Marks unmade

2024 has been a strange year in some ways, I started the year with a feeling that I had somehow failed in 2023 to do anything other than sleep and exist and I wanted to move myself forward to find in myself more purpose. So, I wrote a list in my diary, a task to complete for each month, these were ambitious, too ambitious. The list included writing and self-publishing a novel, making new art and having a show, and relocating to the coast. Of the three big tasks I have made progress but not finished any. What did happen, more importantly was a shift in my thinking. If I wanted to have an exhibition at the end of the year then I would have to complete a whole new body of work in a year, something which would not be possible between work and my portrait practice which can take many hours to do.

I started with linen and conceptually an idea that has been fermenting about the fundamental importance of the mark. That the unexpected and imperfect can be more interesting to the eye than the predictable, and that one mark follows another in a way that does not need to be linear but that can be playful. I wanted the simplicity and statement of the black mark, with so many connotations it can be difficult to navigate, but the light cannot be understood without the shadow, and I began to explore. What I came to quite quickly was that the absence was as pronounced as the presence of colour, as the work began to develop over the summer, I took advantage of the weather to start washing linen and canvas to work with stains and residual marks. Moving forward I began to think about bringing in line and perspective to make the elusive more formal, I did this by stitching pieces of work and using the frayed seam to create perspective and textural interest to what could feel like a flat piece of work, scrunching and wringing the fabric began to create more three dimensional perspectives that I left through a loose stretch of the fabric leaving the canvas and linen slightly sagging on the stretcher bars.

There is an authenticity in the first pieces that I’m beginning to lose as I sharpen the process and need to bring back in, the footprint and marks from the floor on the surface created from my movement around the studio and when stretching the work onto a frame, these add layers and have a feeling of confidence in the concept rather than the aesthetic which is important. As the work progresses, I will need to think about how to keep that truthfulness.