I don’t know if its just artists’ minds that stumble haphazardly upon ideas, or indeed, whether its just how my mind works, but this post will illustrate an example of how things get made less by planning than by accident.
A few weeks ago this cradled board just had the black collage piece on the right hand side and nothing more.
Conscious of upcoming exhibitions this year, I added more collage to it for a while, keeping Blackshore harbour in mind. But most of that was later removed. I just didn’t like it somehow. I tried to think what I didn’t like, but the only answer I got was that I’d made it too busy.
One thing I do enjoy is scratching: the artistic word for that being ’scraffito’. So, with masts and fishing equipment in mind, I scratched! I also like boat shapes and the oldest, most dilapidated huts riverside, so I scratched these in too.
But scratching into wood only shows up when some sort of pigment is applied. I seem to have chosen dark colours: dilute Indian ink, a brown oil bar. It could be that this winter’s incessant rain and dark skies played their part in these fairly unconscious choices. Its satisfying seeing the composition scratched into the surface, gradually appear, so rubbing the pigments in was a choice I made.
The serendipitous parts of the composition were provided by stray bits of old collage very firmly stuck to the surface which nicely picked up pigments in what might be the river, and behind the huts. The brush marks created when sealing the board with gesso, also give some interesting textures.
I like its brooding qualities and feel that the loose style of this work conveys the brilliant chaos of this place. There’s also something really important for me about North Sea ports and their feel of the dangerous power of the sea always close by.
I could go further and loosely quote something I heard on the radio this morning: a statement that we are heading relentlessly towards a situation of profoundly deteriorated mental health in society, and doing so without noticing. I can concur with a sense of increased difficulty I encounter around me and for myself, in managing the world as it is now. Maybe some of the darkness of this piece expresses that.