Dialogues

..These colour relationships are part of the internal dialogue of a painting. Colour can either cut through as a force in a work , or, occupy space as one . Cutting through means it has a direction - a start and an end; I often try to get 'across' a painting from one side to another - usually early on. It helps to assert a large scale from the off.
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Manet's Perfect Pitch

...His work is spartan and sumptuous in equal measure. It outflanks you and continues to induce gasps to this day. These last works are heartbreakingly beautiful, they give you confidence to listen to your own innermost voice as they are spoken with such a humane voice in themselves. They demand an honesty in a viewer as they too were created with such an unfaltering spirit - all the more astonishing in light of his failing health at the time. What more can you ask of an artist?
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When to stop

I concluded the true painter can be picked out if they are more interested in how they stop. For when one stops a painting - especially an abstract one - an artist is drawing a line in the sand and is saying, this has moved from making to made. The decision to stop throws up a whole area of intrigue and theory fodder in equal measures. What is going on in each individual when they make that concluding decision… Done?
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French Curves

..These cartoons often originate from drawings that use the French curve as their guide; the outlines to the forms have a set pace, they cut through space in a neat parabola. All parts are adjusted against this compact guiding element. Much design work that is screen based in this vein also works from this blueprint.
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Tattoo 'Art'

...I wondered what marked the real art our from the faux, the best work from the average, what made the "real deal" as they say, just that?
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Kenneth Noland - a few thoughts

His most recent work shows how much you can get out of so little by paying such attention to the fundamentals of picture making, namely colour, surface and scale - add placement and touch to this and you have a set of parameters creating an amazingly protean situation in which to make art
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The blink of an eye.

It's difficult to be a painter who works with colour in this day and age, especially in Britain. We are a literary culture for one thing - we like things spelled out , explained and increasingly packaged in some sort of "meaningful" way. And as a consequence colour is regarded in highly subjective ways
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ARTWORKS OPEN

Showing a couple of recent collages in the Inaugural Barbican Arts Group Trust Artworks Open. Work is under 30cms square. Artworks Project Space, 114 Blackhorse Lane E17 6AA. PV Thursday 11th June 6-8pm. Open from 11-25 June Tue-Fri 2pm - 8pm, Sat and Sun 12-6pm (closed Mon).

 

NOT ALL IT SEEMS

There's a Palladio show in the Royal Academy which offers a real insight into the conception of architectural space that has informed so much of our sense of the logic of buildings
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CONFLICT

I wonder always how studio work relates to the wider world and never see it in terms of specific subject matter or imagery - trying to paint something that is going on in the faint hope that this is making art that is a some way relevant to society.
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NEW COLLAGES

New collages to be posted soon on the site. These are larger than previous ones and share a vertical format which is currently preoccupying me. I am looking to get more subtle contrasts out of the surface using matte and very soft sheens to play off one another. The colour in them sets up some unusual sorts of space that intrigue me - this is not wilful but seems to occur just as a result of working in this way.

THE ART OF PRACTICE

..Taking this across to visual art. It seems madness or perhaps egotistical to assume that an artist reaches an intellectual and practical level of competence ( a plateau if you will ) to enable and facilitate high level art making and discourse.
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THE SPORT OF PAINTING

It was Larry Poons who made the point that you can go to any international city and see pretty much the same kind of art. This kind of art swaggers and is cool but it seems to be reliant upon content that is external to the actual art form presented. Younger artists learn to plan art but are less and less interested in the making of it
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APT EXHIBITION DETAILS

Private View: Thursday 27th November 2008, 6-8:30pm: Exhibition: 27th Nov-14th Dec; Opening Times: Thurs-Sun 12-5pm

APT EXHIBITION PRESS RELEASE

Paintings exploring how colour is revealed through surface. Intensely saturated, hot colour swathes and stripes with razor-sharp lines of colour zipping and sweeping through them - cutting and orchestrating space. The exhibition features work in a wide range of sizes with smaller collages exploring the dialogue between working on canvas and working on paper. The scale changes are dramatic and the colour application ranges from delicate washes to opaque velvet-like textures.
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SOLO SHOW

I feel a lot more connected with colour as the subject and have realised how my approach to colour has changed
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