I suppose this is, in a way, a follow up to your post the other day. More directly it is a response to an image I have just starting working on.

Many of my paintings sourcfe found imagery, staged photographic images and other photographic sources. Normally, however, the image is a fragment of a new synthetic construction. It is analysed and detached from cotnext and given a new location in a woder field.

So it is interesting when the odd image strikes me and inspires a failry direct translation from found image to final image. This was the case with an image I found two days ago of a young british 10m diver in the daily sports pages.

I knew almost straight away I wanted to use the whole iamge. Not to break it up, dissovle chunks or introduce it too a new set of surroundings.

 Initially I did two small drawings and then today I started working on a canvas, 40inch x30inch.

Fisrtly the enlarging of the image is going to give a new sense of heroism to the subject, but this is old, tired and obvious ground to go over.

What interests me is the chocies I deem necessary to make in the recreation of the image. No painter ever copies truthly, even if they want to. They are always forgetting, remering in a new way, fiddlings, shifting and moving the image towards a new altered end point.

Look at Manet’s work, in this instance his ‘Balcony’ painting of 1870. Look how geometric the coposition is, the rigid retangular nature (a direct descendant of David) in its organisation and linear composition. He reorganises what he saw(either in life or in a photographic image) sytemmatically giving it a new sense of order and structure. Its almost a form of purification.

I realised I was attempting to do something similar today, without even being consciously aware of it. Firstly I divided the canvas up, not as the orignal image was, but in a slightly altered structure. I made the height in which both the pool and the crowd sat in identical. Both were 15 inches high, making the two of them create a square (as the canvas is 3o inches wide). This then left 10inches, and a quarter of the height, for the space in which the diving board and diver would sit. Before I had even added in the specific infomration I had divided the space into a mathematical and balacned format, altering the less rigid structure of the photograph. It was intuative, which is what I find fascinating.

Its as if we have a conversation with the photograph and the blank canvas. On the one hand we are looking to fulfill the mimetic function of recapturing the image. On the other we are aware of the abstract formal qualities of the painted surface. We desire to have harmony, to have balance. Its as if the dialogue between painted space and photographic images ensures we are honest to both truths.

 Since then the crowd has been drawn in and the diving board and diver. I now have a layout which will allow me to find a certain amount of autonomy in surface and colouration. Alloowing me to shift away from the specifics of the origianl source to capture what it is I think I saw in the original image. A sense of dramatic tension, a odd interest in the activity as a spectacle, of the audience inside and outside the cnavas interracting. I don’t wan’t to say too much more about this as I want to try carry working on this image without too much preconceived baggage or agenda. Mydesire to paint it has seen me skip a few ofthe normal stages of construction. I have no idea at this point if this enriches or empoverishes the potential outcome.

Francesca Woodman

In my first year teaching no artist has been referenced or spoken about by students more than Francesca Woodman.  She is neither as famous or as in your face noticeable as many other artists, yet something about her draws numerous people to her work. 

Woodman died at the tragically young age of twenty two, having only produced 800 prints. It would be wrong to assume that her fame or interest in her work is the by product of her youthful passing. Of course, as with Cobain/Keats and many others, it adds and projects a certain amount of meaning onto the work. yet the exists an autonomous power to her images that makes the worth discussing.

Woodman’s photographs explore many of the tricks of the trade familiar to student photographers. Double exposure, slow shutter speeds and low lights.  Technically her images are perhaps no more sophisticated than many a young photographer. But how she harnesses these devices to create her images is what stands her out. 

She becomes an actress in empty and eeeire interiors. The architecture becomes a stage which she does not just play on but through. Moving around so that she dissolves and fades into the worn walls.  What remains of her presence in the final image is no more important than what has been lost. Image a figurative response to Whiteread’s work. 

Francesca Woodman’s images seem to be about a struggle or attempt to disappear, to fade away. The architecture is both what traps and what provides a vehchile for some kind of escape. Slippery transient moments are paused. Figures, which seem to be metaphors of wider conditions, seem to resonate with our inherant concerns with the human condition. Rather than her young death being a tragedy which we project onto the images; is it not a case that her images articulate a particular understanding and struggle with the tragic which lead her to suicide. Either way, they are deeply moving image which, in my tired state, I have not been able to deconstruct effectively. 

The above is one of a large series of drawings I am constructing for a series of new paintings. The motif of the falling figure has been a constant in my work. I am now pursuing the potential interest in figures who appear to have already fallen, or more explicitally figures who want to ahve fallen but havn’t/ Pathetic squirming messes on the faller. I have already discussed this in depth in a previous post. This post is about issues around the creation of the images.

In order to create the images I knew I need a quite specific image to work away from. Many of my falling figures have been soruced form newspaper cuttings, found photographs and internet images, all manipulated and shifted in a series of ways towards the end goal. These are different, there is something more specific I am looking for, and hence I need to create the source material for myself.

Firstly I new I wanted the figures to be naked. Not naked in a sense of having an particular erotic connotation but just a ball of flesh rather than a clothed figure. I wanted something more direct and universal than the character based clothed figure.

I also knew I wanted the figure to be one which tries to look as if it has fallen or to be squirming about ont he floor. The most direct route to this was to take photographic images of someone acting the part of the figure. That figure eventually being a metaphor, not an individual.

This leads to the fact  that you are in effect, when we forget the end function, looking to take photographs of figures squirming about naked on the floor. Seeing as this is an odd task I was obvioulsy going to struggle to get a willing model, so have had to use myself. Thus comes the odd situation of setting up a camera and then flinging yourself about on the floor for ten seconds whilst the timer counts down. My first level of paranoia starts here.

I am taking the photographs with an entirely innocent painterly end point in mind. Yet if anyone was to walk in whilst I was writhing about on the floor naked with a camera pointing at me it would appear to be some strange fetish based performance.

The second problem comes in the printing and then working on of the photographs. First I tried to print them at college. I was literally sweating through fear of them printing out adn someone else picking them up. Then they woudl not print. Now I have a fear that they are jammed in the system ready to pop out on some unsuspecting librarian. When removed from the context of their purpose it is surely the kind of imagery which in the public demain could lead to embarresment and possibly getting the sack. I am not sure the principal would buy into the source material for art argument. It would suddenly seem very conveniant.

I then went to print them at home, terrified, of course, that my family would see them and think I had some kind of screwed up obsession.

I was then working on the photographs today. Transferring from a flat photographic image to a linear sketch to find the motif I loosely have in mind. Having worked on them at home and in public spaces another level of paranoia hits in of someone looking over my shoulder and seeing the image.

It would seem hard to explain to someone that you are not seeing this figure as yourself, but merely an image of yourself as an vessel to become some nameless universal figure, which pretentiously is trying to relate to an aspect of the human condition.

This is not to say I don’t see the figures as having an autobiopgraphical element, although that is only a small part of their production. It is just to say that the drawn figure, whilst absed of images of myself, is most certainly not me.

The claim holds weight only once we view the figure in sketch form; even if its bodily proportions are clealry still mine. If anyone was to come across the photographic image being taken, in digital format, being printed or drawn from then I would have major embarresment to deal with.

I can’t help feel that this pathetic dilemma realtes and informs the origianl hypothesis of these squirming figures.

By drawing out a face from a 50’s mag cover I made a discovery which seems so obvious I’m almost ashamed to write it down.  The image is of a pure and wholesome beauty, this is the original intention, however, as i was attempting to draw to draw out the image my first attempt at the eyes resulted in her gaze being directed at the viewer rather than in the original photo where it is directed slightly to the left of the camera’s eye.  The effect of this miniscule change is profound as the intention becomes shockingly provocative/perverted.  and i asure you the face is exactly the same except for this shift in gaze, the eyes even have the same look.  which suggests that she has not changed, its just our position relative to her awareness, therefore the change in effect is solely down to the fact that she is “making love” to us, the viewer, rather than to an invisible person to our right. but her intention is the same so i find the impact of this small change to be really fascinating.  This resultantly shifts the painting from one of mild pastiche to a subject more contemporary and necessary, particularly if i resist the temptation to change the painting in anymore obvious a way from the original photo.  Hopefully this disipline will come through in the final image.  But this is something that i worry about, and my weakness for wanting to impress people often causes me to make unnecessary additions to my paintings.

Its also curious to note that i was very unsure whether to find some way to negate the drawing stage, by projecting or gridding for example, but ultimately i couldn’t resist the challenge that drawing the image imposes.  If i had decided to do this I wouldn’t have made this discovery. 

Tom, i’ve added a few new studies and works, i’ve got a couple of issues i’d like to cross with you.  Firstly, do you think the godzilla in the background of beach scene has ruined it compared to when it had nothing, i’ve been pondering for a few days and can’t come to a decision, don’t kno whether its needed or whether its just the colour and painting of it thats a bit off.  secondly, what do you think about the crucifixion scene, is the image of the crucifxion an empty symbol now, and thus pointless to use, or worse,  corny to use? i quite like the construction of this study and need to work out whether its worth doing a big one.

“Where is the borderline between abstract and figurative? In the artist’s intention or the viewer’s perception? Or can the distinction be made in terms of objective features of the finished work?

The questions are raised by Tom de Freston’s 2D work from the last nine months, a generous selection of over a hundred of which were exhibited in May and June at Stratford Gallery, where he was Artist in Residence. They were in roughly chronological sequence, with a score or so of big paintings interspersed by smaller framed preliminary sketches and free-standing sequences. Tom says he has recently moved into figurative from abstract paintings, but the signs of his concerns as an abstract artist survive and in many ways give a special power to his representations.”read more