Painting on Photographs

Photographs not only act as documents of places, visited events etc., but also allow the viewer a window to maybe see beyond the reality of the shiny card and glimpse into a world of frozen time and space. Naturally the viewer does not have the ‘real’ experience of that time and that space, but they may have had a similar experience to that portrayed. However, this is not necessary to appreciate a photograph. It is this factor that makes photography an interesting medium to work in, with almost immediate points of reference for viewers to grab on to, more likely to see an image which they can recognise as the truth, a reality or fact. Photographs generate interest in most people, glimpses of someone we know looking stupid, a baby, a sunset. Glimpses of the real world and memory provoking.

It doesn’t actually matter what experience, or emotions the photograph is trying to convey it is still a ‘second-hand’ image. The interest is gathered by the viewers recognition of the familiar.

We seem to accept this concept of the second hand experience quite naturally, and in many forms and styles, painting, music, film and even food production. In each case it is the communication of the illusion that is imperative. A disconnection from the viewers immediate environment, escapism in short.

When painting over a photograph I am adding a real physical experience to it, more realistic than perhaps even the photograph itself. The experience has not necessarily any connection with the object or scene that the photograph is trying to portray, but more of a reaction to the photograph itself, taking it for what it is, actual paper, thus shattering any illusion that the photograph was perceived to hold. A physical experience of the photograph, touching it.

When a photograph is being produced it should not be touched unless it spoils the illusion, of reality which it is trying to convey.

scratch painting - "On Photographs gallery"

The photographic paper/ card is hard wearing (can take a lot of abuse). It is none porous so it is a physical effort to force pigment and marks onto it, I paint over pre-exposed , already developed photographs recycled from the dark room floor. It seems more organic to "paint" over a preexisting image rather than face the white page.

Photographs are representative of mans control over his environment. The constant insistence that all around him must be monitored and recorded, and therefore regarded as fact, even to the extent of believing in the old adage ‘the camera never lies.’ When we know full well that this isn’t true, as we ourselves are influenced by such lies.

The majority of the "On Photographs" artworks were made as a part of a sequence usually in groups of twelve, sixteen or twenty four. Each image thus becoming an individual part of the full story, as if it were a frame in a roll of film, a sequence tile in a storyboard or even a chapter in a book. The images being connected to their neighbour by the physicality of my actions.

I will expand further on this method and my thoughts behind it in a future post and will also include an example of its effectiveness when adjacent to a written piece of abstracted text.

bounce - "On Photographs gallery" art4oka.com

drop - "On Photographs gallery" art4oka.com

Sound Inspired

Before I started taking painting and drawing seriously I used music as a form of expression, playing guitar, harmonica and drums as well as writing music and lyrics. These musical influences have never really left me, they have just be vying for my attention along with painting and drawing throughout the years. Sometimes even working together in such creations as installation pieces or even animated digital sound tracks. Perhaps, even influencing specific painting projects. For many years painting and drawing held a significant percentage of my attention and satisfied my creative urges.

I started producing digital soundtracks for various video art pieces that I was making at university. I sampled and manipulated sounds to create original soundscapes. It felt like I was was creating some sort of audio magic. My interest developed further into creating standalone digital music tracks, using sampled, looped and adjusted sounds.

After a number of years of exhibiting my art and trying to make a living out of my paintings I decided to switch my focus. I absorbed myself into making digital music, I was also at this time regularly performing in a funk band as a turn-tablist. Over the next few years I produced enough music to complete more than three albums of original digital music and soundtracks. It was around this time I enrolled for a M.A. in Electronic media at Oxford Brookes university, in an attempt to validate my skills, experience and interests.

(digital representation of bass notes, reversed)

I haven't forgotten, the title of this post is "Sound Inspired" (same name as the gallery on art4oka.com where you'll find relevant pictures.) I figured background was important. As I am sure you appreciate, producing and editing any music whether analogue or digital takes time. With the digital stuff it is hours staring at a screen and listening intently for the slightest glitch. Hours race by and suddenly it is 4 o'clock in the morning, again! Visual digital representations of sounds burnt into your brain, it becomes your world, your environment. after a "session" I often would write poetry or prose reflecting my experience and/or relationship with the computer as a creative tool. I will publish some of these in a later post. I also sketched drawings on scraps of paper whilst listening to playbacks of the sounds I was making. Inspired by the moods created, the suddenness of the rhythms and even the shapes of the individual sound's graphic representation. I have used these rough drawings to later inspire larger paintings some of which are on display in the "Sound Inspired" gallery.

(clanging birds, drawing - Wide Draw gallery - art4oka.com)

(clanging birds, acrylic and charcoal on paper - Sound Inspired gallery -art4oka.com)

Another one of my influences of the "sound inspired" painting project occurred when I saw some drawings made by young children. They were a part of a physiological study about children's visual interpretations of the world around them. The simplicity of the line and the power to communicate the meaning inspired me. We sometimes have a lot to unlearn. One of the artworks that started with this inspiration is "Expressive voices, dark noises ." Inspired by one child's drawing of someone coughing.

(Expressive voices, dark noises, acrylic on hardboard - Sound Inspired gallery -art4oka.com)

Naturally Influenced

Art4oka.com is about introducing my artworks to some of the world, and so I will try introduce most of the aspects of my painting and drawing and the influences of my creativity.

I have mentioned in previous posts and on the "inspirations" page of art4oka.com that one of my main influences and or inspirations is the natural world. A quite vague statement that covers a lot of "ground". I simply mean that being outside in wild(ish) places has a profound effect on me and I am sure it does on others too. Trying to capture that whole feeling in an artwork (painting, drawing, photograph or even film) is very difficult indeed, if not impossible.

This natural outdoorsy experience can only be hinted at, with the viewer attaching their own experience to the artwork. I delve into this subject in a bit more in depth in a forthcoming post.

In the art I created in the years before my university days and also to a degree afterwards I used natural objects to influence the artworks, not in a still life or landscape way. I took the texture and colour and forms of gnarly old trees I came across in ancient un-managed Oak and Beech forests, sometimes bringing home severed boughs and rotting stumps to study further. I was also influenced by the somewhat grotesque anatomical plates of the seventeenth century artist Pietro da Cortona.

Many of my earlier drawings and paintings have flowered from these seeds of inspiration. One painting was titled "meat eaters leave the mountains" 250 cm wide x 200 cm high on paper very difficult to display and has become somewhat gnarled itself after being rolled and transported many times. Other artworks are "dog jug" (below) and "shelter" (soon to be uploaded to art4oka.com.)

dog jug

pen on paper

Animal Draw Gallery

Inspired by the stump of

a Beech tree that was stripped

of bark to reveal the smoothness.

Gnarled old tree

The exact location

of this tree? Please

use "what 3 words"

spice rises wants

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