28 September 2008
CATOS 08 : this year’s open studio
This year’s Colchester and Tendring Open Studios was really well attended - thank you if you came over and thanks to Peter Jones for organising it again this year. I decided to show almost entirely drawing and work in progress.
Had a really interesting discussions with Jenny and David about the landscape work, the new stuff from Normandy and the older stuff from Alaska and the Thames estuary.
This continued by email and David said something about the landscapes that “speak”. This is a really interesting idea. Here’s what I thought about that :
If artists do our job properly then people will respond to what we do, it’s as simple as that. I really dislike the idea that people have to be ‘arty’ to respond to art. People just have to spend the time, pay the attention. They just have to look and feel.
I was really touched that David thought the buildings speak because that was one of my main intentions. I’m not really interested in the physical appearance of the buildings or landscapes as such, but in their capacity to speak about the people who made and used them. Those coastal defences speak about a whole episode of human history sinking beneath the brambles. In that way all the landscape work is just big, collective portraits ..
Also had a really interesting discussion with Pam, Dave and Josh about the portraits. I really like it when people understand the difference between a persons appearance (snapshots, moments in isolation) and their likeness (what stays in our memory about them, the way we recognise them from thousands of others in a crowd).
I really want to get on with Andrew’s portrait but am not quite feeling brave enough to do very little to it. At the moment the underdrawing and the wash has a real presence that could so easily get lost under claggy paint.
Finally there’s a really interesting show coming up at the Peppermint SHED. Work by Richard Pinkney and Sarah Muzira. Opening on Sat 18 Oct - for details and to get on the mailing list contact the gallery Peppermint SHED
(1) 28 September 2008 at 7:43 pm
Steve
Landscapes speak because they carry the evidence of history. What interests me about these wartime relics is that they are part of living memory, but they are already being absorbed into the continuous narrative of the landscapes. And they are changing from being a scar on the landscape to just being part of it. If we know how to look, we find that (at least in Europe) most landscapes carry signs like this - not necessarily of violence or abuse but use and the passage of humans over time. I’m interested in the way the landscape (and our view of it) accommodates all these changes.
(2) 29 September 2008 at 8:37 am
doug
Landscape as collective portraiture. I think it was George Orwell who said that at 50, every man has the face he deserves. Your face stops being about what you look like and starts being about what you have chosen to do and feel. I feel landscape is exactly the same. The coastal defences in Normandy and the Thames estuary each speak about what we collectively could have done and did do. Good to be talking about this again. Lets start planning a human landscape show for 09!
(3) 16 November 2008 at 10:43 am
Jenny Drake
Hi Doug, Richard told me at college this week, that David and I were mentioned in Dispatches about the Open Event.
What I find comes out also from your landscapes is the pyramid effect of human trials and tribulations.
Inotherwords, the greatest toil and sacrifice is more heavily weighted, like the base of the pyramid, in the endeavours of the common man. He obeys, whichever side he is on.
Whatever language he speaks. It’s conditioning, or programming I suppose.
Thoroughly enjoyed the Life class on Tuesday. Thought Marilyn was an excellent model if sickeningly slim and toned, dammit. Lol.
Jenny
(4) 3 December 2008 at 11:02 am
doug
Thanks Jenny - This thing about obeying, whichever side you are on is a remarkable human trait probably to do with packs/tribes. However, squaddies seem to rarely dislike their enemy equivalent as much as their own officers. My dad had a story about surrounding a distillery in Italy, Germans on one side, 8th. Army on the other. Within days squaddies from both sides had organised access rights between themselves where everybody got a drink and nobody got shot at. Always more sanity at the base of the pyramid.
Did you ever see the Lewis Milestone film called All Quiet on the Western Front ?
(5) 3 December 2008 at 1:45 pm
Jenny
Brilliant yes.
My Dad had a kind of similar experience but with a captured German sub. He was an 18 yr old ASDIC operator. He said that as the sub crew climbed aboad, (they were just kids themselves), the Brits were passing them cigarettes and blankets.
It’s a kind of subtle passive resistance to the state of mind of war. This links nicely with your work, which is an artistic historical document along the same lines I think.
(6) 3 December 2008 at 2:30 pm
doug
Yes - another of my portraits is of Len Sage, who was captured in Singapore and put on the Burma Railway.
http://www.signapse.co.uk/pfs/ourselves/002.jpg
He still has nightmares, but said yesterday he couldn’t understand why we kill our “own kind” in wars. If anybody has the right to think not all humans are our own kind it’s him after the treatment he had, but he remains inspiringly free of bitterness. A true role model.