Sunny, sunny day!
Posted on | March 7, 2010 | No Comments
The sun is shining and my paint brushes are far too dry for their own good. The heavy paper I like to use is pristine and awaiting the tentative first brush with acrylic fate.
- Some Brushes with Fate
The Artist as Entrepreneur
Posted on | February 25, 2010 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine. It is about the ‘grants welfare state’ and proposes that artists should be funded more as investments, over a few years, leading to artistic and financial success, rather than supported through project grants.
Art of England, issue number 68, 2010.
Art and Identity
Posted on | January 25, 2010 | No Comments
Subtitled, What can we learn from art about our sense of identity, this short article explores some of the themes of the Wellcome Collection’s (London) show Identity: 8 Rooms.
Art of England, 67, 2010.
Article: Medicine for Body and Soul
Posted on | December 28, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine. It is some commentary on a conference in London on arts and health. Art of England, issue number 66.
New Work: to December 2009
Posted on | December 15, 2009 | No Comments
These pieces are in a new series called Reflections, and explore inner thoughts and reflective moods.
One piece evokes a walk I had in my local area in rural Kent. The sun was setting and the fields were dotted with a regular pattern of hay bales, some cylinders, some cubes. The sun was hitting them just so. All was really peaceful, and the sky was that blue/red you get just before the sun sets.
The others are ideas I keep coming back to.
Please click here for the new work.
Gallery Review: Périphéries
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
Brigitte Coulombe is an artist in Northern Ontario, Canada. Her work in this show are semi-abstracted minimalistic interpretations of Lake Nipissing. Floating free on the wall, they are unframed. 
This show was held in the La Galerie Du Nouvel-Ontario in Sudbury during November, and while there I had an opportunity for a look. These pieces are quite stripped back in terms of content, so one is forced to imagine a great deal. They are “semi”-abstract as the artist herself sees the lines across her work as an explicit interpretation of the horizon, but at the same time, the absence of a point of reference, does leave one floating free, like the work hanging on the wall.
I quite like these works, partly because they are large and so have a real presence, but also for her stripped back use of colour, and her effort to achieve this lack of place association, despite the works being of a specific place. People who have experienced snow on a frozen lake, and the impression of the horizon, will grasp these paintings quickly.
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Hinge-point: the social media and technology revolution in the art world
Posted on | December 1, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine looking at the impact on creativity in art from the wider use of (mainly) digital technology and social media. Art of England, issue number 65.
Flowers are not the only late-bloomers
Posted on | November 9, 2009 | No Comments
Art of England has published a short piece of mine on older, and late-blooming artists. Art of England, issue number 64.
Gallery Review: Cases
Posted on | October 31, 2009 | No Comments
Cases is an iPod video installation recently showcased in Toronto, bringing 10 artists together to explore the theme of contemporary society’s obsession with health.
The visitor is confronted with a room with iPods, mounted at head height, streaming a video, and a headset for the sound.
The artists and their works:
- Janet Bellotto, A Collection of See and See
- Paula Braswell, Pills
- Jean Bridge, Disposible Membrane
- Laura Cunningham and Elaine Whittaker, Teratoma
- Lynne Heller, Pillflower World
- Joan Kaufman, Paraplegia
- Margie Kelk, Zen Calligraphy
- Ram Smocha, Hairy Up
- Jane Martin, Museum Mexico: cakes and over-the-counter body parts in various shades of pink.
Without singling out any one, they were thoughtful and provocative, particularly because of my own interest in health.
I look forward to viewing them again, perhaps on the web, somewhere. Cases is very good and needs a congenial home.
Cases was on show at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto, during October 2009.
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Physics Envy: or why art theory isn’t
Posted on | September 3, 2009 | No Comments
The September issue of Frieze art magazine is all about ‘theory’ or what appears to pass for theory in the art world. The whole issue reads like some undergraduate magazine or papers prepared by graduate students with too much time on their hands; political polemic blends with obscure language, which even core Frankfurt-school-istas would find hard to follow. All this is to be regretted, as underlying this enterprise is an important problem, namely what are the theoretical, as opposed to philosophical, underpinnings of art itself. Unfortunately, what might have been an informative examination of the problems of theory and art is really just another barrage of intemperate criticism. But is anyone listening or is this just so much solipsism? What’s an intellectual to do?
Physics envy is the desire to have the theoretical rigour that characterises physics. Many will reject this in the art world, but why else would they confuse theory with philosophy if they didn’t see theory as bestowing rigour, logic, structure, and deep meaning? The whole issue of Frieze waffled back and forth between the two terms, citing as theorists people who wouldn’t recognise the word, and citing theorists whose theories lack any basis for verification or falsification. The leap from philosophy to theory is a big one, taken by science years ago when it ceased to be called ‘natural philosophy’. Politics got rebranded ‘political science’, and economics has always had ‘physics envy’. What now for art?
The other distressing theme running through the issue is the Western-centric mind-set; they are still fighting the tiresome battle between Continental philosophy and Anglo (sic) analytical philosophy. In this myopic battle they miss wider philosophical progress. Readers may enjoy the challenges ranging from Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature to VS Ramachandran & William Hirstein, The Science of Art: a neurological theory of aesthetic experience, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6(6-7, 1999):15-51.
What we have instead is writing on the “theory of artists’ minds”, and less about culture, and even less about art itself. But perhaps cultural studies sounds more scientific, (physics envy?) and less, well, less philosophical, and its practitioners more legitimate (in the sense Habermas would use it).
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Recent Work
Ebb and Flow
In the Eye of the Beholder
Natural Rhythms
Urban Mythologies
