Im getting fed up with fluctuating emotions, in regards to my work but in general life as well. One minute I feel elated, the next perhaps just content and the nest utterly down. Its a kind of empty melancholy with no real justification or reason, just a kind of emptiness and hollow feeling. I get it in regards to my work. Its frustrating. Its also a bit pathetic.

Memory is a funny thing indeed.  whats the purpose of it and the way it taints and warps actual events?  and how do we as artists contend with this idiosyncracy, to make this idea react to more than just ourselves (never mind even making it successfully react with our own emotions).  i suppose we could say that it is an evolutionary device that allows the individual to make best use of past events, so if things have occurred which are painful to remember then memory warps the event to be used in the best way for the individual.  but as is always the case, the truth is far more complex. 

these thoughts have been provoked into being through my own rifling through old photo’s, just a few days ago.  I was unsure what to do with myself after the hectic events of my show had subsided.  so i went through some of the visual info i have collected over the past few years and some of the photo’s seemed to perfectly capture the gentle caress of melancholy that has been holding sway over my thoughts recently.  as a result i’m just going to paint them fairly directly onto larger canvases.  i pondered whether this was viable for a considerable time, and came to the conclusion that any alteration to these rather simple but various images would drastically affect that feeling which i wanted to capture.  i’m still not sure whether they will end up as photoreal reproductions, if they do, well whats the point in doing them at all, why not just enlarge the photo and save the effort?  well i think the effort is part of the fundamental point, why have i invested this time and effort into these particular images?  but i feel the need to do it, to invest them with the sense of grandiosity and history that only a painting can achieve.  i am finding something incredibly romantic, personal and powerful about this act.

 i am increasingly coming to believe that our own bodies and minds are not so well evolved as to twist everything to our own benefit.  more and more i see my mind works against me, or i work against my mind.  the only dreams i ever have are nightmares of various intensities of horribleness, and i don’t see any positive effect from this continued onslaught, indeed i am convinced that although i have not always remembered my dreams throughout my life, that this has always been the case, even when a child.  now i could say (and it is probably true) that these nightmares are responses to how i deal with events in the real everyday life,  they are basically occurring because i dont deal with issues in the correct manner. but then, equally i can’t see how the dreams then cause me to change my actions in anyway, the only way they change my actions is by making me shrink more into myself and thus deal with the issues even less.  and so this all acts to make me believe that evolution has not played such a big part in this particualr aspect of brain work.

freud would be proud in this fantastic conclusion don’t you think, really, this has not been an hour wasted.

A drip is what paint does if of a certain fluidity and applied to a flat surface which has moved any degree from the horizontal to the vertical. It can serve many functions. It talks of its own movement across the surface, reminding us of the artists application. As it runs across the flat plan it create veils, walls and deep recessive atmopheres. It has a language which can be both learnt, discovered and developed. I think this it true.

Maps…

Maps are strange things. A man made denoter of space and place. A result of our desire to order and own the land. An attempt to give structure and logic and stop it dissolving into meaningless fragments. It describes journeys we can take or have taken. When put in the context of a painting it talks of our self refelxive painterly journeys. It also alludes to other narratives outsdie the frame.

Grids… 

In painting a grid references the frame. It is a reoccuring theme in the history of the discipline which reminds us of the plastic construction of form across the flat space. It is a devise which focuses our attention on a paintings autonomy.  

A grid talks to us about space and order. A utopian fabricated desire for coherence, understanding and perfection. It relates directly to mankinds various searches for such metaphysical understanding. In history, science, religion, polotics, sociology and archeology we create grid to order our ditritus.

 A grid reminds us of paintings ability to refer both to and beyond itself, from the specific to the metaphysic.

A stage is an arena for performers. An architectural construct which by its very nature suggests the presence of humans. A stage alone is, therefore, intrinsically imbued with melancholy. A prescence which talks of an abscence. They speak of a past which has gone and are a conveyor of a whole history of events.

A painting has always presented itself as a stage. It has always been both a window onto a performance and a wall onto which we perform. This theatrical duality is continuous and in no way a dichotomy. It is not a recent condition. The alberttian window paradox is inherent in the very character of the practise.

 Spent an hour rummaging around in the loft yesterday. Came across a load of old slide photos. Some from trips to Devon, some from a trip with Will to Montserrat. There was a strange nostalgia to these found memories. It was like bringing back this little particular snippets from the past which had been erased from the more general memories of those times.

There was seomthing about the worn, battered quality to this particular image which resonated with this idea. Since having it back I have reremembered that whole day, which had otherwise been lost. Wandering along the beach, taking various photos for what was, at the time, an A-level art project.

I find memory a strange thing.

“No Questions Asked”

The website, My Name is Ferdinand have asked me to answer the following questions to post in their section, ‘NO questions asked.’ So here goes. Have a browse through their website, its a really interesting venture.

http://mynameisferdinand.wordpress.com/

Okay, the questions and answers:
My name is?
Tom de Freston
What is art for?
I sometimes really do wonder if its for anything. It always seems to be one of the last additions and first subtractions in various cultures. This surely makes it the least necessary and most dispossable. Perhaps thats a bit cynical.

I certainly don’t believe arts purpose is that which is outlines by curent educational, institutional, governmental and museum theory. It is not just their to serve some measurable sociological venture. Such instrumental ideals are utterly flawed.

 Art can’t live int he losed roo idealism of Modernism but its socail impact is both indirect and unmeasurable by empirical and statisitcal means. When art is only shown or taught about becasue of its ability to have such a role, then we are missing the point.

I digress. Art’s point? To make sense of things from a particular vantage which need not be constrained to answers. To move clsoer to an understanding of our place in this world, both present and historical.
Which types of media do you work in?

I paint. This is then filtered through an interest in collage, found imagery and some computer based stuff. But primarily it invovles taking various substances and laying across two dimensional planes.

Who or what was your first artistic influence?

I want to say something terribly impressive, but im pretentious like that. But I think my first artisitc influence was my brother. He is quite a bit older and I have never lived with him. When he visited my Dad in Colyton one year I saw him drawing some chess pieces. Memory seems to suggest this led to me wanting to draw him. I remember getting this real buzz out of the ability to move a pencil across a page, to create lines, to make shadows, which could be builot up to look like this thing that stod in front of me. Its quite a basic fascination but the realisation of the mimetic power of a pencil amazed me. I suppose I was about eleven.

 In terms of first artistic influence I remember falling for John Bratby’s work when i was quite young. The headmaster of the school I was at owned a number of his works.  Chunks of paint arrogantly pulled around to capture kitchen sinks and mundane domestic still lives. I am not sure how much I like him now. But all the things I liked about his work, subject matter, approach and style, do seem to reoccur in many artists I like.

And your most recent?
Matthias Weischer, Daniel Richter and Neo Rausch have been a major influence since Andy directed me otwards them and Charlotte Mullins book on the figure in contemporary painting provided a great starting point.

Last ngiht I went to Brian Graham’s new show of works. I wrote my dissertation on his last show ‘Layer by Layer’. The remit of our discussion for the dissertaion spread wider than expected. He made me realise the importance of subject matter, the need to keep eprsisting and believing, the importance to follow your own goals not what you feel you should be painting and a belief that it is actually possible to start creating images which get somewhere near that unseen/unknown point on the horizon you are heading for.
Are you in it for the money?

Don’t be silly. Anyone who is in it for the money, certainly who paints, probally does not have a very good economic brain. There are so many easier roots to making money if that is what drives you.

Money, though, can’t be ignored. If I start making a decent amount form my paintings then that obviously means I can focus more time, energy and money into its production. So there is no point in living ina totally idealistic world which ignores the sytem we live in. 

I certainly would never make work with money as my soul aim. I don’t do commisions as such. I make art in attempt to reach for some particualr values, which whilst I am not always sure what they are, are central to my practise. The moment this is displaced for some production of an object for money alone then I may as well be doing something else. I would sooner be teaching another day in college, and getting paid, then churning out some work of art I dispise to get a few quid.

Politeness or rudeness, which do you prefer?

Politeness in life, although I am perhaps too polite at times due to weird social paranoias. Perhaps somewhere inbetween in my work. I certainly would not like the idea of my work being called polite, but eqaully I don’t think it is brash or rude. Perhaps it is rude in that occasionally it makes me promises or offers up solutions then never follows them through. That annoys me and seems rude.

Joseph Conrads Narcissus used in a comment on Francis Bacons figures from Deleuze

That infamous nigger rushed at the hole, put his lip to it, and whispered “Help” in an almost extinct voice; he pressed his head to it, trying madly to get out through that opening one inch wide and three inches long.  In our disturbed state we were absolutely paralyzed by his incredible action.  It seemed imossible to drive him away.”

Bacon’s scream, is the operation through which the entire body attempts to escape through the mouth.  always bacons figures are attempting this action, not just through the mouth, but by vomiting, excreting, sex. the fact that its an impossible action, to break free, or rather through, yourself, makes it intensely disturbing.

william burroughs was also successful in evoking this phenomenon.

Johnnys body begins to contract, pulling up toward his chin. Each time the contraction is longer. “Wheeeeee!” the boy yell, every muscle tense, his whole body strain to empty through his cock.

i just think these examples are truly fantastic in encapsulating that way we seem to work against ourselves. the conscious and subconscious are not insinc, even if they are speaking of actions that are more specific and intentional.

I thought I’d put up a post, to let you know that i’m still alive and to try and have a think about what i’ve been up to.

Well i’ve been at a meeting all day today where different people have been talking about the roll of art in the public realm.  which really dosn’t have much to do with painting necessarily but was interesting non the less.  leo fitzmaurice did a talk, he’s an artist based on merseyside who’s getting an international reputation,  he was speaking about one project where he and a group of artists moved into a tower block in liverpool that was due to be demolished.  so only about a third of the tower had residents in it.  he and a group of other artists lived there for 5 years building up a dialogue with the residents, learning about them as individuals, their fears about moving away, the upsides and downsides of the tower blocks, and really became a mediator between the housing agency and the residents, all the while creating work that responded to what he was experiencing.  he spoke about how it started off as a purely selfish act of basically getting loads of free space to work in, but eventually became a very much symbiotic venture between the artists and the rsidents, and the brief for the artists was that there was no brief.  they could choose to interact or not with the people around them and could do whatever they wanted with the view to having an exhibition near to the end.  but essentially they all ended up responding in one way or another with their surroundings, basically i found out that through years of neglect the population of liverpool has droppped from 1m to 450000 in the past 40yrs or so. in the past 2yrs the population has dropped a further 6000, and this was supposed to be a boom time for the city.  quite simply everybody is going down south for work.  and this is the reason why tower blocks are getting demolished, because they cannot be filled and thus sustained.  i think its fascinating because certain housing regeneration drives are now seeing artists as being central to their push to hault this mass exile.  basically, artists can offer creative responses to persistent problems, they can offer the ideas which can give a place that has lost its identity, the possibility of a new identity.  I can’t really remember everything that was said because i was being talked at for 6hrs, but i think this outlook can, if managed properly, become an incredibly positive drive for areas in need.  artists in general naturally gravitate towards those outsider areas, the cracks between the pavement so to speak and so if they are given  the proper liscense to be creative and then there are people put in place who understand the risk/gain effect of trusting and managing the artists initial intent, rather than jumping through the hoops of expectation and dumbing everything down for mass appeal, the artists then naturally begin to fill void spaces with potential.  the success seems to be acheived by opening up a dialogue between the community, the artist, the counsillors etc, not just taking the easy option and making something empty and vacuous for mass anaesthesia.

so i now wanna go live in a squat in liverpool, fancy joining me?  although i’m not sure how painting, which is such a bourgoise practice by the nature of its construction would fit into this ideological tirade. perhaps we can work on two fronts.

 the rest of this past week i have been in schools making lanterns for a parade we had on saturday.  kids are pretty damn amazing.  but i haven’t been able to do any work for my show, which is now upon me, and i’ve suffered a crisis of confidence.  spent the last few days so depressed that it was the greatest effort to even get out of bed, speaking to people or looking someone in the eye was just a chore i couldn’t face doing.  i don’t know why this happens, dunno whether its a chemical imbalance or that i just deal with things in the wrong way, but i know i need to work my balls off to get the pics up to scratch in time.