I found myself digging about in the paper bin at Christ’s today. I felt like a fox. I was looking for old newspapers to search for images in. I filter through the newspaper most days to find something, often not aware what i am looking for, which could stimulate a new ingredient for a future piece. It might be a standing figure who could turn into a protagonist, a group of footballers jumping for a corner who could become one figures sequential move through space or a snap from the holiday section which could translate into a painting laced with melancholy and nostalgia. The search tries to not be preconceived.

 The bin provides a fertile compost heap of potential. The newspaper is a cocophany of noise. Melodrama, hyperbole and scaremongering are par for the course in a system which reflects our wider Western psyche with it’s proliferation of imagery. We are literally drowning in visual stimulus, yet we become dead to it, drunk and hungover on the drama of it all.

There seems to be something enjoyable about rediscovering those moments and images which were to be lost to the bin. Holding them, elevating them, painting them, celebrating them and putting them through a juicer to transform them.

 I have yet to see this work in any context other than a book. Even in that format it blows you away. Finding this image of it in situ it makes me realise how much I want to actually see it. I want the expereince of its scale, of its spiritual context, of its engagement with the architecture of the building.

It is a work of staggering power and inventiveness, often credited as being the paitner’s breakthrough, the synthesis of the two great geographic styles of High renaissance painting. The athletic power and dynamism of design associated with Central Italian combined with the absorbing sense of touch, emotive and narrative power of colour and spiritual evocation of paint as light more readily associated as having a Veneitan history.

The combination of these factors, regardless of geographic roots, is a synthesis of upwardly mobile dynamism. All os the formal attributes of a painting are harness to tell of and induce the experience of a rise from the profane lower realm to the spiritual higher realm.

Like listening to choral music, feeling the pulse and melody resonate through your entire frame, its enough to make you appreciate how the sensations can be read as the confirmation of a divine spirit. considering the nature of its subject this is the ultimate compliment of the power of Titian’s painting. If I was not already so cynical towards such beliefs i would be readily converted. As it is it is enoguh to except that it just moves me on a levle beyond mere intellectual deconstruction.

This piece of writting considers the notion of perceiving emotion in art. It is a response to the ideas discussed in an essay of the same name by Damien Freeman, whose essay considers, amoungst other things, Wollheim’s writting on the matter.

 The unique experience of perceiving emotion in a painting seems to come down to a discussion of four parts. Two of these parts are relevant to the production and the others more directly to consumption. Continue reading

I was reading an iteresting catalogue essay on Daniel richter’s painting’s last night. One point in particular stood out.

In talking about the comedy in his work it comments that nothing is funnier than the presentation of the sole of a figures foot.

This seemed a ludicrous statment. Then i was looking at some images I have been making recently, of figures squirming figures on beds. A number of them have twisted and contorted in such a way that the sole of there foot is presented both towards the ceiling and the viewer. They do seem to be the figures who have more wit. Yet i just can’t work out why this would, or perhaps is, funny.

As contemporary image makers I think Crewsdon and Rauch are in the same mode.

They are both products of an approach which seeks to find the unique properties of their medium (be it painting or photography) but which borrows liberally from other art forms in this quest. Filmaking, collage, graphics, advertising are all disciplines which inform their practise.

 In both cases they seek a certain kind of narrative. They are fully aware of the limits and tendencies of narrative in still images. They avoid the temptation to play literature at the game of unfolding a story over time. Instead they make the most of the causal ambiguity inherant in the stilled moment.

For both artists the narratives are always of a poetic sort. That is we are but into a situation where the mood, the drama, the sense of tension are palpably present. Yet the specific nature and context of the scene is not completely clear. How a figure relates to its surrounding, how the various parts combine to a coherent whole and what has happened before or will happen after are unclear.

 The lack of clairty is played upon to give a heightened sense of tension and unease. Crewsdon’s work, for instance, could come straight form a scene in American Beauty or Magnolia. It like some Hooperesque image  but modernised and laced in excess.

In both cases we are left with the sense that this is a point of dramatic tension. That something is on the verge of collapsing, imploding or to be revealed. The moments, in Rauchs particuarly, are constantly left in a state of flux, as if everything could collapse in front of our eyes.

For Rauch’s saturated and unreal colour range read Crewsdon’s move style lighting. They are the formal tools they use to find theatre. It is theatre (in terms of performance, play and a sense of tragedy) which is the central tennant linking their practise.

Article in TCS, October 2008.

Forgiveness and forgetfulness according to De Freston
“Between somewhere and Nowhere” Works by Tom de Freston at the Cast Gallery, Museum of Classical Archaeology

If art is the exploration of humanity at its best, worst and most intimate, then Tom de Freston is definitely exploring human despair for regeneration. To forget, the cleansing experience of Lethe and of course the free-fall of experience and fear.

Icarus II is every man, the fall from grace into the reality of life, the experience of pain and discovery, illuminated within the darkness of the world. Indeed the heroic pilgrims of de Freston’s work are excerpts and metaphors for humanity. Dramatic movement is the key to the expression of experience in his work. Figures fall, swim and shift through the almost rigid settings that frame them, opening the discourse of the inevitable dichotomy between humanity, immersed in the unpredictable sea of feeling and experience, and the seemingly rigid, orderly and predictable setting of life.

But the show is hardly a helpless cry of despair. Ironic cracks in the drowning and falling have left some hope to the viewer; Venus makes shy apparitions that could remind us of Adam’s truth: a man’s salvation from tragic ecstasy might well be found in womanhood.

De Freston poses an intricate, (though incredibly plain and instinctive) interplay of gestual symbolism and human desire with the theatrical performance of society, but he can afford to explore it. For not only his painting is thorough and technically refined, but he also seems to possess a fine perception of composition, both conceptual and spatial. This enables him to coherently place his lonely heroes in a context that succeeds perfectly in conveying the pathetic grandeur of the fall of mankind. Well used geometric spatiality leaves room for almost conceptual composition, which considering the skilful and innovative use of glosses, greatly enrich the works once the juxtaposition is achieved.

This exhibition brings to us a striking collection of “moments” from the history of our own feeling and experience; the foolish and pathetic tragedy of every lonely pilgrim. From The Calm Climber of TESCO’s falling to the suffocated cry of Swimmer of Lethe, the pathos of each moment is clearly challenged and explored with sincerity and sense of humour. I heartily recommend this show. Amongst the pale plasters of Classic glories de Freston’s works have much to say about the ongoing mystery of existing.

  In October 2008 I had to give a one hour presentation of the ideas and themes within my work. This was in conjunction with the exhibition at the Museum of Classical Archeology, Cambridge University.  Attached, below, are the notes for the talk. I have to give a few more later this year and it will be interesting to see how they evolve from this one.  Continue reading

The relationship between the artist and theory is very different to the one the philosopher, critic or historian has. For the artist there can be a certain elasticity in the understanding of the source. They can manipulate and formulate ideas for it for their own, selfish, and painterly ends. The accuracy of understanding is secondary to the impact, influence and development within the artists own practise.

Review by Emma Hogan of ‘Between Somewhere and Nowhere’
Published in ‘Varsity’- October 2008http://www.varsity.co.uk/archive/679.pdf
*****
Tucked amongst the busts and reclining classical figures in the Sidgwick Museum of Classical Archaeology lies an exhibition of Tom de Freston’s extensive work. De Freston has been awarded the 2008-2009 Christ’s College Levy Plumb visual arts scholarship, and is not only talented but extraordinarily prolific. From scraps of paper and backs of envelopes in a display folder to his large oil paintings, Between Somewhere + Nowhere shows not only his finished pieces but also the work leading up to them, and is an exhibition all the more exciting for it.
De Freston obsessively experiments with the human form, cavorting it across the canvas, bodies twisting in distress or leaping into water. His paintings echo or question the work of Francis Bacon, and he sets his figures in similar areas of confinement.Similarly, displayed amongst the permanent collection in the Classics Faculty, his paintings, drawings and sketches crumple the heroic status of the classical statues lying around them, making it more than just an exhibition of paintings, but instead a dialogue, a response.Yet perhaps the sheer volume of work on display is somewhat overwhelming, and this exhibition will need to be seen again.
Alongside large-scale paintings such as the stunning ‘Swimmer of Lethe’ series, where a series of male bodies leaping into water are conveyed through silhouettes painted in oils and washed over with gloss, making the canvas sparkle as though actually wet, are smaller works.De Freston’s sketches are intimate and well-worth seeking out amidst the larger, darker pieces on display. From rows of old men huddled in a line to a man walking a dog on a beach, these pieces seem to capture life in snatched moments, and are a counter to the occasionally oppressive brilliance of his painted work. Yet even these small sketches can pack a punch – one in particular, entitled ‘To the entombment’ haunted me afterwards with its three figures lugging an indistinguishable person or thing into a building.
Looking at the titles of his work such as ‘After the Bacchanal’ and ‘Icarus’, it is apposite that De Freston has been placed in the Classics Faculty – and at times, illuminating, as when the curved reclining gure of ‘Danae IV’ echoes that of the statue of the Son of Niobe underneath it. Yet though such flickering shadows occur in De Freston’s work, his style and force is ultimately his own.

Recently drawings I have been making have been onto surfaces preprepared with a variety of marks and colours. Spray paint, inks drips on and paper soaked then stained with colours. Its initial purpuse was to push through some ideas and to evolve certain uses of colour and mark making. It seems to have become more important than that.

 The image laid on top (arrived at through monoprinting or projections normally) is entirely linear. it is merely a structure; a skeleton. It is, obvioulsy, hollow and transparent, revealing all the marks and surfaces which sit beneath it.

 Certain bits of the figure then get ‘filled’ in. I might, for instance, paint up a head. This more select addition of makrs and colour is obvioulsy, however stylised, towards mimetic ends. Adding colour to describe flesh and form. This sets up a surface dialogue.

Suddenly there are two levels of colour. The marks which sit on the surface without any direct mimetic function. They are detached from such specifics. they are primarily about certain formal delights, about the celebration of the makrs making and presentation on a flat surface. Due to their context and the nature of the image they obviously acquire other roles. Thye take on rhythm and melody, supporting or feeding into the mood of the picture.

The other level, as previously discussed, are those areas of consciously mimetic additions.

The interplay is between areas of the figure which are left and those which are covered. The former creates a sense of a hollow and transparent figures. One which we can reach through and behind to the colour on the surface. The very same colour which we read entirely as sitting on the surface. It has, an odd kind of spatial complication. This fluctuates and pulses with the solid areas, the points where the skeleton is given flesh, where it takes on a sculptural quality.

This gives us two paces, two melodies intertwining with each other.