The Packington Wheel

On a superb Spring morning it is a real pleasure to be out and about - in fact the weather is positively Mediterranean and by getting an early start I was able to pull in Packington, Swannington, Hugglescote, Ellistone and Donington Le Heath. The outer reaches of the district (when viewed from the perspective of the 'Northern Parishes') are now covered bar Charley and Bardon. As I drove around I reflected on the fact that although the project was to essentially immerse myself in my own locality as source material for a sequence of images (as opposed to earlier projects that drew upon trips to far off places) I was however in a totally 'other' environment this far south. The area around Coalville is as unknown to me as - for example - the Lunigiana in Italy. One might even suggest I know the area around Aulla better, having spent maybe two dozen or more visits to it. In fact my knowledge of Coalville itself is pretty much restricted to my occasional visits to the Council Offices when I served as a District Councillor in the 1990's. As I walked around Packington on what is my first ever visit to the village I wondered whether I was as much an alien here as I was in Verpiana? The day being as beautiful as it was suggested I might already be in the Lunigiana (where luckily I will be in a week or so)...so much so that a visit to the bank seemed to posit an Italian experience where counter staff seemed so laid back in that southern european manner. All this played out as I drove from location to location with the occasional radio news reports on the tensions in the 'Eurozone' viz. the bail out of Portugal. It's interesting (to me at least) that global economics seem to rest (certainly for Europe) on the vagaries of climate...

Thoughts on Alan Davie

Very occasionally a day just seems to lead to better decision making. When one comes along its as well to keep moving, make the brushes and paint do your bidding, put down the marks as fast as circumstance allows. A recent new website (of interest to those of us wedded to abstraction) called Abstract Critical ran a lovely video interview with Alan Davie. Now 90 he suffers from still being fit and healthy and working in that because he isnt long gone the reputation isnt fixed and therefore he rarely gets the accolades his immense talent deserves. I doubt he cares much though - too busy getting on with it. Davie championed a vigorous form of abstract expressionism that was never easy and therefore not easily pigeon holed. To my mind he's always been the artist that Pollock ought to have been but never was, instead of being seduced by the process Davie kept at his autonomism, adding in imagery that informed and enriched the canvas. In the interview he reminded us of Klee's 'walk' maxim and emphasized its importance.

This is what came back to me today - sometimes one just instinctively understands what shape, what colour and what directions a line must go and when that happens you just hang in there for the ride, hoping it lasts as long as possible! It has a strange quality about it as a process in that it often seems that you have started doing it before you are conscious that it's a decision you have taken.

Davie has a particularly strong place in my artistic affections - at 14 I went into the bookshop in Exeter that was part of my regular Saturday morning routine and saw a gorgeous monograph on him. The price however was, to my mind, astronomic but I decided I had to have it...it took me over four months to garner the necessary cash, forgoing much else. It still sits on my bookshelves today, minus the dust jacket, frayed along the spine and much thumbed.

More (welcome) distractions

More time away from the studio this past weekend...but the trip was well worth it. A wee bit of 'homage' by visiting the Sailor's Reading Room in Southwold as part of a brief trip to Suffolk. Neither I or my wife know this coast at all well so it was pretty much a voyage of discovery. And despite the flatness of it this is beautiful territory - albeit bisected by Sizewell B, a fact that has more resonance at the moment than would usually be the case.

Apart from brief visits (we will be back...) to sites I know only through my acquaintance with 'The Rings Of Saturn' it was a very relaxing couple of days in which there was plenty of reflection on where the project has currently arrived at. I took delivery today of five more of the digital images and they are now being integrated into the whole. Interestingly they seem to look more and more integrated into the canvases and less and less standing out as 'different'. Why is this so? After all I have taken care to distance my work online with that in the studio but I guess some 'spillage' is inevitable.

A solitary reader occupied the Reading Room, pouring over one of the Sunday broadsheets, and it felt slightly uncomfortable to be mooching around the room whilst he relaxed over his paper. After we left we mused over whether he was actually a sailor, and if so, was that a professional engagement or enthusiastic amateur? Was he simply 'minding' the premises? Whatever - the room does have a strangely affecting ambience - a brooding sense of melancholy, so resonant of Sebald and, dare I say it, my own mood for much of my time nowadays.

Sometimes the spark just isn't with you...

and whatever you do doesn't seem to work out. And for me at least, when that is happening one starts to question the whole endeavour. Take for example the picture shown here - I was reasonably content with it a couple of weeks back when I made it. In response to the - undoubtedly correct - observation that most of the works were within the same limited scale range it was a simple way of reacting to that. OK the grid is a very obvious trope to employ but the combination of the small informal dabs of colour set against the impassive grey seemed to work for me. Today however, it joined the serried ranks of canvases that all suggested that they lacked purpose or resolution and that whatever intervention I made they , to a man, resisted coming into line. Perhaps it will all look different tomorrow - here's hoping...

The Quiet Of The Country

One of the joys of a project like this is pitching up just outside a village you have never visited on a bright early spring day and pointing the camera at whatever takes your fancy. One of my rituals is to take a photograph of the signboard as I approach a location and today I turned the camera back towards the car before I walked off in search of some further images. I have now covered well over half of the 45 habitations that feature on my 'Official Guide' map.

Besides the smaller villages I am now turning my attentions to the larger places - today besides being in Snarestone, Swepstone and the delightfully named Newton Burgoland I spent time walking the streets of Ibstock. I only shot thumbnails on my small Lumix so will have to return there later. However I was struck by the dismal condition of this small town - with very few going concerns and a general air of neglect and a certain 'down at heel' quality. If there is a forgotten heartland in England I suspect this is it. Perhaps I am wrong but it is something I shall literally focus on when I return there to shoot in earnest.

Opening Up

Of late I have been 'opening up' the process - using a variety of means - including internet sources, material from the original source publication, mixing up the media and now, even experimenting with the supports. In part this is of a piece with the liberating strategy of halving the number of required works for the final display and in truth it is probably also a desire to experiment more within the format. If the final product is to exhibit the 'singularity' of each image then this is not only highly desirable but absolutely vital. Above is 'Castle Donington' as the rough digital collage...at the moment being bowdlerised in painting form...which one of these will make it into the final selection?

A week or so ago Newsnight featured the work of writer Nick Papadimitriou whose notion of 'Deep Topography' seems to chime with my own procedures in creating the body of work that will be "From The Earth Wealth'. Apart from a brief 'googling' I've yet to fully engage with Nick's work but I'm fairly sure it will impact on my thinking over the latter stages of my project. Meanwhile the pictures are proceeding, mutating and being joined by fresh canvases. At the moment various media and tools are the focus of my attention.