BEAUTIFUL MISTAKE

LOOKING BACK AT LAST SUMMER'S BIG PROJECT

Below: In the photo you'll see that backwards 'Z' shape that shouldn't be there. Adding deliberate mistakes, and leaving in real ones, can enhance the work and provoke innovation.

[ Can you spot the other anomaly? ]

These photos are from the 'Test Install' session that I undertook last summer, with the help of fellow Birmingham artist Rob Walsh. It was a full-scale practise session in preparation for a mural design for BPN Architects summer art show. Looking at the photograph, and then reading my thoughts about it in last year's blog entry, it seems I failed to highlight one of its most interesting aspects. 

I talked about how 'big art' happens at a different tempo. That, because of its scale, I'm allowed more time to think about the decisions made, and why I make them.

Below: There are actually two 'anomalies' here.

In my paintings, and in these murals, I always put 'mistakes' in. Some are genuine - for instance, if you rule lines across a canvas, it can bend in the middle and disrupt the measurements. I found that I liked the mistakes, and they helped me to keep the art from becoming formulaic. They prevent the viewer from making any assumptions as the eye travels around the composition. And also to partly keep me amused while I undertake the laborious task of scaling up something that is usually as small as an A5 postcard. I hasten to add that this is not 'Op Art' where the viewer's eyeballs are dazzled by some flashy optical trick. 

I want the viewer to suddenly stop and think, 'Wait, is that a mistake?' If he stops long enough, he realises it's deliberate, and at that moment a connection is made between us. The ideal response would be for the viewer to have a private laugh about it. It's like a musical piece that relies on repetition, and then at the last chorus, amuses the audience by deliberately throwing them off.

Rob and I used to discuss these all the time, and they highlighted the differences between our two styles. If a piece looked too 'uniform' or 'designed' I would always point out that it would need an 'anomaly' to break it up. I've sometimes mentioned how my art has a musical or linguistic foundation. 'Anomalies', 'verticals', 'chevrons', 'returns'...we developed our own site-specific short-hand while doing these pieces. Rob is a geometric artist of mind-boggling exactitude. I'm completely the opposite, but to an untutored eye, our work could look similar. I may do an article looking at this phenomenon sometime in the near future, so stay tuned.

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Below: OK, yes, this bit is 'Op Art'. We were testing the materials and having a laugh seeing how it works. But for me, this is too obvious a pun.

BLACK BOX

When in doubt, just paint over it...but save a little bit from the previous iterations, just in case.

Acrylic On Canvas, 50cm x 50cm

DETAIL SHOTS

U.S...AIN'T

Experimenting with random shapes, saw a familiar form trying to emerge, so ran with it. Fans of Philip K. Dick might be especially appreciative - PKD is a big influence on a lot of contemporary artists. Not that you'd know that if you go by what academics write, but you can usually spot aficionados a mile away, just from the art they produce.

Below: Alt History Flag, Vector Drawing with texture, 2017.

ARAB...ESQUE

Experimental Work, Digital Vector Drawing, 2017.

CHEQUERED PAST

Love the tape on this info obelisk.

Birmingham, 24 / 5 / 2017.

SAMPLER

Busy experimenting with shapes and colours. I'll post some examples as soon as I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

[ANOTHER] KIND OF BLUE

The great thing about being an artist is that even when you bunk off work, you are still technically at work. I finally got to experience some 'British Summertime' today, so I absolutely made the most of it.

YESTERDAY [ 09 05 2017 ]

Below: Current work-in-progress, photographed with bright sunshine coming through the studio blinds.

TODAY [ 10 05 2017 ]

Found this amazingly huge ceanothus bush just off a busy road in Worcestershire.

Studio colleague and my blue Kona bike.

My variation on a Greek salad: Slice loads of grapes and blueberries and throw those in with the leaves, olives, feta cheese, olive oil and vinegar.

SEE ALSO: A KIND OF BLUE [ MAY 2014 ]

[MORE] SURFACE TENSIONS: CURRENT WORK IN PROGRESS

Okay...so what happens when the piece you are working on, no longer looks any good, but isolated areas look beautiful? This piece has been constantly evolving - on and off - for two years. It's a 60 by 60 acrylic on canvas, and I don't know whether it's because of the size or proportions, but despite scores of revisions, it has never looked satisfactory to me. 

You've seen from previous posts that I am fascinated by what is happening on the surface of my paintings. I love holding a painting in my hands, and playing the light across it, reading it from side to side like an engraving, or a piece of lazer-etched nanotech, or a 3D topographical map. To me, they look like buildings, cities, or even worlds.

This is how minimalism probably started: Cameras got invented, and artists inevitably would document their work, focusing on details of interest, and then come to the same conclusion that I have - that the details look better than the actual painting.

I used various new techniques to get the paint to behave differently. I like to degrade the surface to keep it from looking too smooth. I want it to look both rigidly uniform, but weathered, like a piece of modernist architecture that hasn't been maintained.

I asked my studio colleague for her opinion the other day, and apart from finding the current colours 'revolting', she observed that it's not the composition that seems to interest me, but the lines on the surface. She said it's no longer a painting, it's an installation. 

I find that perhaps it's more like a sculpture, because I'm constantly attacking the surface with a knife, or peeling bits off, or waiting until the paint is like a kind of plastic cement, and trying to mould it.

Since these pictures were taken, the painting has changed again, which is why I won't show photos of the whole piece. And also because I assume people will find it as anticlimactic as I do.

i [ am a ] CAMERA

I was given an iPhone recently, to use as a music player. Then I discovered the camera...

Below: Mixing colours for my 'concrete' paintings.

I'm actually shocked at how good it is. In fact, this phone is better than my actual camera. The only thing that will prevent the iPhone replacing the old camera is because no-one at Apple has thought to attach a wrist strap for those tricky leaning-out-of-a-building shots.

Below: A police helicopter, hundreds of feet above the city. No rotor blur!

Below: Birmingham reflected on a communal hand-dryer.

Below: I love the design of this poster.

Below: The Typhoo Building ( near my studio ), where Spielberg filmed Ready Player One, last year.

Below: Birmingham UK, as seen from the Custard Factory.

SPLITTING INFINITIES [ THE ABSTRACTION OF MODERN TRAVEL ]

Umberto Boccioni, the Italian Futurist, recognised the disconnected psychological, temporal and geographical phases that you experience when travelling. In his 'States of Mind' paintings, he acknowledged three distinct conditions: The Farewell; Those Who Go; and Those Who Stay. 

For me, travel represents nothing but the anxiety of alarm clocks, check-in deadlines, and air turbulence.Therefore, when I have to catch a plane, I will not eat or drink all day, as I'm too paranoid about being in an air crash on a full stomach. Starvation over a long-haul journey inevitably sends the body into shock, and therefore heightens the sense of disorientation, terror, and paranoia. Only when I have achieved this ideal state, do I start thinking like a true artist.

Despite all the negative aspects, travel can still be a pleasure. For example, I'm a huge fan of Switzerland. I love how it's so clean: Clean houses, clean lawns, clean towns, clean mountains. They even have clean air. I go there at every available opportunity, sometimes even for three hours at a time.

The pictures in this series represent another possible addition to Boccioni's 'States' - The Stop-Over.

Source of inspiration, below: Zurich Airport's sparkling concourse and lines of perspective.

My point, is that disorientation inevitably leads to abstraction, and when that occurs you must seize the opportunity to record it.

So, when deciding on a new 'wallpaper' design to go in the background scroll of my pop-culture blog, I remembered all those shiny surfaces in Zurich airport's concourses, and thought that they might be appropriate. For the current edition of my blog, I wanted something dystopian, robotic, sinister and Ridley-Scott-looking.

I have a folder of 'real-life abstract photographs', and I used repetition to see what effects I could achieve. 

Note: No other CG techniques were used. These are unretouched photographs, simply cropped, flipped, and repeated.

Below: One of my first Zurich Airport abstracts, from 2012.

Below: Back in 2012, I must have photographed this logo as a possible inspiration for a future 'Alexi K' logo.

The only thing that bothers me about flying, is being up there and suddenly not flying.

An example of Financial Abstraction, below: 

Hide your billions from your government, and celebrate your good fortune by eating chocolate gold out of a miniature vault.

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Below: The Alexi K 'Smiley Man' logo, inspired by the old Swiss Air 'box logos'. I was aiming for just the right amount of corporate and frivolous.