Worthington

Several more locations visited earlier this week in the brief interlude between thick grey cloud blanket. Although there is yet time some twenty plus locations have yet to be photographed and given that the loose deadline I set myself for this part of the project is fast approaching (I intended to have all my source images completed by end of February) it was important to get some completed this week. I have commented before that it is perhaps surprising how ignorant one can be of places maybe only a few miles and minutes from one's home. On this occasion I found myself wandering through parts of villages I didn't even know existed.

As a topographical exercise I have been recording each of the places of worship and each pub I have come across. A rather sad aspect of this has been the number of pubs that are boarded up...usually within the last few years, months or even weeks. Given that quite a few of the smaller villages have no retail facilities (or post office etc.) pubs might be the one and only sign of life in a tiny hamlet. Certainly all three villages on this trip were utterly silent during the period from 11 in the morning till three thirty in the afternoon. This lends an eerie and elegiac feel to one's meanderings...and especially to the sounds around. In such rural locations sound takes on new significance - from at least a mile away I heard approaching horses and riders - who took twelve or fifteen minutes to pass me. How one can encompass such aural experience in what is essentially a visual project needs much thought.

Village Life

Although the paintings are coming along well, some 34 are underway with at least a few completed, the digital images are taking longer to emerge. In part this has been a consequence of the winter conditions that have made it more difficult to progress the shooting of the photographs from which each is derived. The past couple of days have seen improved weather conditions and in turn trips to the villages have yielded some results. However village life in Leicestershire is both quiet and uneventful and especially neat and tidy! Finding fresh visual interest in some places is tougher than one might imagine. The knack seems to be in the little details; the metallic sign wrapped around the post to protect it from the farm traffic; a row of footballs neatly lined up on the bench seat; the strange upright post in the playing field;the incompleted wiring jobs etc. From these come the disjointed and clumsily arranged collaged images that spark off the ways into the paintings.

How a picture comes together

Part of the point of this diary is to show to some extent how each picture comes together. As part of my intention is to endeavour to keep a singularity within each it is important that I recognise where tropes begin to coalesce. Sealing off certain motifs and techniques is vital to this process. Typically though the process of making each starts with the taking of a set of images in a certain location, these are then subjected to a collaging process within Photoshop - for me it is critical that this doesn't become too sophisticated - and a print is arrived at. This is then taken into the studio and a loose transcription is made onto one of the standard linen canvases. At each stage the variability of the transcription, surfaces, colours and even further alterations to the forms are happily incorporated into the methodology. Describing all this makes it seem random and haphazard and I suppose this is so. However I make the choices and decisions with my own internal dialogue that at the very least means that it is directed by some sort of narrative albeit maybe one that only I am interested in! I picked up a catalogue at the studio today that had a statement in it from the artist Michael Finn. Finn was Principal at Falmouth School Of Art when I was a student there. I admired him and latterly have admired his art. He wrote that "I am rather in the dark about what I do except that it feels right for me and seems to be within a tradition that is nearly a century old and yet it is still possible to make something very personal, which I think is wonderful". I rather feel that it is wonderful too.