Thursday 22 August 2013

Questions, proposals & painting the innate ... 

subliminal references & cognitive reflection

Its over a year since I embarked on this journey and it has certainly been an enlightening, enriching and a productive passage of time; productive mentally & physically, where there is a need to create and a need to reflect, internally and externally. I know that I need to make work but in trying to create from a completely unknown starting point makes for very topsy turvy internal voyages of discovery and the realisation of the continuous quest for bringing together a multitude of elements together at the same time, where all of these separate elements are perfectly aligned : me, colour, mark, speed, weight, opacity, translucency, dilution, contrast etc... so many etcs.... is difficult.

studio 18 Aug

There is no doubt that the funding I received allowed for a freedom in approach and this brought about changes that are still being measured. It has enabled me to reconnect with myself and my values that had possibly been eroded over time. Naturally this can make for an uncomfortable experience. It is not always easy to put your hand up and say, ' somewhere, somehow I got lost and I don't really want to admit to that because if I do a whole lot of other stuff will present itself and demand my attention and ...'  
Traps, pitfalls, comfy slippers, whatever analogy you want to use, as visual practitioners we can lose sight of the bigger picture - pun intended.  It's never too late though to revisit your core values and realise that you may have strayed off course, unintentionally, but off course nonetheless. Just because you think you can paint & draw does not make you an artist. What does? Well ... without artists there would be no answers because there would be, no questions. 

So, the work, well it has become more stripped back. I have tried to push the simplicity as mentioned in a previous post, pursue the exploration of colour relationships and division of space.
The exploration of the idea of imagined medical cross sectional slides continues - not intentional from the outset but realised on reflection.


Apoptosis                                                87cm x 55cm




Resistance
                                                   87cm x 55cm




 
Lesion      
                                                               108cm x 100cm
There are two examples of the next image because as mentioned in a previous post it is difficult to photograph images that have both gloss & matt on the surface without losing its impact that can only be sensed in situ via movement of the viewer and light on the surface.



Non Sequential Division    
                                                144cm x 114cm







Remission  
                                                         70cm x 48cm



Internal Assault  
                                                           88cm x 70cm




The Moment of My Conception    
                                         145cm x 118cm

Finally, website is live but still in the process of being populated - niallcampbell.info