Music For AIs is one of a series of improvised drawing/ paintings. It was created over a period of about a fortnight in 2023.
The process with these pieces is to divide two sheets of A3 art board into eight tiles each (measuring c. 10.5 x 14.75 cm). Each one is then numbered on the reverse, the pack shuffled and I start drawing or painting on the one from the top of the pack. When every tile has been worked on they are reassembled in number order, recreating the two sheets of A3.
So last year I made a 32 part mosaic, The Roister Doister Boogie.
But I was never fully satisfied with the completed work – it was too big to maintain any kind of visual tension – so I’m selling my favourite “tiles” as individual pieces in my shop: richardguest.bigcartel.com
This is the first batch of four. I’ll be listing them on a semi- regular basis.
Each one measures approximately 10.5 x 15 cm and was painted in acrylic, drawn with watercolour pencil, or soluble pastel on artboard.
So, having immersed myself in the digital in the 2020s I decided to do the opposite and make work with traditional materials and work as instinctively as I could…
This Tongue… is one of a series of improvised drawing/ painting/ mosaics. It was created over a period of about ten days in early 2023. The recognisable images are derived from street photography taken in 2013-14, when I roamed the streets of central London with my then newly-acquired dslr. Everything else was created “in the moment” in the most direct way possible – pencil and paint on paper.
The process with these pieces is to divide two sheets of A3 art board into eight tiles each (measuring c. 10.5 x 14.75 cm). Each one is then numbered on the reverse, the pack shuffled and I start drawing or painting on the one from the top of the pack. When every tile has been worked on the two sheets of A3 are reassembled in number order.
This Tongue…is a unique work. The images below show the the reverse of the work (to show you how it is taped together), and two close-ups.
This Tongue…is available to buy from my shop: richardguest.bigcartel.com
Hello folks! I see it’s been about a year since I last posted – it was meant to be more frequent, but life got in the way in horrible ways. Anyway, here we are and I’ve decided to return in a rambling, semi-incoherent manner – I’m telling myself it’s a tip of the hat to the early days of blogging…
I’ve been listening to The Fall, Danger Mouse & Black Thought, and Bob Marley by the way, drinking lots of tea and reading music books…
I’ve updated my website, and will continue to post works etc to my instagram account, but I’m keeping The Future Is Papier Mâché for the rambling, incoherent diaristic stuff. Hope you’re all well and enjoying life.
So, here are the final two digital constructs using other people’s marks to date. Frustrations seem to drive the work at the moment – I got to the point where other people’s marks could only go so far in a colour composition without the need for gross distortion (which would render the marks and objects somehow meaningless), so I stopped using them.
In the present phase I’ve been raiding my own pictures for marks. You can see the process creeping in in Winter II – there’s a section of my painting Psst! (Orange) in the top right quadrant.
If I could set a soundtrack to these images it would probably be something by John Dwyer. I’ve written about Thee Oh Sees on this blog before, but his other “band” Damaged Bug is just as good, but with a more experimental, electronic edge. Here’s the rather lovely Jet In Jungle.
And here’s where I went next…
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If you are interested in seeing more digital constructs, there are a lot of them on this blog or you can visit my Instagram here or my website here.
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In early October 2019 David Cook and I visited Peter Doig: Paintings at Michael Werner, and Cy Twombly: Sculpture at Gagosian, both in London. Afterwards, we discussed the shows by email. You can read the resulting conversation starting here.
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Here are some elements of new works in progress. The paintings are details from a series based on earthworks and have all been tipped on their sides. The photographs are all of parts of Dorset as seen from a train window. As of fairly recently I have started using elements of my own paintings in my digital constructs.
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And here is a finished digital construct…available as a C-Type photographic print on archival paper from my Big Cartel shop. For a more comprehensive description and for shipping details click here.
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If you are interested in seeing more digital constructs, there are a lot of them on this blog or you can visit my Instagram here or my website here.
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In early October 2019 David Cook and I visited Peter Doig: Paintings at Michael Werner, and Cy Twombly: Sculpture at Gagosian, both in London. Afterwards, we discussed the shows by email. You can read the resulting conversation starting here.
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At the moment I’m working with tensions – painting, drawing and digital constructs are feeding into one another with no clear path as to which is the dominant or most important form.
T-2 shot here on our beaten up old dining table. With source drawing below.
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If you are interested in seeing more digital constructs and paintings as well as street photography (including portraits), visit my Instagram here or my website here.
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Winter I (above) is another of the new digital constructs I’ve been working on. I’m having fun with their evolution – more posts soon – and at the same time have started working on paintings that have the shape of landscape as their starting point (T-1 pictured below on our knackered dining table).
Again, more to come…
The Paul mentioned in the title below is Paul Letchworth, a painter I was on Foundation with way back in the mists of time – his work’s lovely and you can see it on his website here. Hello Paul!
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If you are interested in seeing more digital constructs and paintings as well as street photography (including portraits), visit my Instagram here or my website here.
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For the next paintings I tried to move as far away from imagery as possible – where a shape suggested an object I painted it out, and waited for other shapes to suggest themselves. The idea was to make paintings which did not reference anything except the urge to make a mark and balance a colour composition.
The drawings followed a similar pattern.
And became a more regular output. For all sorts of reasons I needed to make smaller works and started thinking again about digital constructs…
More in the next post…
The Future Is Papier Mâché 