Life, Art, Murder & Weather
3 Painters - About the Collection
The ‘3 Painters’ exhibition opened in June 2016 and was a good show, though attendance was quiet in it’s duration at Colin’s gallery; I made a couple of sales alongside Colin and Debbie, with two more paintings from the show being sold in mixed gallery exhibitions later that same year. When the exhibition was finished, I wrapped up the paintings and stored them at home, feeling somewhat disappointed in not achieving more sales, nor the opportunity of attaining a possible solo show at the gallery as discussed with Colin at our meeting at Debbie’s home - that factor was drive enough for myself to complete these paintings, experimenting with a more ‘commercial approach’.
By the end of the show, I had already begun to concentrate on a particular theme that appeared within this new body of work - monochrome paintings that were of a more familiar style to myself, yet which also seemed to be going somewhere else in content, and for several months, I couldn’t make any sense of the narrative they contained; by the end of that summer, perplexed by what I was painting, I decided that my artistic mojo had finally run out on me.
Not long afterwards, the dreadful event occurred which made myself re-evaluate everything in my life, including the artworks painted that year; I separated the ‘dark’ monochrome paintings from the ‘3 Painters’ works to clarify what I could see that had been worked out in them, selecting these for the ‘Quietus’ show in 2018, with two of the colour works from ‘3 Painters’ show embedded alongside them, ‘Going Down’ and ‘Sunday Evening’, complimenting and highlighting the exhibition well.
Prior to Lockdown #3, I felt it necessary to unearth these paintings from the ‘3 Painters’ show near the end of 2020 as they'd started to reappear in my mind's eye once more - they work really well together. ‘Sound’ and ‘Over & Above’ are works that show coastline as well as an ariel view of the landscape - both proto-‘Quietus’ elements, whilst ‘To the Flats’ is similar to the same theme, i.e. brooding sky, coastline and habitation lights - just the wrong colour, and definitely less weird. ‘Outskirts’ and ‘Light Virus’ were inspired by a night time holiday flight home, the plane circling the city to land, whilst ‘Sky Star’, although completed after the show, is included here - it fits. ‘Pointer’, ‘Dusk’ and ‘Still’ work well too, though ‘Up against the Sky’ remains my favourite - with twilight falling upon a desolate space, you can feel the evening breeze upon your face, a solitary oak bearing witness to the end of another day.
I’d worked hard to achieve desired results, especially on the colour paintings, however, the murder detonated my head and whilst I was able to work as usual with the monochrome works and depict all that I felt at that awful time, the will - as well as the ability to depict full colour landscapes - disappeared.…………but not forever.
Upon the end of the Quietus show, I threw myself into full-on recovery for myself and an element of that self-made programme included attending ‘graff’ meetings at various locations, mainly to meet new people and to pick up on the thrill of others creating art, taking that inspiration back into my studio; I really enjoyed the excitement of watching new, original art being created out of nowhere, albeit on-the-hoof, and after a couple of meetings, I got the bug. Within the year, I had completed several original pieces, canvases now the size of a wall, with both concrete and spray paint having re-birthed full colour images that suit the medium completely - the ‘cartoony-feel’ cityscapes that didn’t seem to fit in on canvas boards and within my usual subject matter, now feel at home in the big outdoors, displaying a life that is seen and appreciated by others.
Images: all copyright STUDIO SiX
