I thought very hard about the morality of both viewing, uploading and discussing this image. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy it was one of the images censored as it was deemed to explicit. It was part of a move towards imagery which focussed on the heroic elements in the attempts to save life, rather than the actual lose of life itself.

The voyeristic focus on one individuals descision to jump rather thanawait inevitbale death was considered to be a step to far. An example of desenitised public and the immoral media.

I disagree! I believe this image to be of critical importance. It is something which whyilst incredibly difficult to look at we must look at. Events such as 9/11 get lost in a plethora of figures and the political reverberations and reactions. In this mass of information something critical is forgotten. The loss of life of individuals. To talk of thousands of people dying can lose meaning. To relocate the mass lose of life (of the day and of connected events since) back to a speciifc and singular figure seems to somehow remove us. I say remove as I feel we are now virtually incapable of feeling genuine empathy to scenes of genuine tragedy and death. So immersed are we in the mass media spread of war time imagery that we have become oblivious to it.

Discussing it in such formalistic terms seems inappropriate. All I know is that this image moves me. I find it difficult and uncomfortable to view, but essential. It seems to not only evoke the tragedy of that days events and what has followed, but beyond that more unviersal elements of humanity.

We can close our eyes to uncomfortable imagery all we like, but in doing so we are ignoring truths.

As a final comment- this does not mean I support the viewing of any imagery. There are other extensive sections of images in the last few years which I categorically believe should never be viewed. I am thinking specifically about the horrific beheadings of kidknapped citizens in Iraq. These killings continue as the murderers are aware of the spread of the footage across the internet and media. The intention of the murderers is to get as many people as possible to view the footage. By viewing it, therefore, you are in part providing the justificaition and support for future similar acts to take place. I don’t believe the viewing of the above discussed image (falling man) to be subject to such a network of events.

I hope I have managed to articulate myself accurately in the above post. I feel it is a very contentious area of deabte and thought long and hard about the justification of its discussion. As it is I feel, despite my lapses in articulation, that it is necessary.

Ok so i’m thinking icaroonus and the child and icarus II seem to be your most successful works so far, i wish i could see them close up to geta real sense of how your paint work is improving, all i can really talk about is the balance of these 2 which is where their strength lies. there is an increasing unification of those ideals you hold dear, the articulation of abstract craftsmanship and context within a figurative whole. i feel this is the wrong way of describing it, don’t particularly like the terms abstract and figurative, when really what it is is all those different facets that combine together to create a successful construction, after all we could talk about the brilliantly balanced colour relationships of a titian or goya. i suppose,more than being abstract and figurative, your paintings are responding to photography and modernism and giving this a classical twist. so figures exist within flat spaces, i’m not sure you’ve fully articulated what this is exactly for yet, and because the images are relatively sparse, realising this is perhaps one of your most important challenges. i’m thinking specifically here of how pshycologically intense fracis bacon’s spaces are, i’m also thinking, what the fuck am i looking for? bacon certainly was responding to photography, but also a space that is unmistakingly urban, and an outlook that is equally urban. sharp, mouthy, harsh, stark. what is it you want?
thats about as much as i can muster here, can’t bloody concentrate, the tv is always fucking on in this house.

Nothing else matters
Does it?
When the greatest of love die’s.
When the red rose wilts upon the alter
And the rafters fill with sigh’s.
The lightest of breezes may caress the tree’s,
Yet the leaf will break and fall.
However much the branch would swoon,
Only crows to answer the call.

The pretty young woman who speaks of weather,
Say’s nought much but rain.
The heavy boots of cow-hide leather
Stain the socks that itch the brain.
The jacket pinches below the arm,
Cuts in and then cuts out.
And the heart pinches below the calm,
cut in and then cut out.

What is it I could possibly say
That would help to ease the pain?
All I can say to each of you
Is, “was she ever the same?”

i’m a best man in a few hours and i still haven’t written a speech, and i’m hungover to fuck… i’m a moron.
on an up shot, you’re work is really really improving at the mo, i’m crapping one. and you’ve written the first poem that i actually like of yours. yey. i think people will like the work, and thats not a slight at any commercial element to your work, i think that the pieces are becoming more balanced, harmonious, but more than that, the figurative side to the work seems to be starting to say something that is more interesting, more articulate, and funnier, which is nice.
i’m wishing i could be getting my work as in sinc as these images are.

These have got to be some of the most disturbing images I have ever seen. Genuinely tragic and horrific.

I was quite happy with my two latest paintings untill i got them out of the car this morning. I don’t know if its the thought of entering them for public view but they now leave a sour taste in my mouth. Limited, crude, obvious and weak are all words that spring to mind.

I could be part of a wider issue I have with where my work has gone. I feel I have become, for the time, to obsessed with the narrative. I need to move towards something less specific, without falling back into old, pointless, lost ways of empty abstraction.

After this current body of work is finished I am going to work small; either on paper on small stretched canvases. I need to explore tone, the surface, the process, the figure and its placement with a great intensity and pace. I need to search, with less conscious and predetermined thought, for my subejct matter. Working small will allow me to get through ideas at a quicker pace and also to not hold back in the use of the materials. (it is a depressing reality that financial limitations can stop you applying as thinck and luscious a layer of medium as you would like)

I think in general i know some of the things I am looking for. I need to just allow them toi come together into a coherent form. Some fo those things are (sorry for repetition)

Figures which sit between abstraction and figuration- lost in and formed from the ether of the paint

Figures interracting with there space in some kind of space. Be it falling across the vertical or floating and drowning in the depths of layers. I want to persue a greater use of archietctural and landscape type depth to stage the figures in. I use these terms loosely but a recent drawing which sets a figures agasint forms borrowed from the architecture in a Tintorretto painting is where I am looking, as is another where a section of a turner has formed the basis for where the figure is situated.

I want the play of image, its destruction and formation to play on narrative notions of time, of memeory, of the fleeting and eternalised moments, of transcience. I want image, form and process to evoke tragedy, melancholy of a human sort. The kind of notions dealt with my Innes in his drip paintings, Rothko in his Seagram mural, Titian in ‘Venus and Adonis’, Keats in his spring Odes, Hughes in his Crow and Shakespeare in King Lear. I have begun to realise more and more that tragedy is the root and foundation of what I am trying to get at. From this come many other romanticised notions which I am still interested in articulating.

I feel like there is more I need to say but have to dash. I needed to get this down though.

After a heady few days of intense work I finally managed to get these two paintings finished. I am entering both into the Leamington open. ‘Icarus II’ in the first image. I have placed it next to an image of the same painting a month ago, when I last thoguht it might be finished. at points I felt like it had hardly improved despite layer after layer of paint. Yet this comparison shows that the colouration, tone, drawing and surface have all improved greatly. The second image is ‘Icaroonus and the child’ The two other images were also finsihed recently ‘Danae V’ and ‘Danae III’ (Danae IV is still being worked on extensively)

In theory i have always considered myself a coloursit, in practise im crap with colour. There are only so many times you can let out sighs of delight when squeezing out Alizarin Crimson from a tube. before long you need to realise that its not about one colour but the sucessful interelation of parts.

Since seeing the Hodgkin retrospective and reading some stuff by the wonderfully intelligent Bridget riley I have realised a few things. Enjoying colour and using it well are two very different things. There needs to be a firm purpose, a clear and rational underpinning in what the colours are doing. Rothko, Riley, Hodgkin, Titian, Veronesse, Turner are all exampels of artists intimately aware of the interelations of colours.

I waffle

I am getting close to finishing Icarus II (despite having thoguht i had finished it a while ago. At last colour is working in it, it has comes alive. The matt, light, translucent greeny yellow of the middle strip just sings when placed agasint the warm, dark, deep, shimmering reds of the ‘walls’ either side. no longer is it a falt plane of various greys. it now has depth, vibration, energy and life. If all else is failing, at least for once in my painting life so far i have managed to sucessfully use colours in unison, no just sexy seperate elements from a tube.

The crow sung to cupid over a cup of tea

“Im an animal tr5apped in your dead wings
Im your shadow of unseen things
Im the exrta step before you fall
im everything and nothing at all”

“So you are” cried cupid

Two digestives and an epoch later
Crow started up again

“I am the sun and gravity of your icarus
All your broken hearts and because of us
i am the groin hungry boar of your Adonis
The fleeting moment and the broken kiss”

“More bore than boar” laughed Cupid
“Now fuck of and leave me too my Assam”

A gasp of silence filled three seas and a bucket of weeks
Crow couldn’t help himself…

“But I am your darkness and your death
Rour Autumn leaves and your river lethe…”

to be continued