Cider man! I need osme advise on which comp to use for the sinner piece you like. The one you saw was obviously square, but here are three options. I wont say anything on them as I want an objective view from you. Can just be a gut reaction. Have uploaded a close up of the putti figure as well. Do you like the idea of him having something dropping form his hand? I thought it gives him a sense of being a protagonist of grand proportions. As if the very dropping of an object will spawn (current fav word I think) a whole world of events.

Have also uploaded the Adam/Apollo reaching for the fruit of Daphne and Eve sketch. See what you think.

When do you think you will have the new picture up? Really keen to see it now.

Thanks for the ideas on the lectures. Much appreciated. I am worried, though, that too many of mine are going to go towards painting. i think I need to make sure I give them a wide understanding of all aspects. Will mull it over during half term. Will probs run some ideas past too.

Right. Im off to get on with some of this painting. Got two new Danae ones on the go which are becoming interesting.

Sorry to bombard you with sketchs. I have just been workong on another. LIke with the previous two i cant make my mind up about it. Be interested to have your gut reactions.

“you seem to be working with rigour and a clear head”

i’m actually working with flatulance and a cloudy cider.

I think the photoshop looks brill, really unusual construction, if that can become a painting then success is yours. As for ideas on lectures well i suppose how narrative is being confronted in contemporary painting, that way you’re dealing with figurative painting so it narrows the field slightly and its something i need to cometo understand so with your giant brain you can help me. also an obvious one but a goody, how the boundaries and stigmafiers of modernism have melted away so that there is now no definition between abstraction and figuration. whole load of artists to choose from here a good one would be daniel richter though, his figures slowly appeared out of a continued study in abstraction. One artist that needs to be looked at when you’re talking about contemporary painting is gerhard richter, every painter since has been influenced by him in one way or another, particularly his advocacy of painting anything you want, no boundaries.

I have said for a while that for me it does not matter where my figures, poses, structures, motifs are sources from. I am just as happy to draw from life, lift a pose from an old master, take a newspaper cutting as a starting point etc etc. I have suggested that I don’t believe in a hierachy of sourcve material.

For me my sources are not intended to be intellectualised. I think I borrow a pose or subject for genuine interest, not to make some conceptualised comment on the original. Its not the kind of quotation Manet makes of Titian in Olympia. Its more the kind of borrowing of a signifier to place in a new context and to give new signification too. The sign can be destablised.

Having said all this, my sources have tended to be art historical. Quotes from Titian in particular have dominated. I believe this to be due to having been so immersed in his work that relevant poses or potential borrowings come to mind easily. Yet as the process has perpetuated I wondered if my practise if going agasint my theoretical claims.

Finally, today, I have broken the mould. I was flicking through the Time. (I do h ate giving that prick Murdoch money but it is easy to handle and does have very good sports coverage. I go on the logic of varying my paper as I feel a slight twinge of disgust at any one I buy. If I get the Guardian I am worried im on the slippery slope to left wing idealism. If I get the Telegraph I feel like im one corner away from Daily Mail bigotry, tory boy polotics and eventually Nazism. An exaggeration, obvioulsy, and a clear sign of my pathetic identity crisis. Being white, male and middle class really is a struggle these days.)

Anyway, whilst browsing the times… the depression of England pitiful perfomrance agaisnt Russia was relieved by an image of Wayne Rooney. It was him in mid air, diving, just after he gave away the penalty. It came attention with the tag line, fallen hero. How true. In an hour he went form being a demi god with his volley to a pantomine villian with his tackle. The media perpetuates the cruel rise and fallen, in exaggerated terms, of our new heroes. No longer Greek mortals engaged in epic battles bu minor celebriteios, sports stars and musicians. Just as the mortals found out, they could so quickly rise to heights and then fall to disaster. Consider Icarus and his rise to the sun, Adonis and his love for Venus… the tragedy was spawned the moment they arrived at this moment. As with Keat’s Ode to a ngihtginale, the inevitbale rise is followed by a fall.

All of this goes off on a tangent. The point is that the pose of Rooney is perfect for a new work i have planned. I have wanted to do another ICarus work, with a new composition but needed a new falling figure. I knew I wanted a horizontal falling form, just to open up a new dynamic from that in Icarus II. So hear I have found it.

Now I can take the form of Rooney and remove him from the specifics of his context. Rooney can become Icarus with the slightest nod to irony. The shift is not improtant, the work in no way will be about Rooney. The sources and quotation will be hidden (although revealed here) ONce in a new spatial and aesthetic context its specific meaning will shift. The sense of a fall through air is all that will remain. The sense of a drop from one realm to another, from a height to the floor. All the oither paraphanalia surrounding our contemporary hero can disappear.

The quotation leads me onto a potential reading. As much as the work will not be about Rooney, neither will it be about Icarus. Icarus is not longer an individual, but an embodiment of a generalised ideal. A metaphor for mankinds tragic and desperate reach for perfection and its inevitbale failure. (as Andy pointed out to me, in far better terms) Suddenly it becomes about the human condition, about tendencies within us which bridge the gap from ICarus too Rooney. Relevant and in some ways timless; I think.

Specific narratives are great. They allow us into an intimate world. But I am searching, maybe not reaching, for a kind of narrative which is not constrinaed by the zeitgeist. Whilst my lanague has to be of my own time, we can’t avoid that, the message conveyed should hopefully be non specific to location, geographic or historical.

Perhaps this is pretentious, perhaps this is aiming for the unreachable. Perhaps I am destined fall flat on my face in the search. My failure being the closest I get to conveying the essence of Icarus’ plight.

The idea sounds very interesting Tom but i’m concerned you’re over thinking things at such an early stage. they may be too specified for their own good, you should just get on with it and if the painting decides to change or seems to want to go somewhere else then let it, its a mistake to think the title should be marsyas and then work from that, particularly with how i see the making of the painting going, regarding your description of it. i also think its going to be really difficult to articulate the idea successfully, it may be a long hard journey to find those elusive tones and colours which speak accurately of the emotional centre to the idea. i find this one of the trickiest parts of painting and its probably why my work for so long suffered from colour saturation, i’m still miles away in this respect from where i need to be.
Having said all this, i usually like to let an idea sit in my conscious for a while, and stew, dissolve and turn inside out, which i suppose is a way of assessing if it has the necessary critical/conceptual rigour to withstand the onslaught of its violent assension into plastic reality. perhaps this is all you’re doing, but you should know the dangers of doing it, the pitfalls you can trip into.

on a different note mary the queen and the sower of seeds is very nearly complete, thank the fuckin lord its been a long one! obviously you haven’t seen this yet but one of things i am most happy with is quite a recent moment in its development. i knew it needed something else but i couldn’t work out what, until i had the idea that the viewers eye had to be moved more vigorously in a diagonal direction, that could give the piece an extra boost of energy. only the canvas was too full add anything else and all that was in it was necessary so i added an extra smaller canvas to the bottom right and painted a little dog creature with angler fish eyes licking up the shadows. i think this may be one of those epithany moments. it was simply a logical decision with no intention to raise eyebrows, an organic process of addition simply because it was needed. i love that feeling. and i think it could be an interesting way to work which would allow easier transportation of of paintings as well, if i start off with smaller canvas’ and add when needed. its a wonderfully unfussy way of keeping a painting alive right to the end.

thats all.

Andy, many thanks. Some excellent advise. I shall take it on board and plough forwards.

I am truly excited about your new work. It sounds like a brilliant realisation. As you say, one arrived at through an organic and logical process, not the search for gimmicry. True invention and originality always arrives that way, I am sure. It lasts, it holds, it engages, rather than merely providing a chuckle or a raised eyebrow. I can honestly say i cant wait to see the painting. I was so impressed with the most recent work that I have been eagerly awaiting the new batch ever since. I think your making strieds, genuine realisations and movements forward. You seem to be working with rigour and a clear head.

Right. Going to try get a load of painting done on friday. i am really loving the lecturing and tutoring but it does eat away at the time I have to paint. Need to get this whole life balance thing sorted and then I will be fine. I cant see why they cant all be kept going together, and feed into rather than distract from, each other. Time, as always, will eventually tell. At the moment, however, it is bieng surprisingly quiet.

Did you get a chacne to look at the second lefcture? Got a few ideas to run past you for future ones. Really want to tackle the notion of representation today, but it could be too vast. Might need splitting into different genres. Painting, sculpture and other perhaps.

Christ knows. Anyway, must dash. Need sleep and a clear head before delivery of semiotic waffle.

ps Any thoughts on the photoshop sketch of the sinner and putti?

Andy, you blog the other day struck a real note with me. The whole notion of reaching towards goals which are intangible and constnatly changing. I am working on a picture, in design stage, at the moment which I itnhk might deal with the same thing. All I know at this stage is that it is a conflation of (Adam and Eve) and (Apollo and Daphne). I want to capture that sense of the former reaching up, due to the temptation of the female, towards the fruit. A like the potential of fruit as a metaphor of knowledge and lust. I think that plays well. The story of Apollo and Daphne filters in through another angle. Apollo was struck by Cupid and feel for Daphne. She was struck by an arrow which induced repulsion. Cruel? So she ran and he chased. Just as he was about to catch her she turned into a tree. The unreachable and tragic seem crucial to both. I want to get a more general sense of a figure who seems to be moving through time and space and reaching up, not quite grasping, some other abstract form. I will keep you posted.

Right, back to the subject heading. For a while I have wanted to deal with the story of MArsyas in some form. The works by Kapoor and Titian have both inspired me for a while. Coudl there be a more gruesome story of the tragic nature of the mortals challenging the gods, the danger of two realms meeting. I will use this post to explore how certain ideas are sketching themselves out in my head at the early stages. All these things get lost and edited once works get formed, once we are bored of our new creations. I tihnk it is worth jotting them down when first born, even if its means they are vague, unstructured and unattached. For despite these flaws this is the notions at there most raw, and for me, the most exciting. (although incredibly boring for tohers i suspect)

A synopsis of the story is thus: (as I understand it)

Minerva (I think) drops an instrument from heaven (im not two concerned with specifics in this context) Marsyas discovers it. For me this is the seed of tragedy, it is predestined to fuck up from here on in. He plays many a tune. The crux is that this leads to a musical duel between MArsyas and Apollo. Whoever wins can do whatever he wants to the other. No surprise, Apollo, as a god, wins. If this is meant to be a story of vice and virtue then it is about the foolish pursuit of perfection by mankind. Icarus in musical form if you like (although now I just have images of some west end show production in my head) Anyway, as punishment, Apollo orders MArsyas to be flated. This invovles being hung from a tree and then skinned alive. Brutalistic horror.

I know that what I want to find is a non figurative essence of this story. It does not present me with any narrative or figurative moment which I wish to depict. Titian has depicted the flaying with such timeless brilliance that the scene is rendered pointless in any representational language.

I have been tihnking of how the canvas itself, the painting itself could be a substitute for the body of marsyas. The canvas will read as skin, the paint as flesh and the processes I subject it too could replacate the flaying. The historical asosciations between these various referents and references are clear. Paint as paint and paint as flesh is hardly new. Which is why it is potentially such an exciting language to explore.

I know I want the work to play on forms and makrs laid on, in and udner the surface. So these become like a metaphor of the flaying. The problem is the oprganisation of the forms. I want them to be vertical, so they have a figurative resonance. How to order them is sometihng I am not so sure of. Do the verticals go to and through the edge of the picture plane, or break well before (more like a Rothko rectangle). The later will create a sense of floating forms, the former something more solid, landscape like and eternal.

I am going to look to explore a range of ideas on paper. Treating them all a individual autonomous pieces but hopefuilly leading up to a conclusion in canvas form.

The play on various surface values will hopefully have suggestions of time. I want to create a Titian?Tapies like melody between the sefl refferntial time signature and the narrative one. Harmonising those is key. PLus, this muscial mode of viewing, opened up, will fit in nicely with the subjecdt matter.

in terms of music I want to use colour adn surface to create melancholic rhythms across the whole. So the eyes moves around, as if in song… remidning us of the tragic nature of the subject but also the musical root of Marsyas downfall. PLus, this kind of visual meldoy is something which has been fading as my work as progressed ove rthe last few motnhs. SO much else has improved but that has been lost.

I am at the stage where I tihnk the whole conception could become really crude or really sophisiticated. Execution and desciion making are key. It could so easily become a Rothko/Tapies/Graham pastiche. Hopefully independance will be found along the way. I am also aware that as a process, searching for representation in the lanaguage of abstraction also touches on the work of Jdgkin and Brian Graham, and as such I could be destined to fuck up… just as Marsyas did. Hopefully my punishment will be nothing more than self deprecation. I am not quite ready for a flaying. I like my skin firmly attached to my body thank you.

The thing I find most exciting is a complete exploration of surface and its references to time and transicnee. IF I can get my surfaces to deal effectively with such notions then in turn I tihnk I will be close to capturing the essence of Marsyas’ story.

The organisation of form will also be important. i want to continue my search for a Poussin like geometry. One which takes us across and through the surface. To generate a spatial two fold play on flatness and depth. I want the figures to pulse, as if the alive, as if Marsyas himself is breathing his last heavy breath. I want them to seem half alive, like a spectre. Again, surely that is exactly what a freshly flayed person is. Sat in a hellish limbo between life and death.

This will also be a chance to play with Crimson, Burnt Umber and Napthal red. I want to get a vibration set up between these various hues. Hopefully I can get them to dance in and out of the high ends shadows and lights. I want this to have a theatre, a drama akin but seperate to Titian ‘Flaying of MArsyas’ If I can take one step towards any of these waffled aims I will be happy.

I am still not quite sure how I feel about the process of me using photoshop. But regardless of my doubts I continue to find it a useful program to explore pictorial ideas in. I can cut and paste figural elemtns at pace, move them around and play with composition without too much fuss. It provides a kind of drawing with strengths and weaknesses, but useful none the less. I still find it odd that I use a graphic program when I am producing, or hoping to produce, works of a highly painterly nature. There seems to be a dichotomy between design and final output which I cannot fathom.Besides all this, I have a couple of ideas which are in there very initial stages. I have made no attempt, yet, to even hide the sources of certain quotations. These are nothing more than scribbles, in effect. One is a painting called Adam/Apollo reaching for the fruit of Daphne and Eve. The other is currently looking to confalte a few stories, but is still vague in the specifics. Apart from the obvious refernefce to one of the four sinners- forever lifting his boulder up the hill in hell. The little Bellin child (removed from a Virgin adn child work) seems to be an interest little detached protagonist. Something I am also looking into in a work I am about to start- ‘The Drummer and the dancers.’

The second image wont upload for some reason. Computers!!!! grrrrrr

A room full of sorrow and empty of love
Where the solo sock with no name lay
Divorced from function now sleeping with loathe
His partner had left him with nothing to say.
No foot to fill him with a job to do
Yearning for the smelly of sweaty labour
NO more journeys with his cousin the shoe
Nothing left to say except for…
Where have all the lost socks gone
Leaving us behyind, half dead and alone.

ps am trying to work ways to incirporate your ideas into a future lecture on representation in the 21st century. I may need to pick that mind of yours apart for advise and direction.