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.