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.
Happy New Year to everyone who has supported TFIPM by reading, liking or commenting!
The intention for 2020 is to make this blog more like an online sketchbook, so along with the finished works and art conversations with David Cook, I’ll be posting ideas, sketches, diaristic photographs and portraits. Not sure of the exact format, but here we go…
The above is another example of my renewed interest in digital work – I seem to have strayed into the landscape format good and proper. There are paintings in the works as well.
In the meantime, here are a couple of photographs from just after New Year in Brighton, UK…
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If you want to see other work, visit my Instagram here or my website here.
All best wishes!
CB (for John Dwyer), 2018, acrylic paint and watercolour on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
This painting is dedicated to John Dwyer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, visual artist and record label owner. He’s most famous for being the founding member and main songwriter for Oh Sees (AKA Thee Oh Sees, OCS, etc). I first heard one of their songs, Web, last year on Marc Riley’s 6 Music show and have become a rabid fan ever since.
The band has had several line-ups and produced a diverse catalogue of music. The following is a favourite (from the album Help) by the group which comprised John Dwyer, Brigid Dawson, Petey Dammit! and Mike Shoun:
One from the current line-up of John Dwyer, Tim Hellman, Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone:
And finally one from the last release (as OCS). This line-up was Patrick Mullins (the band’s first drummer), Dwyer, Brigid Dawson, Tim Hellman, Eric Clark, Mikal Cronin, Thomas Dolas, Emily Elkin, and Nick Murray:
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Ashley Lily Scarlett and I are engaged in a conversation in pictures called Between Scarlett and Guest. Check it out.
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Psst! (Pink), 2017, acrylic paint and watercolour pencil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
Another of my Psst! paintings – the second to be made. The recent paintings have had a lot less colour in them…more of which soon.
Ashley Lily Scarlett and I are engaged in a conversation in pictures called Between Scarlett and Guest. Check it out.
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And David Cook and I are reviewing each other’s record collections one disc at at time (very slowly). Check out Zzzounds!
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Bull Resting, 2012
Bull Resting is a 1913 painting by Franz Marc. The painting is not so much abstract as an abstraction – the bull is recognisable, as if seen through a stained glass window.
Marc was a member of The Blue Rider group, with Wassily Kandinsky. Franz Marc had this to say about the work of the group: “We have gone with a dowser’s twig through the art of the past and the present. We have shown only art that lived unaffected by the constraints of convention. Our love and attention were directed to any kind of artistic expression that was born of itself, living by its own merits and not relying on the crutch of custom. Every time we discovered a crack in convention, we drew attention to it, because we wanted to discover the power that lay behind it, and which one day will come to light.”
You can see a picture of Bull Resting here.
Without putting a time limit on it (because I know I won’t stick to it), I’m going to do a few posts (and photographs), with titles taken from Jean-Luc Daval’s History of Abstract Painting.
As usual, thanks to John Pindar and Deanne who set this whole titling thing in motion. And to my collaborator, Richard over at CK Ponderings – we’ve just completed our eighth collaboration – it’s over on Richard’s blog.
Grey Forest, 2012
Grey Forest is a 1926 painting by Max Ernst. The painting is abstract, but suggestive of figuration. Ernst used a technique called grattage, which is scraping colour on a prepared ground set over an uneven surface, effectively a version of frottage (making a rubbing, much like a brass rubbing).
Max Ernst had this to say about the technique: “By adapting the process of frottage to the technical procedures of painting, although at first it had seemed applicable only to drawing, while all the time trying to restrain my own active participation in the evolution of the picture so as to increase the active functioning of the hallucinatory faculties of the mind, I succeeded in being present as a spectator at the birth of all my works…Swimming blindly, I made myself see. I saw. And I was suprised to find I was in love with what I could see, and wanted to identify with it.”
You can see a picture of Grey Forest at Pam Thompson’s poetry blog here.
Without putting a time limit on it (because I know I won’t stick to it), I’m going to do a few posts (and photographs), with titles taken from Jean-Luc Daval’s History of Abstract Painting.
As usual, thanks to John Pindar and Deanne who set this whole titling thing in motion. And to my collaborator and all-round cool dude, Richard over at CK Ponderings with whom I will be doing a collaborative post this Sunday on his site. Please check it out.
The Future Is Papier Mâché 