texture and transitions in the composition
using pastel, oil pastel, charcoal and pencil
Following my travels in the first half of this year I've got down to some sustained work in the studio again and at last working through ideas I've been thinking about since late 2022!
In a new approach I am now making my studies on A1 paper and no longer in a small (A4) sketchbook as in the past.
The larger-sized paper (each drawing is 52 x 62 cm) encourages me to take more time over the studies, perhaps treating the larger format more seriously than the A4 format, returning to the studies and re-working them where necessary but (hopefully) with the same lack of inhibition that has always characterised my sketchbook studies.
These studies record my interest since late 2022 regarding transitions and texture in the composition of an image.
The medium is mainly soft pastel with additional use of charcoal, compressed charcoal and occasionally oil pastel. This allows me to work quickly which is something I like as I rush to get my ideas out of my head and into the world. With pastel I feel able too to make big changes to the composition as I go along.
In this way I feel I develop different ideas and compositions much more quickly than if I were to use oil colours on a stretched canvas.
If the current series of studies works out - and I think there are positive signs already - then I would like to explore the same ideas and compositions using oil colour on canvas.
It may be that my ideas find their most effective expression (for me, for others too perhaps) in pastel on paper rather than in oil colour on canvas. That remains to be seen.
Pastel is after all a perfectly respectable medium in its own right and one with which over the years I have had great pleasure and no little success. All the same oil painting has fascinated me since I was given my first set of oil colours at the age of twelve.
Illustrations shown (from top to bottom):
- pastel, oil pastel, charcoal on paper "quiet anticipation of the excitement to come"
- pastel, charcoal on paper "we were stuck in a beautiful place"
- pastel on paper "la ruta del pollo"
- pastel, charcoal on paper "did someone bring the popcorn?"
- pastel, oil pastel on paper "chacabuco mist"
- oil colour on raw canvas "rate of change, early version"
- watercolour on paper "waterworks"
4.05.2023
my latest show at the projektraum, Frankfurt opened last Thursday, 4th May 2023; a special thanks to jacqueline jakobi millán for curating the exhibition; you can download her article in german and in english
you can see installation views of this exhibition on this website by browsing all exhibitions or by clicking here.
thanks to all of you for your kind support and interest
21.04.2023
"does it do what it says on the tin?"
vernissage 7 pm thursday, 4th May 2023 (artist present)
projektraum elbestrasse 10, 60329 frankfurt
New work in various media including gouache (watercolour), pastel, charcoal/compressed charcoal on paper, as well as oil on canvas.
Exhibition runs until lunchtime Monday, 8th May 2023. Viewing outside of the vernissage is by appointment only. Please contact either by email (mail@peterneighbour.com) or direct message via instagram (iampeterneighbour).
I look forward to seeing you!
17.10.2022
all trousers and no mouth
a work inspired by memories of working in investment bank dealing rooms.
Image shown:
figure, walking in a room 2015
oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm
05.10.2022
outcast | how a cartoon character was born
Today's work, jetsam #1 (2022, gouache on paper), is from the series motion pictures.
For each work in this series I have taken a motif or abstract shape that appeared in work from 2021 and for the new work located it as a "character" in a comic strip.
The comic strip format allows the 2-D motif to appear as a dynamic character in its own 3-D world or space without the use of modelling or linear perspective.
The jetsam #1 motif has its origins in the last days of 2020.
Back then I was using the sketchbook to develop my ideas about abstraction with my memories of Antarctica as one source for inspiration. But as my sketchbook began to fill up with cartoons and abstract shapes my personal life provided inspiration too.
Christmas 2020 was a matter of days away from a dramatic overnight change caused by Brexit to my personal situation. Many British citizens - myself included - feared a so-called "cliff-edge" in terms of the changes this would bring to our lives on 1st January 2021. As a British citizen living in the EU my future seemed both unclear and insecure.
The pages of my December 2020 sketchbook show how these two pre-occupations, the Antarctic landscape and Brexit angst collide and combine.
Carried over from earlier 2020 work in oil on canvas the rectangle motif features from the beginning of the sketchbook. But by late December the rectangle is qualified and modified: a creature is perched on top of it, first looking up and later looking down. Then, decisively, the rectangle changes its position in the picture plane. No longer central and on a horizontal line the rectangle is shifted from the horizon to the lower left of the image.
Not only shifted but also turned ninety degrees the rectangle is now vertical and in the bottom left corner of the image. The bird-like creature has returned to perch on what is now unmistakeably an edge - a cliff-edge.
In the following sketchbook pages this avian creature morphs into a blind-folded homunculus, squatting on the rectangle's edge with legs a-dangling. A few drawings later and the little man has been reduced to a mere head, now masked as well as blindfolded with a few wisps of hair and a three-day beard. A few more pages of the sketchbook later and only the mask and blindfold are left - in profile.
This mask/blindfold became at once a comic-strip or cartoon character. During 2021 I started to link my cartoon character explicitingly with the giant rocks (tephra) of Antarctica's Brown Bluff beach the latter jettisoned by the volcano when it erupted one million years before.
In this particular image ( jetsam #1 ) the cartoon outcast seems to be not cast out like the rocks of Brown Bluff but cast ashore, jetsam discarded by the ocean.
Work shown here (from top to bottom):
jetsam #1 2022 20 x 18 cm gouache on paper
stranded #1 2021 30 x 27 cm oil on canvas
eight drawings from A4 sketchbook December 2020
22.09.2022
throwback to 2010 - 2013
the desert scene series
This cycle was inspired by memories. Many years ago I used to travel by train to work: about two-hours each way from rural England into London’s banking district.
Every day as my train sped by I’d stare out of the window at the railway tracks and their micro-landscapes. What began to fascinate me were the neglected and desolate spaces between the railway tracks. Morning and night I saw how these micro-landscapes changed with the passing seasons: now sun-drenched, bursting with life and thick with colourful flowers, now buried in January darkness and the litter of passing passengers.
In my imagination these little strips of wasteland were also a moral wasteland or desert; the annual rise and fall of rugged vegetation an emblem of life’s desperate need for hope. Corners of the world at once familiar and forever out of reach these places and their annual cycle of growth and decay became a source of comfort like the company of an old friend.
Working on the first of these paintings in 2010 I began to feel that the composition lacked a focal point.
My fascination with the goat as a powerful motif and emblem goes back a long way. While at art college in England I often took a goat or a group of goats as a subject for my work.
And so I decided that a goat was exactly what was needed for this series of work.
Shown here is the last work in the series desert scene #5 from 2013 with the goat on this occasion located in Frankfurt's main railway station. Four separate images on four separate canvases (each 80 x 80 cm) when hung together form a fifth image.
This work was painted in grey tones using a highly limited palette of only three colours: English red, chrome green and the zinc white.
Look closely, however, in the lower right of the total image and you will see that one small area of the work is painted with additional colours: the weed-covered ground between the railway tracks.
Use the search function on this website (work cycle "scapegoat") to find all the works in this series.
21.09.2022
time postponed: new dates for exhibition
next month's show has been postponed to next year
vernissage now on thursday, 4th may 2023
projektraum elbestrasse 10 60316 frankfurt
11.05.2022
a cinematic approach to abstraction
In recent months I have looked to evolve my position on abstraction further by using formal elements borrowed from the world of cinema and comic strips.
For my current work I continue to use the "almost square" format of 100 x 90 or a version thereof. Each work consists of three rectangles, arranged in the picture plane either horizontally or vertically, as in a comic strip.
For last year's terra fluida exhibition I presented new abstract work derived from my experience in January 2020 of the Antarctic landscape.
The terra fluida exhibition itself showed how my abstract artwork had evolved from the colour field abstraction of 2019/2020 to a new position with abstract shapes and forms by mid-2021.
In both oil colour on canvas as well as in gouache on paper these "terra fluida" artworks featured non-figurative shapes and forms I had created by a process of abstraction using the raw materials of my personal record of the Antarctic landscape.
motion pictures
My current concept re-configures the picture plane in order to re-locate the 2-D terra fluida shapes in an imaginary space of their own.
My methodology has been to subject the "terra fluida" abstractions to a formal process borrowed from cinematography and comic strips.
Cinema uses three basic camera shots to set the scene and tell the story: the close-up, the medium shot and the long shot. Comic books and cartoons also use this device.
I create three views or "shots" of a given terra fluida shape and place each shot or "angle" in one of three horizontal rectangles. The original "terra fluida" shape is now shown as if seen from three separate "view points" or angles, echoing the formal conventions of a comic strip or those of a story board in cinema.
By using this cinematic or comic strip device the artwork is now divided into three distinct but related images thereby gaining a sense of narrative; the abstract shape acquires a sense of personality, as if a character in a comic strip, cartoon or video. The original 2-D shape in the "terra fluida" artwork appears now to be a 3-D object inhabiting its own formal space.
23.04.2022
throwback to 2017 | why I called the painting "fascinatin' rhythm"
this painting is from a period in Frankfurt (2013 - 2017) during which I experimented with different ways of representing the human figure; ways that were not based in realism like the portraits I had painted from life a few years earlier. Part of the work cycle "REGATTA | a race apart" this work was inspired by four elite oarsmen at the top of their game. Stepping back to look at the painting in my Frankfurt studio what went through my mind was the composition's sense of rhythm. Almost at once the song "fascinatin' rhythm" popped into my head. The song is of course a classic and a version sung by Ella Fitzgerald - my Dad was a fan - had long ago lodged itself into my brain. I'm not into jazz myself but the way that the song crashed its way into my consciousness was pure instinct. It felt right that the painting should have the same title as the song.
fascinatin' rhythm is one of several paintings exhibited in my 2018 show "kunst in der konferenzetage" in the offices of Hogan Lovells International, Frankfurt. A pdf file of the exhibition catalogue can be downloaded from this website.
image shown: fascinatin' rhythm, 2017 oil colour on canvas 120 x 100 cm
21.04.2022
throwback to 2016/2017 | inspiration for a work cycle
REGATTA – a race apart | 2016 – 2017
From late 2013 to late 2017 I was focussed on exploring different ways of presenting the human figure, typically using past experience as the emotional trigger for my work. As raw material I would use found images such as publicly available photos on the internet.
In 2016 I began to look at photos of rowing and regattas. I grew up in Marlow-upon-Thames, a small town with its own tradition of rowing on the river Thames and an annual rowing competition – a regatta. I had family and friends who were competitive rowers even though I myself wasn’t involved in the sport.
Henley-upon-Thames is about nine miles further up the road and up river from Marlow. Henley is the birthplace of rowing as a global elite sport, its own regatta being styled as Henley Royal Regatta. Baron de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee took inspiration from its rules and organisation.
The aftermath of the 2016 referendum in Britain caused me to look afresh at the Henley Regatta which I had visited in July 2014. Henley Royal Regatta is a key date in the social diary of the English upper classes. As well as a sporting event Henley Regatta is a vivid display of hierarchy by those who see themselves as members of a superior social caste. There is a hierarchy of different spectator "enclosures", with strict entry requirements and strict dress codes; you are what you wear. Those spectators not watching from such an enclosure can watch from the publicly-accessible river bank. Space is at a premium so that people are crushed along the narrow strip of grass that follows the course of both river and race. Champagne and strawberries ease the pain.
The race tournament officials – the stewards - are themselves former oarsmen. They wear loudly-coloured jackets - blazers - which advertise to insiders their membership of a particular rowing club. Unsurprisingly, some clubs have greater status than others.
The stewards enforce the regatta’s set of rules, the latter known as “the conduct of races”. The double meaning of the word “race” is something I decided to exploit when giving a title to some of the images in this work cycle.
Rowing’s dedication to training is typical of its compulsive, addictive nature. In fact, rowing isn’t a sport at all; it’s an addiction and these elite sportsmen and women are a race apart.
The English upper classes likewise see themselves as an elite and as such revel in Henley Regatta's modern incarnation as a competition for rowing's global elite. Holding on to power, as this caste has done for centuries, requires a different sort of conduct. In fact it is a game without rules and no sport for self-styled ladies and gentlemen. In truth, power is but an addictive end in itself whereby those who are in power self-servingly view themselves as a race apart.
Use the website's search function to explore this and other work cycles or series, past and present.
13.04.2022
the rectangle
and how it went from colour field to comic strip
the terra fluida catalogue records changes in my abstract work from late 2019 to 2021. It documents how at first a rectangular colour field was central to the composition of large canvasses and then how, via sketch book studies and other works on paper, the rectangle evolved into something linear and fluid as new shapes appeared in new paintings, similarly linear and cartoon-like.
As well as being linear and dynamic, the rectangle was by early 2021 no longer fixed at the centre of the composition. However, the composition underwent even more radical change later as the rectangle went from being three rectangles instead of one. Two canvasses, "breaking away" and "you go your way and I'll go mine" illustrate this development and are both in the terra fluida catalogue (pages 22 and 23).
Two images serve to illustrate for the purposes of this blogpost how the compositional device evolved: violet and yellow, a colour field painting in oil colour from 2020 and a 2021 notebook sketch (not in the exhibition) in pencil and gouache.
Using the three horizontal rectangles as formal elements took me back to an idea in a sketch from in December 2020. Composed of four horizontal rectangles, the sketch illustrates different stages of an event, in this case whales feeding in the Antarctic ocean; the passage of time is indicated by the comic-strip format.
I am currently working in the studio to develop these ideas further. I have re-visited the linear shapes created for and exhibited in last year's terra fluida exhibition. I have been looking at how cartoon strips and comic novels go about creating a sense of movement and 3-D space. I have also been looking at how cinema, like comic books, typically uses three shots taken from three different distances and/or angles to add dynamism as well as a sense of depth to the narrative.
And so in the studio I have been trying out these ideas and applying this treatment to some of my terra fluida shapes and images. I aim to give these flat, abstract linear shapes a sense of movement and that they inhabit their own unique 3-D world by using formal elements taken from comics and cinema rather than by using a single image with one traditional perspective.
6.04.2022
studio notes | about the title of a new work
after the visit oil colour on canvas 72 x 80 cm
the title for this painting came about in the following way. As the work neared completion it reminded me of my trip to Antarctica in January 2020. How so? Well, I imagined the rectangle to be a ship on the horizon, leaving the scene after an earlier shore landing. During that landing, so my imagination continued, the local fauna had hidden away in response to the human disturbance. But as the ship disappears over the horizon the wildlife feels it safe to come out and play. ? The black "creature" of the work's composition was a total accident. I had been playing around with some ideas on paper using gouache. I made some free style random brushstrokes in black. These brushstrokes were intended as loose abstractions of shapes and forms remembered from photos of feeding whales. Now I make a point of working very quickly in watercolour and as so often happens there was way too much water on my brush. Pools of water had collected on the paper and so I grabbed a sheet of kitchen paper to absorb the excess water. Acting as blotting paper the kitchen paper left its pattern behind and some interesting effects. My earlier black brushmarks, brought to life by these effects, now had features and a personality. Oil painting is a versatile but challenging medium and I'm always keen to find new ways of working with oil colour. So I decided to see how the composition might work in oil on canvas, but without the use of kitchen paper this time!
To enquire about purchasing artwork please email.
11.02.2022
new neighbourhood, familiar subject
here you see the shiny new ECB (European Central Bank) headquarters tower which is a short walk from my new studio. I came to this part of Frankfurt ten years ago when the frame of the tower was being erected as part of a giant construction project built around the shell of a listed building, Frankfurt's Großmarkthalle.
I have always found building sites fascinating. So when in 2012 I came upon this construction site it didn't take me long to decide to turn the subject into a work project. At this time too the Eurocurrency project was itself gripped by an existential struggle so that the whole headquarters project seemed to me an act of hubris. I became obsessed with the site and spent almost all of 2012 at the site, making drawings that would later be used as studies for large oil paintings, including Twisting in the Wind (2013, oil on canvas).
The Großmarkthalle, I later learned, played a central logistical role in a dark chapter of Frankfurt's history. It was here that the locals rounded up Frankfurters of Jewish faith promising them a "new life" in the East.
To commemorate the rounding up and murder of Frankfurters by their fellow Frankfurters a public footpath now runs along the ECB perimeter marked with moving eyewitness quotations telling of their horrendous and heart-wrenching experiences from that shameful time.
01.02.2022
new studio: re-painting walls white!
my new studio is in an office building formerly occupied by Telekom engineers; the walls are painted a nicotine yellow - very off-putting when painting etc in colour.
So I'm painting the walls bright white. The overhead lights are yellow too so I plan to replace them with natural light tubes.
as you can see I'm not the tidiest of decorators!
07.02.2022
new part of town
my new studio is near the Ostbahnhof in Frankfurt's Ostend. The clue is in the name: I'm now in the East End of central Frankfurt. This area has undergone significant change since the ECB headquarters was located here during the last decade. Old buildings are being pulled down to make way for "smart" apartments. 'Twas ever thus.
31.01.2022
new storage space
I've had a storage system built in my new studio so that I can store canvasses safely and make best use of the studio space.
30.12.2021
moving into a new studio
here is the van to take ten year's plus worth of work and memories to the new place in Frankfurt's East End.
29.12.2021
after ten years, it's a poignant good bye
to my old studio in gutleutstraße 8 near the Frankfurt Opera and City theatre. It amazes me how far I have come during these ten years. I have learned much and met many interesting people along the way. It's also been helpful to have the chance to show my work. There's nothing like an exhibition deadline to focus the mind!
20.12.2021
Omniturm at sunset
from the Christmas market the view of the Omniturm at sunset. In 2019 I was commissioned to make some studies of the Omniturm tower.
20.08.2021
oyster beds at cancale
a month after the exhibition "terra fluida" I'm at Cancale. I was fascinated by its celebrated oyster beds. Perhaps one day I'll make some work based on this subject. The oyster beds make me think of the Normandy landings, or the Battle of Helm's Deep.
22.07.2021
just in! exhibition catalogue for terra fluida
I'm very pleased with how the catalogue turned out. As well as having photos of the July 2021 exhibition the catalogue has some text explaining the ideas and processes behind the work on show.