In progress…

Work in progress (That’s How We Do Things #2) with plant

That’s How We Do Things #2 is one of two paintings I’m working on at the moment. This one is 80 x 80 cm. The other is 90 x 90 cm and I’m feeling the difference in scale in terms of the marks I feel I can make. Both paintings are acrylic paint and watercolour pencil on canvas and are based on digital constructs.

Also in the works: a series of hastily assembled limited edition books collecting sketches, photos, and writing…more info soon…

Sketchbook (book ideas)

And a new online conversation with David Cook is on the way…we’ve been to visit a couple of new exhibitions…

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If you are interested in my work, I’m an active member of the Ello community (fantastically vibrant artist’s social media platform), and post regularly on Instagram. For an overview (and to buy a limited number of prints and paintings), there’s my website: https://richardguest.art/. In the spotlight this month December:

December, acrylic paint and watercolour pencil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm, 2018

There’s a wider selection of paintings and digital constructs available to buy on Saatchi Art and I sell prints and greetings cards on Etsy.

Sketchbook (Gambon detail)

Cheerio!

Meanwhile…

I am honoured to have taken part in this project. Thanks Emily!

Journeyofaphotograph

Emily’s photograph currently resides in Beckenham (a London suburb, or a town on the fringes of Kent depending on your point of view), on our dining table. The photograph is a delicate thing and handling it makes me worry protectively at its ephemeral nature and about its onward journey, but hey it made it from Canada to here (thanks, Karen!).

It’s been both fascinating and daunting to see artworks accumulate around the project’s central image. For my own contribution I wanted to make a work that could not exist without Emily’s photograph; I deliberately set out to make an adjunct to it.

My immediate question on receiving the package was what was going on on the train when Emily took her shot. So, I got on the train to find out.

Once I started photographing people in the carriage, I realised it was their hands that would tell my story…

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Dogfood

Between 1988 and 1992, I made nineteen book works. The idea was to make sequential works you could experience in a similar way to listening to music, books that had rhythm, and repeated themes – books that you could dip into and out of without losing the sense of what the book was about. In the most part the content comprised  juxtaposed “found” images and text in increasingly complex arrangements. Round about book thirteen, I started introducing blank pages. Looking back I think this marked the beginning of the end for the project. The number of blank pages increased with each book until I found myself facing the possibility I would end up publishing a completely blank book. So I had a rethink.

Dogfood was book nineteen. It was hand-made from photocopies and cardboard, and published it in an edition of 25 in 1992.  The images were all originals and there was no text apart from the title and a copyright notice on the final page. The rhythm was deliberately stripped down: Dog, Food, Dog, Food, Dog etc.

Dogfood was my punk album.

Minestrone (2001)

Tessa was about to make her third mistake of the day. A big, steaming, multi-headed mistake, bristling in anoraks and coats, between the condensation on the peeling door and the fake-wood counter.

About two feet from the spot where they should have been greeted, the family was waiting for a signal to release them from the confines of the cool, cream corridor into the warmth of the restaurant. The man had checked his watch several times and taken care to make just enough eye contact with Tessa to elicit a response.  But Tessa could not and would not respond, no matter how much he stared at her.

It had been seven minutes since the family had crossed the threshold and collectively inhaled the sweet traceries of Louis’s Sunday roast.

Tessa’s attention traveled a precise and involved route around the intricacies of lace-work on her apron. After a third trip round, the uniform stubbornly refused to offer anything that could realistically be considered to be of interest – and she realised she would have to look up. If she could just make it through the next few minutes, Sarah, the senior waitress, would be back from table 3. She would greet them properly. Tessa lacked confidence.

The man coughed.  Eight minutes.  Tessa could almost feel his impatience growing under those thick, black fatherly eyebrows. Her face felt hot and dirty. She looked at her watch, willing the time on, watching the second hand crawl around its circuit. Sarah had told her to wait, but the man was looking at her. She was the waitress. She was there in black and white and it didn’t make sense for her to ignore them. The boy would get restless soon. Tessa’s hand searched blindly for the pad that hung at her side and stopped its gentle swinging. She could go over to them and confess that she did not know what she was doing, but she had already lost two customers that morning by doing that. She tried a smile.

Download a pdf of the whole sorry tale here

Minestrone was originally published in Fash N Riot (2001), edited by Flora McLean and Anne Hardy.