I’ve been struggling.
My back is aching and it’s all my fault. Having had a working life in design should be an advantage in making geometric art. But instead it’s ended up reducing me to the role of being my own technician, bent over a table all day.
A painting can be many things. When you see a Bob Ross or a Howard Hodgkin - frame and all - you know you’re seeing a painting. But look at Roy Lichtenstein’s later work and it’s as smooth and flat as an ironed-on transfer; graphic, clean and so precisely applied the painting style reinforces the detached take he has on his work. I’m unsure if knowing that it’s painted and appreciating the labour and the skill spent in disguising that fact means we respond to it differently than if it were just a giant print. But then why else lean in close unless it’s to see that texture of brushstroke on canvas, those wee blemishes that let art breathe, before we lift our Tote bag on the way out.
I’ve spent many Covid days in the studio, calculating, measuring, masking, lining up and spraying. And yet the best I can hope for is to have a bigger version of what I’ve seen on my laptop. Everything is already decided before I start and that’s been my problem. Anything that happens from then on just looks like a mistake. The result is that I’ve been busy removing myself from my own work.
Like a contrite Boris Johnson, happy accidents don’t exist. Instead there are only unimagined consequences which appear in the making; recognising and responding to them then takes the piece in a new direction.
Recently it’s been the bits around the making that have inspired; the overlapped and layered edges of masking tape, the unaligned gaps between the stencils, the irregular patterns and uneven spraying. All have a life and unpredictablity that the designs I’m making - or really applying - don’t. So, while the grids are there to hold the marks of the making and to serve the work, they shouldn’t dictate it.
And although the sellers of Ibuprofen may not thank me, I’m hoping at least my back will.