stewart's studio

Stop in the mighty river

2012-01-20T15:55:00.002Z

Art is such an ambiguous word that it can be open to almost any interpretation. Every artist has their own take on what it means, likewise curators and viewers have their own ideas and all of these ideas, on everyone's part, are likely to be altered by context. This morning, for example, when reading an article about art I realised that I had entertained a thought that was diametrically opposed to one I had earlier in the week. Less than an hour later, those diametric views have been forgotten and I find that I am unconcerned by their occurrence or loss.

Untitled, Arrangement with Black
William Johnstone, ink brush drawing, c. 1975

The idea that everyone has a role to play in defining art is very close to the subject of the current exhibition at the Talbot Rice Gallery. Beholder, which runs until February 18th, focuses on different people's perceptions of beauty in art and therefore comprises a very mixed show. It was refreshing to see such a variety of work in one place, even if personally there was no particular piece that represented beauty to me. Of course, in many ways that is the point.

Beauty for me, however, is a hard thing to grasp in the grey depths of winter and so it was consequently something of a surprise to find it lurking in the Scottish Gallery's William Johnstone retrospective. Until walking through their doors a few days ago, I had no idea that there was a local abstract expressionist contemporaneous to the big names of the field. (This probably says more about me than it does about the world of Scottish art.) There are some powerful pieces in the show, however it was in some of the stark ink on paper works that I really saw something special.

The most lingering effect of the show has been to give me the feeling of a connection to the past. Hitherto, I had been under the uninformed impression that abstract art did not have a local history, that it had taken place mostly within a small group of New York-based artists. I therefore saw myself painting in something of a rootless, borrowed environment. While seeing Johnstone's work means that I am still clearly not at the cutting edge of art, it also means that I am no longer quite so adrift.

Painting by Doug Randall

Another person whose art I encountered this week and who is similarly far from the cutting edge is Doug Randall. Doug is an impressionist painter from Fayetteville, Arkansas and a friend of Megan Chapman. This week Megan and I had our own late Christmas day and Megan gave me a small painting by Doug as my gift. It is one of my favourite pieces from all that I have seen in the past few weeks.

In a less personal way, both Megan and I were also very drawn to four textile pieces by Phoebe Anna Traquair, so much so that we visited them twice. As part of the permanent collection at the Scottish National Gallery, these works from the end of the nineteenth century are located in the furthest and darkest part of the gallery. Even in their dim corridor, they sparkle with richly-coloured life, made with an assured, painstaking hand.

These recent experiences have given rise in me to a different way of thinking about art. Both my work and Doug's have their genesis in eras before our births, yet we are by a very correct definition contemporary artists. Thinking about this and my recently-discovered local history, I began to see art as something like a mighty river, yet like a river whose delta is often springing new separate rivers, all flowing ever onwards.

The Progress of a Soul
Phoebe Anna Traquair, thread on linen 1895-1903

With this in mind, I thought further about Traquair's pieces, which do not appear to be from a particular period. In photos, she is clearly a Victorian lady (even if she acted little like that imagined stereotype). This idea of her seemed almost irreconcilable with her work and it gave rise to a further thought; that who we are as artists is of far less importance, within that great river, than what we make. We do not enter the river, only our art does. Art is all that is important.

The river of art, today, seems less about beauty than ever before. Whilst the Beholder show demonstrated that beauty can be found in many disparate art forms, the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art's Sculpture Show (that Megan and I visited last week), gave strong clues that beauty is no longer such an important element in art. Even less palatable than this revelation though, was a further one which suggests that in the world of art, the art itself seems to be losing its importance.

In one of the only rooms not to be currently housing the Sculpture Show, is Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #1136. The gallery notes that "drawings such as these exist as a set of instructions that are then carried out by a team at the Gallery who make the drawing themselves…"

The suggestion that the artist does not need to make their own art is unwelcome enough on its own, however that the artist need not even go near their work is worse still. More dammingly, the statement goes on to note that the piece, which is painted each time directly onto a gallery wall, will later be painted over. We can therefore be delivered into the unhappy conclusion that the actual piece of art is less important than the idea behind it. In many ways this interpretation of what art is for is the most challenging and potentially disastrous of all. When the idea becomes more important than the art, can we still actually call it art?

Back in that immense river, as the delta spreads, the main channel grows slower and weaker. Indeed, there are so many other channels now, that for all we know maybe what we once saw as the main one will soon wash up in a mud bank. Or maybe the time for such a simplistic vision has passed. It is an entertaining thought.

In the mean time, I'm going to keep on contributing to one of the less well-regarded channels. It may not be a fashionable one, but for me it is art.

Ideas and meanings

2012-01-13T22:19:00.001Z

Inspiration and ideas are some of the rarest things in art. They don't come often or easily. Staring at a blank canvas and wondering what comes next is difficult and brings with it too many questions of self. Waiting for a cosmic inspiration ray to connect with the correct synapse is fruitless. Ideas and inspiration take work, thinking and planning.

When I returned in November from my visit to Fayetteville, I had an idea and I was very pleased to have it. It was vague but I had the edge of it and I was sure that, if I could find a corner piece as well, I'd be able to make something of it. Last week I made something out of that edge, which I was also very pleased with. I have not, however, managed to grasp that elusive corner piece as well and, instead, that very edge seems to be dissipating back into the mist, from where it came.

All of this is a whole mess of metaphors, that only serve to say I had an idea but it didn't work out as I had hoped. Luckily, I was distracted from this by the arrival in Edinburgh of Fayetteville's own Megan Chapman. In the first few days of Megan's stay, we visited two of Scotland's national galleries.

The Scottish National Gallery was our first stop. Featuring a broad selection of works from the Renaissance period up to the early 20th century, there is quite a wealth of art history on show. Many world-famous artists are represented, from a mostly Euro-centric view of art. For all of the jewels in the collection, it was the lower gallery, which is given over to exclusively Scottish art, that Megan and I found most engaging. Here we found life and beauty in pieces by artists whose names are unlikely ever to be mentioned outside of Scotland.

A few days later we visited the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which seems to have suffered an unfortunate re-branding accident. Inside 'Modern One' we visited The Sculpture Show. Stuffed with a who's who from around the last 150 years of sculpture, with a particular emphasis on contemporary conceptual art, there was a lot to see. Sadly, there was not a lot to feel. My long-standing antipathy towards conceptual art can't have helped, nonetheless I really felt a lack of connection to most of the art on show. I'm at a loss as to exactly why that was, or indeed why I was left with a lingering feeling of having encroached on an elitist area that I have no right to be in. In many instances I felt myself wondering if there was simply something I was not getting.

In all, there were only two pieces that spoke to me, both deceptively simple works by Barbara Hepworth. With their clean lines and stark white paint on wood, the pieces were elegant and inordinately pleasing to view. There was a strong temptation to touch them, however the gallery's own piece Wave, had been stuffed into a glass case.

The exhibition left me with a lingering impression that I mostly don't like sculpture, that "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like". I can't stand that feeling. I was also very disappointed to note that the entire gallery had been given over to this exhibition for six months. I am not going to be able to show the collection that I have long admired.

Across the street in Modern Two (or the Dean Gallery as was), we found some Samuel Peploe paintings, which mostly made up for the earlier disappointment. I've enjoyed Peploe's work for many years and seeing them in the flesh is always a treat. This time it was doubly so because I was seeing them with Megan, to whom I first (digitally) introduced Peploe almost two years ago.

As enjoyable as seeing Peploe was, the earlier exhibition became the dominant topic of conversation on the walk home. Our discussion was lively and I often found myself attempting to defend my ongoing dislike of conceptual art to Megan, as ever a great devil's advocate. Ultimately, I questioned whether an idea that has been created by a brand and produced by employees should be called art.

As I sit here now and ponder the nature of my own inspiration and ideas, the discussion resurfaces. I have few positive feelings about The Sculpture Show and so it is probably not helping me wrestle with my own art in any meaningful way. It leads me then to this conclusion: that no matter what the art is, it can provide inspiration, even if only to not make art like it. It also reinforces my belief that the best art is that which means something personal to the artist and that they have made it with their own hands. Maybe this makes me old fashioned, an anachronism. If so, I really don't mind.

Nebulism

2012-01-06T17:25:00.002Z

As I have mentioned a few times already, Kevin Low and I will be having a joint show at Edinburgh's Union Gallery in April. I have been aware that, apart from being really, really excited by this (which I really, really am), I should probably be at least a bit worried. This is because the exhibition will be my highest profile one so far and not only have I not yet a body of work to show, the three months I have to make that body of work in is not a very long time.

I especially thought I should start worrying after I spent a day at the gallery in December and worked out just how many paintings I was going to need to do. Somehow, though, I did not worry and that made me happy because I have always been someone to whom worrying came easy. My recent lack of worry could mean that I am less of a worrier than I used to be, which is good, however it could also mean that I now have confidence in my abilities and that is great.

In the middle of November, on my flights home from Fayetteville, a vague idea for a theme for my new work floated in my consciousness. As the weeks went by following my return, and I resolutely did not paint, the idea never became any more concrete, indeed it seemed at times to become less so. Nonetheless, I gathered materials and waited for the moment when I knew I had to paint. That moment arrived six days ago.

(As yet untitled)
© Stewart Bremner 2012
Mixed media on board, 12x12"

Every day since the moment's arrival, I have painted for several hours. Pulling something from nothing, with only a slight grasp on the edge of a concept, is hard work and it was therefore to be expected that the pieces would not be as focussed as could be desired. Consequently, I am really rather pleased that two of the paintings I have been working on are quite fully realised and close to my nebulous original idea.

In a week I have made two paintings that I am happy to call finished. If I can keep that hit rate up, I'll have enough paintings for the exhibition by the middle of March. Which would be perfect!

I've got many, many hours of painting ahead of me and a lot of thinking to do. This is going to be my biggest artistic challenge to date and as the desire to paint slowly builds, I know I am going to truly relish these coming months.

Onwards, upwards

2011-12-31T22:52:00.003Z

This year has been, quite simply, my best year as an artist, indeed it might almost be the first year I have truly considered myself an artist. I know that I have been an artist in the past, however this year I knew I was one and I knew it all year.

Surrender
© Stewart Bremner 2011
Sold by Union Gallery in June

I've made better paintings this year than ever before, paintings that speak to me, that mean something, paintings with thoughts and feelings, with depth. This, above all else, is probably the single most important thing that happened this year. It is not the only thing to happen, though.

I have been in more exhibitions this year than almost every exhibition in all my previous years combined. It has been very exciting and not just because they were on two continents!

I've also sold more paintings this year than… well, you get the idea by now. Thank you everyone who took the chance to buy one of my paintings. It is because of your patronage that I am able to continue on this path.

Let Go
© Stewart Bremner 2011
Sold at the Fayetteville Underground
in October

All of these amazing things came about with the support of two special people. Close to home is Alison Auldjo at Union Gallery, who has stuck with me through times when normal gallery owners may well jumped ship. But then just as Union Gallery is no ordinary gallery, so too Alison is no ordinary gallery owner! Thank you Alison (and Rob too, of course!).

Further from home but immeasurably closer at the same time, Megan Chapman is the one person without whom I doubt I would have had the year that I did. She has been an incredible source of support, inspiration, ideas, knowledge and so much more. She has been truly indispensable and I cannot thank her enough. Megan, you are a star!

I have some big things lined up for next year and this afternoon I took my first step towards them. Next year is going to be exciting. I hope that yours is going to be as good as mine promises to be!

Begin again

2011-12-23T16:22:00.001Z

This week, finally, the shared dream that a group of us had for what the next incarnation of the Fayetteville Underground was going to be, died. One more body blow was dealt by the soon to be ex-board and that was pretty much the end. It made for a pretty gloomy week, although it also marks the end of having to think and care about the place and so there is relief too. It is time to move on.

Kevin Low and I at Union Gallery (thanks Rob!)

Happily, there is a lot to move on to. Top of the list is my show next year at Union Gallery with Kevin Low, which has just been confirmed to start on April 5th. I do not yet know what I am going to paint, however I have the beginnings of an idea for what I want the work to be about, which is almost as good. Today I picked up some boards in order to start some preparatory work. Making the work for exhibition is going to be a big challenge and I can't wait to get stuck into it.

The shortest day of the year has passed and the northern hemisphere is starting its slow journey back into the light. Even though there are still plenty more dark days left, nonetheless it is a relief. Soon, I am going to paint.

Shoulder to shoulder

2011-12-17T15:05:00.002Z

My artistic week has again been dominated by events at the Fayetteville Underground. Unfortunately it seems that the vision for the future of that organisation, as the Fayetteville Arts Alliance, is on the verge of expiring.

From my distant hideaway my thoughts swing between anger and depression at this turn of events. Up close, I cannot imagine how it must feel to have spent so much time and effort on the enterprise and to have put your reputation on the line, only to witness this sad decline.

Of course, no one asked me to get involved, nevertheless I did because I believed in the organisation. I believed it was more than just the sum of its parts and that it would go on to bigger and greater things. It is a terrible shame that this belief was not wholly shared.

St. Hope, originally uploaded by stewartbremner.

An easy lesson to take from this would be that one should not act for the (perhaps only perceived) greater good, that it is easier by far to simply look out for oneself because that is what everyone else is doing. I have never been one for taking that easy path and, as a socialist, my entire belief system is based upon the idea that when we act together, we are stronger. It is who I am and what I do.

Ironically, I realise now that I share some ideals with my father, as he was thirty years ago. At that time he was a shop steward for his union, which marked him as hard left and a trouble maker, at least as far as the establishment was concerned. In standing up for his beliefs and for those around him, he was black-listed by the Thatcher regime and was never again able to work in his trade. I am very glad that today, it seems, standing up for ideas beyond the self is becoming a global phenomena, even in places such as the United States where for so long the individual has been prized above all else.

The need to look out for each other has never been greater, than it is now. We are under constant and daily threat from the powers that own our governments, powers that have caused our world to turn away from post-Second World War dreams of liberty for all, into an undemocratic pro-capitalist corporate entity. Only by standing together can we hope to make it through this time, which I fear is likely to be the most difficult and dangerous that most of us will ever see. We need to stand together in every walk of life, in every way we can.

The Fayetteville Underground will cease operations at the end of next week. If anything is to take its place, if the Fayetteville Arts Alliance is ever to become a reality, at the core it is going to need a family of artists who will look out for each other, who will stand together, and do what needs to be done to support the group which, in turn, supports them. To me the Underground, at its best, was such a group. The Alliance needs no less to succeed and I wish those who are part of it every success in their future.

See you next Tuesday

2011-12-09T17:10:00.001Z

Winter Wonderland at Union Gallery,

December 8th-January 24th.

Last night saw the opening of Union Gallery's new exhibition, Winter Wonderland. I have six pieces in the show and it was very exciting to see them on the wall next to four by Megan Chapman and just around the corner from three by Trevor Jones. We had our own little mostly-abstract corner and I enjoyed spending time near it last night.

The weather, rather unfortunately, played against us last night and the turn out was much lower than usual. With luck, all of those who did not make it along to the opening will turn up in the coming weeks. In fact, if any of those who missed the opening come along on Tuesday (13th December), they'll find me in the gallery all day!

I'm very much looking forward to spending more time in the abstract corner and in the exhibition, which being busy, full and colourful is the perfect antidote to the short and dark winter days. I am also hoping I'll get to talk to visitors about my art and Megan's. If you are in town on Tuesday, come past and say hello. The gallery is open from 10:30am-6pm.

I have also this week been continuing to think about making art and especially my two major joint shows next year. Very soon now, I am going to start working on the first of them, that will take place in Union Gallery in April, with Kevin Low. I'm very excited by this and, even though I have an idea of what I want the work to be about, I do not know yet how it will look. It is going to be without doubt my biggest artistic undertaking to date, indeed I don't think I have yet taken in the magnitude of the challenge that lies before me. Just now all I feel is excited. Would anyone care to predict when the fear will kick in?!

Show time

2011-12-04T22:01:00.001Z

With the creation of art currently on hold, this past week has been more about the showing and selling of art and the showing and selling of art that is to come. To begin with, I have work in two end of year shows.


Sold this week: Make it (Mixed media, 10x10" © 2011 Stewart Bremner)

The third annual Fayetteville Underground Art for the Holidays exhibition got under way this week, with a selection of my work in two of their galleries. Some of my Hidden Message series, as well as six pieces from Craig Munro and my Iteration/Span photos are on show in the Hive Annex, while the remaining sixteen of my Fading Glories and a few more Hidden Messages are in the Revolver. Happily two Hidden Messages sold in the first 24 hours! The show runs until Christmas, so do head down there if you're in Northwest Arkansas.

On the home front, six of my small paper works have been chosen for the Union Gallery's Winter Wonderland show! They are currently at the framer and I am looking forward to seeing them all spic and span and ready to hang next week. The show opens on Thursday night and I will be there, so do come along and ask me about my work. Also on show are four of Megan Chapman's Sometimes I Love You paintings and I'm really looking forward to seeing them out in public in Edinburgh. Naturally, I'll be very happy to speak about them as well. Come out and get the inside scoop!

This week also saw some more developments for the year to come. The big new news is that Megan and I have been offered a show next year at the Art Center of the Ozarks! We've not made any definite plans yet, other than to decide that we will be creating a new body of work for it. This work will follow in the footsteps of our A Question of Chemistry series, which in itself will be showing over March and April at the Northwest Arkansas Community College.

I also this week briefly met Glasgow artist Kevin Low and we tentatively discussed out joint show that is happening next year in April at the Union Gallery. Again there is not much to reveal as yet, but plans are afoot and I'm very excited!

In the dark

2011-11-25T16:25:00.001Z

Winter draws in, with hesitance and with flickering speed, inexorably, it draws in. Sunset here in this sheltered part of north western Europe, slips ever earlier, closing in on half past three in the afternoon, although fated never to quite reach there. This steep side of winter, sliding down into that dark well before the solstice, feels like the hardest part of winter (although in truth every part of winter feels like the hardest part of winter when it is happening).

Ahead of me, over the winter, I will be creating a new body of work for my forthcoming exhibition with Kevin Low in April at Edinburgh's Union Gallery. Ideas for that series, the subjects and the thoughts I want to explore and the moments I want to pin down are slowly gestating. But this is not the time to create a new body of work, in these short and dark days, with the light so hesitant and faltering in the old part of the year.

This is the time to close down, to circle hibernation, to consume culture and use its fire for heat, to follow fairy tales, dark, sinister and hidden beneath bough and bark, through the long cold nights. When day time begins its climb back towards life, that is when the work begins. Until then, I think.

Strange brew

2011-11-18T16:59:00.001Z

It is approaching half past four in the afternoon and not a lot of sunlight is left in the sky, duck egg to the west, shading into deeper blues in the east. I'm back home in Scotland now and there is just not all that much light here. After spending nearly three months in Arkansas, it has come as something of a shock, this lack of daylight. I should be writing here about art, not light, however with jet lag still in full effect, it can be hard to stay focussed.

Art… right. Art.

Is there a conscious idea here?
© 2011 Stewart Bremner. Ink on paper.

Over the sleepless hours of the past few days, on two aeroplanes, a car, a bus and a train, across four and a half thousand miles and through three airports, I have felt something brewing deep inside. With that imperfect focus, that hands-grasping-soap-in-the-bath feeling when I think, I am not sure what exactly is brewing, nonetheless I know that it will become art.

Over most of this year, my painting has evolved into an means of expression. Abstract expressionism, for all of the baggage the term carries, best describes what I have painted: abstract paintings that express a particular moment in my life. Each one is a message in a bottle from the past, being carried ever forward on time's tide. What is brewing now, is what I expect to seed those next bottles with.

My hazy thoughts slip around in this messy brew of ideas and words. Identity, belonging, memory and distance shine in the murk. Will they figure in the work? Perhaps. I can't say. A number of strange scribbled sketches are dotted in two different books and again I wonder what their relevance is. They are neither on a medium or in a material I think I will use but again I cannot be sure.

Somewhere nearby lurks revelation. Wakefulness is what I seek first.

Amorphous time

2011-11-03T15:31:00.001Z


Blind conviction © 2011 Craig Munro and Stewart Bremner (part of my First Thursday sale!)

It has been really quite a busy time recently, which is one of the reasons for my Friday blog being almost a week late! I've been heavily involved in the recent goings on at the Fayetteville Underground and in the artist's new campaign, which will soon see them rise like a phoenix from its ashes. I'm utterly convinced that these brilliant people are going on to something bigger and better in their new organisation.

Fayetteville is very lucky to have something so amazing and I really hope that its citizens will do all they can to assist this new venture. To learn more about what the artists are going to be doing, please, please visit morph the org. The artists need everyone's support in their exciting new venture, including yours (even if you are not in Fayetteville)!

With First Thursday upon us again, I am looking forward to my last studio/opening here in Fayetteville until who knows when! For this night only, I'm going to be having a special sale, with up to 33% off! The sale includes some of my Hidden messages series, my newly launched Fading glory series and the six remaining Iteration/span pieces. Not only will a portion of these sales be going to help morph the org, but I'm also hoping my suitcase will be lightened for my impending trip home!

Come and say hello, or goodbye, and bring your wallets! See you there.

The universal yes

2011-10-21T21:55:00.003+01:00


A fearless humming across the wires © 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x40" Sold

The past seven days seem to have taken a month to pass and at the same time just one minute. In that nebulous time, I debated the length of my stay in Fayetteville and the artists of the Fayetteville Underground spent endless time debating their future. A few decisions have been made, although all I can reveal right now is that I am going to stay in Fayetteville until late November.

With all of that going on, there has not been much time for making art. Even so, I managed to start a few more paintings for my Fading glory series and varnished all the other ones.

There was time, however, to sell another painting! A patron that I talked to at length on First Thursday came back mid-week for the sole purpose of buying one of Megan and my A question of chemistry paintings. I tried to take it in my stride, although may have babbled excitedly on a bit more than usual. It seemed that less than an hour after committing to the expense of staying here for three extra weeks, the universe saw fit to try to cover some of those costs.

Also this week, the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival visited the Fayetteville Underground. I had my studio open to the almost two hundred visitors and spoke to a lot of them, as well as running all over the building making a photographic record for the organisation.

It's been a busy week. I might have to have a lie down a lot at the weekend to recover!

Fading glory

2011-10-14T19:10:00.000+01:00

When I was in my teens, I was very keen on custom cars and vintage American cars. The chrome and the curves and the outlandish styling captivated me. I subscribed to two different car magazines, had bedroom walls covered in double-page spreads of cars and even had a led sled t-shirt (although it was stolen from the back garden washing line not long after I bought it, so doesn't quite count). It was my obsession in the years before music fully took control of me.

During September, the first month of my stay in Fayetteville, that old obsession returned. For over thirty days I took photos of cars to publish in my daily photo journal online. Every single day I hunted down, and often simply walked into, beautiful cars. I talked to their owners whenever they were in attendance and I took thousands of photos. Eventually after many splendid adventures, I had to stop because it was becoming too much of a hindrance on my day and Megan's, who was often needed to drive me to these cars (ah yes, the irony here being I have never learned to drive!).

Last week when I stopped taking the car photos, I knew that I was not yet over the obsession. I wanted to make it continue in some way and I had the idea to make art from the images I had amassed. As it happened, artist Linda Sheets (who for weeks had been whetting my appetite by feeding me a fine line of car adverts from vintage magazines) had cut down some MDF strips into square blocks for me. I realised these would be the ideal place for my car art. There was something about their chunky appearance that just seemed right. However I did not know quite what the art would be, apart from somehow combining the cars with my abstract painting style. I considered several ideas, before settling on drawing the cars directly onto the gessoed blocks and then painting over the drawings.

Representational art is something I have avoided for years and I was hesitant to make any now. It has taken time and perseverance to reach the point that I have, where I am settling into abstract painting and even becoming (ever so slightly) known for it. To make non-abstract art seemed like either a backwards step, or possibly even self-sabotage.

On the other hand, the impetus to make this art was very strong and I have learnt never to ignore the muse when it strikes. Sometimes it is better to move and then find the time later for explanations. With this in mind I began working and, with encouragement from Megan, Linda and Jennifer Libby Fay, I continued. So far I have made seventeen paintings (although only fourteen are shown in the above video).

These paintings fuse my love of line, my training in illustration, my obsession with vintage cars and my new-found confidence in mark making. I have combined the skills I learned in making abstract art with my dormant illustrative skills to simply enjoy myself. These paintings were created for no other reason than to make them, they do not represent a new direction, nor an old one, they simply are.

All of the paintings are on six inch square, 3/4 inch deep MDF blocks. I may make as many as thirty of them, depending on how many blocks are left in the box Linda left me.

I'd love to hear what you think of my mini-project. Any and all opinions are welcome. How are my drawing skills after all this time? Do you think I'm making a mistake mentioning this in public? Do you love them so much you simply must buy one? Please, drop me a line or leave a comment and, once again, thank you for stopping by.

(shown in the above video are: '53 Plymouth, '59 Edsel Ranger, '66 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, '62 Oldsmobile Super 88, '55 Chevrolet Bel Air, '73 Pontiac Catalina, '54 Dodge Wayfarer, '55 Nash Ambassador Super, '65 Ford Falcon Futura, '61 Ford Galaxie Starliner, '67 Pontiac Firebird, '60 Chevrolet Impala, '56 Continental II, '60 Cadillac Coupe de Ville)

Not so hidden now

2011-10-07T21:38:00.000+01:00

Who I am
© Stewart Bremner 2011
Mixed media on board, 8x8"
Sold

Until last weekend, it did not seem that I had done all that much work since I arrived in Fayetteville. Last weekend, however, with Megan Chapman's help I tidied up the studio I am visiting at the Fayetteville Underground and was able to make it into a temporary exhibition space for First Thursday. Once the walls were painted, the lights sorted and my work hung, I realised just how much work I've done here. It was kind of staggering seeing it all. I've made 20 new paintings as part of my Hidden Messages series and while the largest is only 16x20" that is still a lot of work.

Sitting here in the studio surrounded by that work, as well as the series, A question of chemistry, (with Megan) and six of the Iteration/span photos (with Craig Munro) feels great. Other than the Life is the process paintings (three of which are showing in the Found Gallery in Dunbar right now), this has been my year and it has been quite a year. I feel like I've really achieved something.

Let go
© Stewart Bremner 2011
Mixed media on board, 8x8"

Last night at the First Thursday opening, I had three hours of conversations about the work. It was great fun to engage with people who were genuinely interested in both my work and who I was. Equally as exciting, five of my pieces sold. It was quite a night!

THIS JUST IN
This morning I was invited to be part of a two-man show with artist Kevin Low at Union Gallery in April 2012. I can't even begin to express how excited I am by this. Please do head over to their Union Gallery's Facebook page right now and friend them. They are lovely people!

Above board

2011-10-01T18:55:00.004+01:00

All it takes
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

Last week, I worked on three 16x20" canvases. Two of them went well and were more or less completed by the end of the week, however there was one that I simply couldn't find an end to. The piece stayed hanging on my painting spot, as I watched and watched, wondering if I was done with it. I could not work out how to move forward.

Heat© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

Reaching such a sticking point is not an uncommon occurrence, however finding a way to break from it can be tricky. It is an event that somehow is easily forgotten after it has passed and so I do not have a plan in place to combat it. As luck would have it, an amiable and at times out-spoken ex-Texan came to my rescue.

Want
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

Linda Sheets is one of the Underground's studio artists and this weekend sees the end of her month-long exhibition there, The Dog and Monkey Show. Linda is known for her scratchboard work and her current show, as the title suggests, was a lot of fun. Sometime around the middle of the week, she gave me a half dozen small scratch boards to work on. It was exactly what I needed to shake me from my inactivity. As soon as I started working on those small boards, all six of which are pictured here, a flow began that lasted the week.

We do it all
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

Making art on such a small scale was an interesting and fun challenge. I also greatly enjoyed the solidity of working on board, after using canvas for the past few weeks. I realised that canvas is not the ideal medium for how I am working at present, that I need a ground that I can work into, one that I can scratch and score and mark. Canvas simply will not provide that ground.

It will all work out
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

It was with this realisation in mind, that I got some larger boards and spent the rest of the week working on them. I'm pleased with the work I produced, which all fits as part of my Hidden Messages series. Next week is First Thursday at the Underground and I plan to show this work in my borrowed studio. If you are in the area, please come along and say hello. I'm in the first studio on the right before the galleries.

Be alone
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 3x5"

Moving again

2011-09-23T19:52:00.000+01:00

After finding a little corner of the Fayetteville Underground's classroom to paint in a few weeks ago, I made two paintings. Somehow after that, I never quite made it back to painting in there. Partly it was because the space was a public one.

As luck would have it, Underground artist Maggie Ivy went back to study in Sweden a few days ago and so for the next month, I have her studio to work in. It is a really big space, which seems almost intimidating, and it is very empty right now. I plan to make it home until the end of October and I've already started two new pieces. If you are in the area, drop by and say hello. You might even catch me making more new paintings!

Another 5x5

2011-09-16T18:26:00.000+01:00


She Brings Me Back © 2011 Stewart Bremner, Mixed media, 5x5"

The last time I visited Arkansas, I painted a 5x5" painting for a fundraiser at the nearby Tulsa Artist's Coalition in Oklahoma. During this visit I've again painted a 5x5 for an arts fundraiser, this time the ninth annual 5by5 Exhibition at the Arts Center of the Ozarks. Both exhibitions sell the work through auction and use the profits to fund their organisations. Whilst that means there is no direct profit in this for the artists, there still other benefits.

To begin with, it gets your art out into the public and, for me in particular, in places it has never been seen before. That means another group show for my CV and exposure into a new market. More altruistically, these kind of shows also help to raise awareness of art, bringing it not only to people who may never have considered buying any before, but also those who cannot normally afford to. It brings people into the art world and that is not only a benefit to artists, but to everyone who enjoys art.

When painting my entry for the exhibition, I found there is something about working on this small size and shape of the canvas that is quite enjoyable. It feels both like a quick sketch painting and something more serious. Having spent some time recently working on other small paintings, it was not as much of a stretch to paint as the last 5x5 and it fits as part of my ongoing Hidden Messages series. Next week I'm going back to painting bigger pieces.

5by5 Exhibition, Arts Center of the Ozarks, 214 South Main St., Springdale, AR; October 5–November 4, 2011 (Ticketed reception, Thursday, November 3, 2011 5:55–7:55)

In a distant classroom

2011-09-09T17:46:00.002+01:00

My borrowed studio space in the Fayetteville Underground's classroom

A few days ago I came the closest I've been yet to having an actual away-from-the-house studio, when I was told by the lovely people at the Fayetteville Underground that I could take over a corner of their under-used classroom. I was slightly reluctant at first to be in such a large space and one that was not solely for my use. However, I decided to try it out and in less than a few hours I'd made a nice space for myself.

Find my certainties
© 2011 Stewart Bremner, Mixed media 20"x16"

That moment of clarity
© 2011 Stewart Bremner, Mixed media 20"x16"

Over the last few days in that space, I've come close to completing two new canvas paintings, both 20x16", that build in the simple idea behind my Hidden Messages series of paper paintings. It has been really enjoyable to be painting larger pieces again, after working on so many small bits of paper. I've had room to make a few more expansive strokes and to load the painting more with paint and water. The large space of the classroom has also given me room to really get some distance from my paintings, which I have found has helped at times when I've painted myself into a compositional corner.

My plan now is to build on these pieces and to attempt to create a small body of work, with luck, I can get exhibited here in the US.

Spreading the message

2011-09-02T23:20:00.001+01:00

In our imaginations
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media 5.25" x 8.5"

It's a week and a half since I arrived in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In that time I've been bitten by a score of bugs (or bitten a score of times by one bug), tried hard to deal with the high temperature and humidity and painted four new small paintings. The last of these three things I'm really quite pleased about.

These new paintings are part of my Hidden Messages series of affordable works, that I began in July. The series was conceived as a message to, or about, a distant lover. Each message is composed of one line of text, which forms the kernel of each painting. The messages, however, are almost fully obliterated in the painting process, leaving only small hints as to their content. Every painting marks tiny moment in time that, like every moment we live through, is irrecoverably lost to the past.

Which way
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media 5.25" x 8.5"

As well as these four pieces I've just painted, I brought eight more of the series with me. All twelve are on display at the Fayetteville Underground this month outside the studio of Megan Chapman, along with the remaining eleven paintings from my Post Process series.

My most exciting new news is that my work has been picked up by the Found Gallery in Dunbar! They've taken three of my Life Is The Process paintings and six of my Hidden Messages paintings. All will be on show there very soon and should be up for the rest of the month.So if you're in either North West Arkansas or East Lothian this month, stop by and see some of my newest pieces.

Stewart is away

2011-08-26T23:06:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I arrived in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I will be for the next two months. Consequently much of the past week and more has been spent preparing and then travelling. Art has not been on my mind all that much. Next week I expect I'll have something to report.

A morning vision

2011-08-19T13:43:00.000+01:00

Just a kiss away
Mixed media, approx. 11x8" on 12.5x9.5" paper.
© Stewart Bremner. All rights reserved.

Less than forty-eight hours after writing my last entry, the dam slowly opened. I woke up one morning with a half-formed idea floating around my conscious. When I got up, I decided to gesso a few sheets of paper and see if I could make the idea more concrete. The first of the three pieces went really awry and has subsequently been wiped out. The other two worked out quite well, even though they were by no means the pieces that had been in my morning brain.

Silent reply
Mixed media, approx. 5.25x8.5" on 6.5x9.5" paper
© 2011 Stewart Bremner. All rights reserved.

With those two complete, I found that I was unsatisfied and so I made another four paintings. For these pieces, I discarded any notion of trying to capture some half-seen vision and made an attempt to revisit the éciture automatique technique that I had some success with recently. The process and the results I found to be far more satisfying.

I have subsequently worked on eight more or these small paper pieces this week and am really quite enjoying the results. As and when they are dry, I will be selling them through my Etsy shop, where right now you can find the first six paintings mentioned above.

Crack that dam

2011-08-12T21:03:00.002+01:00

Being an artist is a full time job and it is a full time job where much of the activity is, like an iceberg, mostly unseen. To get to the point of making a mark needs a lot of preparation, a lot of thinking and planning, even simply getting ones brain to the right place, tuned to the right frequency.

For me, at times, I feel there is inside me something that roughly equates to a reservoir, where my artistic drive is stored. Over time, it fills, with ideas, with motivation, with energy. I never know quite when it will overflow, what incident, fragment of a thought, image seen out of the corner of my eye, word from a lover, brush stroke in another's painting, or simply some random confluence of events, will cause it to crack, yet I know that it will at some point. The motivation, the ideas, the need to paint will rise and I will simply have to paint. It happens time and again and it is all I can do to ride that wave for all that it is worth.

Right now, my reservoir is filling. Whilst that happens, I think and I look and I talk and I take photographs. One day soon, I will paint again.

Friend or foe?

2011-08-05T15:46:00.000+01:00

The progress I was making in my recent canvas paintings came to a halt this week. Given the close links between my painting and my life, it is hard to tell whether this halt was the cause of a recent downgrade in my positivity, or the result of it. Sometimes cause and effect can be too closely entwined to be separately indentified and it is not always worth the effort of trying.

The two canvases sit in my studio and I stare at them. The exciting immediacy of my recent paper paintings, which was the impetus behind these new works, has not really translated over as well as I had hoped. There could be two reasons for this.

Firstly, I may be investing too much fraught care and attention here, which is more or less the antithesis of what I had been doing with the paper paintings. Their immediacy has given way to lengthy consideration and second guessing, Secondly, I fear that the concept underpinning these pieces may simply be too thin, have been given to little consideration, to hold up.

These are just two possible reasons for my halt and they come at the end of a darker week than I have had in some time. Perhaps now that I am climbing out of that darkness, I will find a way to move forwards with these two pieces. However, my inclination is to dive back into small paper pieces and see where they take me. Next week, with luck and a tail wind, I'll have something new to show!

Away

2011-07-29T15:45:00.000+01:00

With two pieces currently under way, I stopped to look at them at the beginning of the week. Somehow it feels, at least presently, that something is not quite right with them. I've really enjoyed making them and I feel there is a definite progression to my mark making, however something small and niggling just is not clicking. So it is lucky that for most of this week, I am away on holiday. It will be interesting to return to them next week.

A little tighter

2011-07-22T14:06:00.001+01:00

The large canvas painting that I began last week has been put aside to rest, while I think over my next move. I reached a point with it, delicately close to completion, where what I do next will either make or break the piece. It is a fine balance and I need to be careful not to take the piece backwards. This is always a risk with every painting and the trick is to accept that this can happen, will happen, and not to let it stop you from making a mark. Nonetheless, with this piece I simply cannot be certain what mark to make at all and so it rests, whilst I contemplate. It is a dynamic presence opposite the foot of my bed and I see it there every morning. One of these mornings, I will look at it and I will know what I need to do to it next.

Untitled work in progress
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media, 20"x16"

In the mean time, I have began a new painting, again on canvas although smaller at 20"x16". It has been interesting to move to this more intimate size after the freedom of the larger canvas. My mark making has been tighter and slightly less expansive. In musical terms (music being the driving force behind my current work), I have been concentrating on tightly intense periods, as opposed to massively powerful ones. A sharp guitar solo, instead of massive riffs, for example.

Interestingly, the size of this piece, and perhaps the immediacy that has been engendered by it, makes me feel that this is far closer to completion than my larger previous painting. A little more time with it should suffice.

The week has also brought me a few more sales from my Etsy shop, which has been very exciting. It is very rewarding to see my works shipping across the world and I want to thank, again, everyone who has bought one of my pieces. Your support allows me to continue on my journey and I am truly grateful.

Automatic writing

2011-07-15T21:34:00.000+01:00

The only proof of what you are is
in the way you see the truth
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media 5.25" x 8.5"

In 1919, Les Champs Magnétiques by André Breton was published. It was the first known use of a technique he developed called éciture automatique. Described as the "dictation of thought without control of reason", it was seized on not just by the Surrealist movement, but by many abstract expressionists across the century. Reading peripherally about it this week, I realised that this was a method similar to what I had realised in my own work at the start of the year. It was also the method that I used, in combination with the lessons learned while painting with Megan Chapman, to paint sixteen small paper paintings last weekend.

The paintings were created using particularly-chosen music to provide both an emotional focus and the energy to drive my will. I listened to the songs very loudly through headphones, allowing my movements and marks to be dictated by my responses to the music and to how I was feeling at the time. This could very much be described as painting "without the control of reason". It was a freeing and enjoyable experience, although incredibly wearing, and I was unable to paint in this manner for much more than an hour at a time. I consequently worked on the pieces over several staggered sessions, across four days. The results surprised me.

Because you know we do it right
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media 5.25" x 8.5"

I had set about these paintings with the intent of loosening up and trying to find my way back into working on my own. Quite unexpectedly, the pieces developed quickly into a small series in their own right and, better yet, gave me motivation sufficient to start my first (solo) painting on canvas of the year.

The pieces share a sense of dynamism, of energy. They also all show a central shape, that I would describe as a body if that did not engender anatomical expectations. The shapes are at once being acted upon by forces and exerting forces of its own. They are part of a story, of something possibly bigger than themselves and looking at them now, I am faintly stunned that I made them.

Don't know how long I've been awake
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media 5.25" x 8.5"

Dynamic and energetic is both how I would describe these pieces and my reaction to them. I am genuinely thrilled by where these paintings have led me. It feels like I am at the start of an exciting moment in my work and I can't wait to see how it develops and how I develop with it.

You can find the new paper pieces in my Etsy shop, where I have priced them quite affordably. There has been one sale and plenty of interest already, so don't wait too long to snap one up it it grabs your attention!

All you need to do is turn up

2011-07-08T12:39:00.000+01:00

Today has been a victory because I have painted. Today has not been a victory, although for slight more complicated reasons.

Dominance
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media on paper

Being an artist may seem to many an easy life: all one needs is to have a bit of talent, some technical skills, materials and a studio. From then onwards, one just turns up. Sadly, that's not the case. As an artist, as a painter, most of my professional working time is not spent painting. Rather, most of the time is spent thinking about art, looking at art and fretting about art. In particular, fretting about my own art.

When I making a painting well, the feeling is incomparable. It is sublime. It is what I live for, yet it is a fleeting moment. When I am not in that moment and the periods bookending it, doubt will all to frequently creep in. I doubt that I can ever break free of the painting the same idea ad nauseum ("how do I paint something new?"), I doubt that I will ever progress ("where do I go from here?") and I doubt whether I can, or even will, paint ever again.

Divergence
© 2011 Stewart Bremner
Mixed media on paper

Painting is a balancing act. To do it well, an artist needs to walk the line between order and chaos, between head and heart and between joy and doubt. Artists use all their skills and their materials to walk that line and it is a line they walk almost always alone, because painting is mostly a solitary process. It is a process of reaching within, subject to and powered entirely by one's own energy. It is an incredibly personal mode of expression, where often as not one is laying bare ones inner-most being. To explore these depths, to pull out the material needed, to mine one's soul, is an intensive and tiring process that is simply not sustainable over lengthy periods of time. Those creative moments are then limited and, in the fallow periods that exist between them, the doubts bloom.

With the recent completion of my Life is the Process series, with nothing but a void of empty, gessoed paper in front of me, today I face these doubts. However, I painted, I made marks and for a while I lost myself in the work. I have started to address the question "Where do I go from here?", even though as yet I have no answer. And so I clutch desperately at my tube of cadmium orange and I stand in front of those sheets of gessoed paper and I wonder "How do I paint?"

Moving on and letting go

2011-07-01T17:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I completed what may well be the last of my Life is the Process series of paintings. When I came back to this work after a months-long break, I was unsure what kind of success I would have, whether or not I would be able to make a cohesive series. Happily, I believe that I have. It seems to me to be my first mature body of work, although I will admit that I feel this way because I am so fired up for what I am now painting and how I am painting it.

I'd love to share these new paintings today, however they are currently under several stacks of records. When I removed these pieces from my painting board, they were more warped by paint and water than I deemed acceptable and so I decided it would be best to properly flatten them. Once they are freed from their oppression, I'll highlight the whole series here.

I'm also going to soon highlight a new series of paintings, that I began work on this week. They are all going to be small and affordable paper pieces, taking my Life is the Process series as a starting point. I'm making them because I really believe we should all have original art in our houses and that current financial circumstances makes this difficult for most of us. I'm also making them in order to move on from my Life is the Process series. I'm consequently expecting to see a gradual progression in my work over these pieces.

Treading Water available on Etsy.

These affordable paper pieces will be listed on Etsy, as and when I complete them, so do keep an eye out for them there. You'll also see over the next few days on Etsy, that I will be listing paintings from my archive, all at reduced prices. Many of these are paintings I've been holding onto for some time and have decided that the time has come to let go of them. These are the remnants of my decade as a pop artist, as well as some of the progressive pieces I made as I moved from that tightly controlled style, to the freedom of abstraction. I really hope you enjoy the glimpse into my past and that some of you out there will give them good homes!

Thanks again for stopping by.

Celebremos

2011-06-24T20:21:00.002+01:00

(currently untitled)

Fantastic news: all three of the paintings I have in the current show at Union Gallery have sold and a fourth painting has been commissioned! I'm really, really excited – the show could not have worked out any better for me. As luck would have it, I was even working in the gallery on the day that three of the four sold and I was able to put out red dots on my own work. Several days later and it is still too soon to evaluate what this means to me. In fact, it feels like the news has not sunk in properly. A few words float around in my head: joy, confirmation, confidence, relief, gratitude.

I also painted this week and was able to revise and finish a painting that I started way back before things got crazy. I'm slowly making my way back into painting again and it feels very good.

Slight return

2011-06-17T11:10:00.000+01:00

I've really been enjoying popping into Union Gallery this week, to look at the three paintings of mine that are on show there this month. It is a joy to see the pieces away from the clutter and mess of my studio, framed and mounted in pristine white. In fact next week I will be looking after the gallery on Monday and Tuesday and I just know I am going to spend a lot of my time standing in front of my paintings, looking in wonder at the marks that I made all those months ago, being ever so slightly amazed by their complexity and thinking, "I made this?". The time that has passed since I created them, as well as their physical distance from my day-to-day reality, has been enough to allow me to appreciate them more fully.

Back in the studio, I completed my first solo painting since my return from Fayetteville. It was strange to return to the physical and mental space I created in February, as well as working on this series which also started then. All the time there was an awareness in me of where I had been and what I had painted since then, that seemed to want to pull my arm and shape my intentions. However, I resisted the temptation of the new, in order not to create a series with an obvious fracture.

Sadly, I will not be sharing my new painting because the paper it was painted on warped badly, to a degree inexplicably more than any other of my paper pieces. I'm going to attempt to rectify that situation and, with luck, there will be more than one new painting to show next week!

Now We Are Two

2011-06-10T12:56:00.001+01:00

Last night saw the opening of Union Gallery's Now We Are Two exhibition, a joint show in which I have three pieces from my series Life is the process. I began this series back in March, when I last had time and space in my studio to paint. A lot of other jobs and, or course, my trip to Fayetteville have all occurred since then. Yesterday, therefore, returning to these pieces having not seen them in six weeks and seeing them not just hanging in a gallery but framed really well was a genuine pleasure. I spent so much time looking at them that I began to feel that I was maybe being insulting by not looking much at the other work in the show.

The gap between me and this body of work also seems to have kept away that common ailment, the post-show blues. Rather than wondering what I am going to do next or if, even worse, I will ever paint again, I am feeling excited about returning to Life is the Process and completing the series. My original plan was for it to contain nine works and at present there are only five finished pieces. Next week I will put my studio back together and re-learn how to paint by myself. The pieces in the show are the best things I have ever painted (alone!) and I really looking forward to trying to match that feat.

A matter of distances

2011-06-03T13:08:00.001+01:00

After the storm
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 40x30"
$1,350

Seven days after completing 'A question of chemistry' with Megan Chapman, I was hoping to review the series, to have had the time to stand back and appraise what we had achieved in three intensive weeks of painting. Somehow, today, I find that I have both too much distance and yet not enough.

Physically, I am now four and a half thousand miles from the paintings. I do not know when, or indeed if, I will see them again. (Which, I must point out, is not negativity – I do hope to work in Megan's studio again one day, however perhaps by that day the whole series will have sold!) Returning to look them over, to let my eyes drink in their complexities is no longer possible and, as is always the case, photos of paintings never do them justice. In the flesh, paintings have an almost indefinable quality about them that reproductions invariably lack.

On the other hand, in the week that has passed, I have returned across six time zones, slept intermittently and am rather unsettled to be home alone. I have not yet found the mental space needed to stand back and look or, rather, think about what we achieved in our collaboration.

So instead, here is the news: last Saturday at our preview of the series, one piece was bought by one of Megan's lovely patrons. It was a wonderful experience to meet with someone who cared enough for a painting I had help to create that she wanted to buy it. In all my years of painting, I have rarely met with those who have bought my paintings and for that privilege, I am both grateful and thankful.

Secondly, all of the nine paintings in our series are now available to view over on Facebook. Please do take a look over there and let Megan and I know what you think.

Lastly, this coming Thursday, 9th June, sees some of my work go on show in Union Gallery's second birthday exhibition. A private preview is taking place from 6-8pm that night and I will be there if you want to come along and ask me questions. I'd be more than happy to see some familiar faces!

Nearing completion

2011-05-27T16:30:00.000+01:00

We communicate through static
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x24"
$800

…and so my last week in Fayetteville, Arkansas, rolls to a close. It has been a fun, challenging and exciting time, not to mention, when the grown-up weather rolled across us, really quite frightening. Megan Chapman and I spent a good deal of the week in the studio, putting the finishing touches to our collaborative series 'A question of chemistry' (as well as hiding from the storms!).

Yesterday, with the final piece of the series nearing completion, we took the opportunity to take a look at all of our paintings at once. We quickly realised that we were too close to the work to really take it all in and so recruited some help from Jennifer Libby Fay, another Fayetteville Underground artist, to give us an outside opinion. Happily Jennifer was impressed by the body of work and, after some discussion between the three of us, we concluded that only one piece looked to be in need of slight alteration.

Beneath the silence
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x24"
$800

As ever when making art, an outside opinion is an incalculable aid to achieving perspective. Jennifer's voice allowed us to regain the vision we shared upon returning to the first piece after taking our initial break. We not only were able to once again see the depth and complexity of that painting, but also how we had gone on to translate it into the rest of the work. Needless to say, we were quite pleased!

Tomorrow we are going to have a sneak preview of the series in Megan's studio. It will almost certainly be the only time we will be together to show the work. We're looking forward to exciting afternoon and we hope that if you are in Fayetteville, you'll be able to drop by.

A question of chemistry

2011-05-20T08:52:00.003+01:00

The collaborative series Megan Chapman and I have been working on really took off this week. Initially, our collaborative process was more tense than enjoyable and we had doubts about the project. Sensibly, we took a few days away from Megan's studio, during which time we talked over our painting process and agreed a more relaxed set of rules. We returned to the studio with some trepidation, yet were more than pleasantly surprised by what we found there: the first piece we had painted was revealed as being very nearly finished. It was so much better than we had hoped for, in fact quite a complex piece and, after making only slight additions to it, immediately hung it in the Vault Gallery at the Fayetteville Underground, where we sat and looked at it for a long time.

Fired up by the success, we began another painting and, over the week, completed three further pieces, with a one more piece in progress. The newer paintings are bolder than the first painting, reflecting the more confident and relaxed approach we have taken to them. Each one is a curious blend of our two hands, with hints towards both of our styles for those with sharp eyes.

This week has been some of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in a studio. It has truly been a collaborative process, where often four hands are moving over the canvas and, at times, two brains are acting as one.

We are planning to a further four or five pieces in this series, which we have named A question of chemistry. Come back next week and see how things progress!

We took the quiet roads
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x40"
$1,350

A strange currency
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 40x30"
$1,350

A fearless humming across the wires
© 2011 Megan Chapman and Stewart Bremner
Mixed Media on Canvas, 30x40"
$1,350

An unexpected update

2011-05-15T04:57:00.000+01:00

I thought I would find you here, 60x48"

We returned to the studio today. As soon as we walked in and saw that first collaboration piece, it was obvious that it was very nearly finished. A little time later it was. We also started two more pieces. A full update will come on Friday…

Collaboration time

2011-05-13T21:56:00.002+01:00

Megan takes a turn

Finally, after talking about it for quite some time, abstract artist Megan Chapman and I were able to start out first collaborative piece this week. This is the first time I have collaborated with another artist and I really had no idea how it would work.

We decided that we would take turns working on a large canvas that was in the back of Megan's studio, with approximately ten minutes per turn. I gessoed and started the piece, then we began taking our turns, whilst similarly alternating control of the music playing.

Seeing Megan work as she created textures using techniques I had only heard her describe was fascinating. The working process, however, was not as smooth as we had hoped it would be. The relinquishment of control over the whole painting, together with having someone else in your space as you work challenged both of us. We managed a few hours of work, during which time the piece changed dramatically several times over. At present it is unfinished and full of potential. More on this next week!

Mirror world

2011-05-06T21:45:00.004+01:00

This week has been a pretty eventful one in art land. The biggest news was the opening of my and fellow photographer Craig Munro's joint exhibition iteration/span at the Fayetteville Underground in Arkansas, USA. This is not just my first exhibition of photography but also my first international show and it has been very exciting. We were invited to do the show by Megan Chapman, a studio artist at the Underground who is responsible for much of programming of their galleries' exhibitions.

I also spent part of the week painting in Megan's studio and was able to complete nine new works on board. These pieces, collectively titled Mirror World, reflect on my first fortnight spent in a familiar and yet quite different culture.

The works are currently on show at the Underground. Each is 8x8 inches and are a modest $45. If you are interesed in buying one, please email me at stewart(at)stewartbremner(dot)co(dot)uk

Everything seems bigger

Familiar from afar

Gradual acclimitisation

Here comes the stride

I say tomato

I've heard this one before


They say it's the same

This land is your land

Up close the weave is different

Stranger in a strange land

2011-04-29T15:32:00.001+01:00

Introduction to the mirror world (acrylic and graphite on canvas 5x5")

This week I have become a sort of visiting artist, or more exactly photographer, as I spent the week preparing for a photography exhibition in Fayetteville, Arkansas. That show, iteration/span, will run through May at the Fayetteville Underground and is now more or less ready, which meant there was time to make a painting for an exhibition in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Called 5x5, the show is a fundraiser for the Tulsa Artists' Coalition which also runs throughout May and is made up entirely of 5x5" paintings, all selling for $55 and opening in May 5th. My piece for this show reflects on the dislocation and strangeness I have experienced during my first week in Fayetteville, in a world that is at once familiar and yet often subtly different.

Still some hitches

2011-04-15T18:06:00.001+01:00

With just a little too much to be doing and thinking about right now, painting seems to have slid down my priorities a little. Not that I didn't paint at all. I worked on two different pieces from February that were unfinished. It seemed, when I began this, a good idea, a way to ease back into painting. However, it proved to be rather frustrating, as I tried to work these paintings out of their dead ends. Right now, my efforts seem to have done little more than simply move materials around the paper, so that rather than fix the existing problem pieces, I have merely changed the problem.

With hindsight, I probably ought to have warmed up with a few small pieces first. That, then, may be the plan for next week.

Slow (re)starter

2011-04-08T17:20:00.001+01:00

It has been yet another slow art week. An unexpected hangover from the intense month gone meant that painting was not really on the cards this week. However, I did spend some time with my finished paintings, looking at the marks and the shapes and just generally being amazed that these works actually came from my hands. After the recent darkness, it was a welcome reminder.

I also made a first attempt at naming the four finished pieces this week. So far, this has only been successful on one painting. More time just sitting with them will with luck cure that problem.

Almost there

2011-04-01T13:03:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, sadly, art did not happen. After another long week of uninspiration, I came down with yet another office-related bug and spent far more of the weekend on the sofa that I had planned to. Today sees my last day in that buggy office and so from tomorrow onwards, I return to a more creative and free world (also one that has considerably less income, but you can't have everything). Quite how this will mesh with the body of work I was creating when I began this four week sentence is hard to forecast. My intention is to let events and my hands move as they will and to try not to worry about it. Wish me luck!

A little way from finishing

2011-03-25T20:24:00.000Z

As the weeks of daily office work mount up, its effect on my art becomes apparent. Most notably, it limits the time I can paint down to just weekends, as there is not enough head room on workday evenings to even contemplate painting. So each weekend I work on my paintings, however I am yet to finish one. Instead, the five day breaks between sessions mean that when I return to work on a piece, the original motivation for the work has altered. To work on further in light of this means either to make a mess of the piece, or to alter is so fully that the original idea is irrecoverably altered. Rather than risk falling into either of these situations, I have been putting half-worked pieces aside, to complete when I return to painting daily in a week's time. These are the thoughts in my head as I head into one last office life weekend.

Weekender

2011-03-18T12:38:00.001Z

Last weekend, after a week of office work, I was somewhat worried that I might not be able to get back to the place that I had worked my way into. It has taken more than a month of painting every day and talking about painting every day to get there. Having had that suddenly cut off was not nice. However, I really ought not to have worried.

In the middle of Saturday afternoon, a little while after I had tidied and cleaned, the need to paint just smoothly flowed into me. It wasn't subtle either. It just hit me: I must paint. I dropped whatever I was doing at the time, walked over to my board and picked up a brush. I was there. Back. A while later, when I stepped back, I realised that I was relieved.

On Sunday, I started a new piece. It was a reflection on the difficult week that had passed. This weekend I will be trying to pull that one back from the brink.

Changed priorities

2011-03-11T16:23:00.000Z

There has been almost no art action this week, not through a lack of a desire to paint, but rather due to spending my day time working in an office. Unsurprisingly, spending a large part of one's day in an uninspiring environment is not condusive to creation. The freedom and space needed to create art is effectively destroyed, not just be being in this environment but also by the regimented hours required in attendance.

It proves that making art is not simply a case of simply turning up and getting on with the work. Art needs space, more than anything. What may seem to others as an artist flitting about and not actually working, is the necessary time needed to recharge one's creative batteries, the time needed to find the moment when creation can occur. Locked into the daily grind, this process atrophies.

With added relish

2011-03-04T18:00:00.001Z

Over the past month, my painting journey has involved not only painting every single day, but also an awful lot of thinking about art and talking about art and then thinking some more about art. A cycle of thinking and talking and writing, with intense burst of painting mixed in. It has been a head-bending time, as I've grappled with concepts that I have both never considered and avoided, as well as creating paintings that I had never expected to. I've uttered surprising statements and watched amazed at some of the shapes flowing under my brushes.

Those brushes have become notably freer too, perhaps even more painterly, as I move further and further from my controlled, graphic nature. I've become more familiar with my materials, with the various consistencies and tones of my acrylics and the way their mixed pigments split in water. I've also began to re-discover materials I had not used in many years – pastel, oil pastel, oil sticks and hard pencils – which I have been adding to those acrylics to give texture, depth and shape.

My goal in all this is to capture something of the changes to my manner of thinking, my manner of perception, that I have spent the last few years working to alter to the positive. The underlying framework for each piece therefore becomes an interpretation of how I see the world and myself, of the past, the present and the future. More specifically, the pieces become a reflection of my state at the moment that my brushes, pencils, rags, roller and pastels move on the paper.

The three pieces I am sharing today, all as yet unnamed, are the first three finished paintings I have completed to my satisfaction in quite some time. It is only this week that I feel I have finally got to where I wanted to get and that, right now, is only the beginning. I do not know what will come next but I am looking forward to it with relish.

Be here now

2011-02-25T15:43:00.001Z

The first full week in my revised studio space has seen some bold and positive steps in my work. The space and the scale afforded me has given more freedom than I have experienced in a long time when painting.

For most of the week I continued to work on newspaper, although the rate of their progression slowed to less than one a day, as I began to narrow down my scope and focus more on a goal. Gradually, more and more time was spent on each piece. By the middle of the week, after some long and hard thinking, I decided it was time to move to a more permanent setting and so bought some heavy-weight paper.

As I sit here, on this sunny Friday afternoon, my fingers are spotted and smeared with paint, ink and pastel. A new piece, painted on some of that heavy, heavy paper is behind me drying. It may well be the start.

I read the news today

2011-02-18T12:09:00.002Z

After the small throwaway paintings reached their end, I wanted to keep painting every day yet not on the same restricted A4 scale. The next logical step, to me, was to move to newsprint, specifically newspaper pages, which I would gesso then paint on.

Whilst the first couple were made in the much same manner as the smaller pieces, they soon began to move into markedly different territory. I wanted to challenge my habit of drawing shapes and then colouring them in, a recurring pattern from my pop art that seemed to have been creeping back. This took me off in an unexpected direction and whilst I had been thinking Motherwell in my head, Miro seemed to come out of my brush. The ongoing evolution continues, however, and that moment has already passed.

The increased scale is a joy to work on, giving me more freedom in my movement, allowing my brushes to slide with more fluidity. The contents of the pages under the gesso has also been interesting, adding textures and shapes where I have allowed it to show through. The pieces feel a little more mature than the smaller works. Which is good, as I am now starting to think about my next body of work, about what I want it to say.

The other big change this week has been in my studio. I've moved my furniture around and where once I had a painting corner of my living room, now I have a living corner in my studio. It is a better use of the room and the increased space is going to be great to work in.

The throwaway paintings

2011-02-11T12:50:00.000Z

For nine days I have been painting quick, small paintings on sheets of A4 printer paper. The idea was to free me up, to get me painting enough to stop worrying about what I was painting and just paint. This then would help me move forwards, to try to get to the place I have been fighting my way towards for the last year and some.

I made thirty paintings over these nine days. The biggest challenge, in some ways, has been to try not to think of this as a series. My brain works that way, is always trying to make connections, looking at the continuing narrative. Trying to disconnect that impulse was not all that successful, although I did manage a few times. I'm still to close to these pieces to look objectively. A few of them I quite like, a few I really don't.

Throwaway paintings from stewart bremner on Vimeo.

There has been a lot of art thinking and art talking this week. I know I'm still not there yet, not at the point that I need to be at, but I'm getting closer. What I need to do now is keep on moving. Right now, the best way to do that seems to be to continue to make throwaway paper paintings. I might, however, change the scale. Stay tuned.

Letting go

2011-02-04T10:33:00.000Z

This week has seen more discussion about art take place than in any other of my life to date. They stemmed from one fairly short painting session on Sunday afternoon, when something finally happened.

I was working on the larger piece I documented here last week. It had the piece down was on the floor and, along with a box of pencils, I was down there with it. My intention was to add some lines to the piece. Once I had started, my hand steadily became more and more free. The lines became less controlled and my began to jump around and across the canvas. Soon, in a frenzy of sharpening, flying hands and pencils I lost myself in the work. Finally. I stopped trying to exert conscious control. I let go…

A little while later, when the music I had on stopped playing, I sat back on the floor, panting, heart racing, head swimming. I was shocked, sickened, frightened, shaking and later, when I calmed down some, I knew that I had finally taken my first true step into art.

Gone from stewart bremner on Vimeo.

Simply, I had to talk about it. During one conversations, with my friend the artist Megan Chapman, I was challenged to paint a bunch of quick, throwaway pieces. Megan's idea was that by making these pieces, they would help negate some of my entrenched ideas about what art should be and how it should be made.

The challenge made was to paint at least one piece a day for nine days on cheap printer/copier paper and that no piece would take more than an hour. I was somewhat reticent about the idea to begin with and was rather unwilling to try. However, using her wily American ways, she 'double dog dared' me to do it. I was too amused to do anything but accept. Below is one of the pieces from day one, when I painted three.

'Day #1, Piece #3' - acrylic, ink and graphite on paper

Reawakening

2011-01-28T10:38:00.001Z

(Untitled work in progress) 30"x20"

The new year has seen some small resurgence in my painting and with it something of a direction. After a year of re-building it does feel like now I am getting somewhere and it seems that what I need to do now is paint, more and often. Luckily I have quiet a large supply of older works that are going to be good for painting over, they'll provide good texture as an base layer. This was one such old painting and small sections of it can be seen under the unbleached titanium that makes up the background colour of this unfinished piece.

New year, new work

2011-01-21T23:28:00.001Z

A couple of the recent pieces I have been working on have been put aside for a while. Instead I started a new piece (top) and totally worked over an old piece.

A million magic crystals

2010-12-12T22:02:00.003Z

Until a few days ago, these were two finished paintings. I hacked them apart and started again. They may be heading somewhere new. They may not be. It is too early to tell. One thing for sure is that they look different to the last few paintings.

About to be writ again

2010-12-12T21:48:00.001Z

Stop thinking about what you don't have and enjoy what you do (20"x16")

Insert self improving message here (16"x12")

Two more that might well be finished, although I'm not fully certain. The top one may have too many colours.

Unmolten

2010-12-09T20:11:00.000Z

There has been more painting going on here than there has been for a while. This piece is one of the newest ones and it is going somewhere a bit different. It is at that exact stage where it looks like it could be finished now but I know needs something more.

Pale rider

2010-12-07T10:15:00.001Z

Another ongoing piece. This one very rough and very early.

The answer

2010-11-26T21:10:00.000Z

This might be the first time I feel like I've done a proper grown-up paper. Might be.

New layers

2010-11-20T13:07:00.000Z

The experimenting goes on. These two have been gradually evolving over the past few months. They've both got a long way to go. The newest addition is Lazertrans.

And finally

2010-10-13T15:12:00.001+01:00

Absorption, interpretation, neglection, repetition, 20x16"


Seek and you may find, 16x12"

These two have been hanging around unfinished for quite a long time now, passing though several incarnations each before arriving at what you see above. These are the first two canvases I've completed since May [Ed. What about 'I go to sleep?'] and they feel like they are moving things on.

Unfixed

2010-09-25T15:15:00.002+01:00

Untitled work in progress, 16x12"

I went too far with this one a few week ago. I've been looking at it ever since. Yesterday I had a go at it with some white paint and a litte ink. It looks a bit better now. A bit. Still a long way to go...

I go to sleep

2010-09-23T15:16:00.001+01:00

I go to sleep and keep grinning, 20x16"

Wow. A finished one. How unexpected.

Not much order here

2010-09-18T11:46:00.000+01:00

I don't really know where this is going right now. I've been looking at it for a few weeks now. The chaos I am happy with. Order, however, I am finding hard to, well, find. As above, so below, I guess.

The instant photo is not fixed yet. It is just a thought. It may move. The orientation may slip back to upright as well.

I go to sleep

2010-08-27T10:58:00.010+01:00

Last week's works in progress are still in progress and unfortunately in a less finished state than last week. I shall persevere and perhaps next week one or both will make another appearance. In the mean time, I think I have finally put this bugger to rest.

The canvas has had more incarnations that a thing with a lot of incarnations. It started out a few years ago as a pop art flower, before impacting with a night of out-of-this-world Sun Ra tributary music . This incarnation suffered from the never knowing when to quite problem, before being pushed into an even stupider place.

At the end of last week I spread some very lumpy plaster on it and then prompty ignored the resulting mess, figuring that once again I had made an arse of it. However, when I was stuck waiting for the other two works-in-progress dry, I had a little fiddle with it. A drippy, splashy fiddle. I then left it too to dry.

A few days later, I was sorting through my pile of text and something in the 'grinning' quote and this one just clicked. I had a slightly sinister chuckle, then spent longer than seems feasible figuring out where the text would fit on the canvas. Eventually I got it to work (the canvas is now flipped 180º from its earlier incarnations), before adding a little garden twine and declaring it finished. (Well, for this year!)

Red return

2010-08-20T11:07:00.001+01:00

Untitled work in progress, 20x16"

Untitled work in progress, 12x16"

After so many, many months of inactivity, this week I have finally applied some paint to a surface using implements. It felt good. Very good. I don't know where I'm going with these, there is no plan behind them, no thoughts or intentions. Unthinking, subconscious work seems the best way forward right now. Thinking and planning can come once I've got back into the swing.

Shouty man

2010-07-12T14:00:00.001+01:00

Shouty man, originally uploaded by stewartbremner.

My focus is elsewhere at the moment. But who am I shouting at?

Lagrangian points

2010-06-04T21:20:00.002+01:00

My two new exhibitions are now up. Those of you who can't make it to the venues can catch the work here.

Alpha
Omega

To też przeminie

2010-05-28T13:08:00.000+01:00

An appropriate message for a day when shit just keep on going wrong. (See, they're all the same message.) Textures and washes underneath stencil and enmeshed string.

Thoughts on strings and things

2010-05-27T14:09:00.000+01:00

The Lagrangian series is about balance, about finding the point between order and chaos where the two divergent forces exert an equal pull. In this respect it as as much a reflection of the world as it is a personal exploration of the artist's psyche.

The forces of chaos come first, represented by the rough, swooping texture of plaster, the bedrock on which everything else is built. Next come the random daubs, splashes and splatters of paint, that run across the works, still an element of chaos but one where the creator's hand is more evident.

Order's first implementation is through the dividing strings, that dissect the canvas, a fencing-in of areas that reflects our most basic urges to divide reality into mine/yours, us/them, here/there, to divide and conquer nature. The colouring of these areas then adds to and strengthens the imposed order, yet is never able to entirely disguise the chaos below. There is therefore no single part of the canvas where either order of chaos are completely dominant and so a balance is achieved.

The text in representative of society, our lives and our communications. The words themselves become almost meaningless, instead rather it is the balance achieved between the phrase (the many) and the single word (the individual) that is the focus. However, in each individual canvas, a further balance is sought between the meanings of phrase and the single word. What can at first seem to be a phrase with a single, ordered meaning, is pulled into question by the ambiguous comment. A balance of sorts.

(notes for future thinking)
*What is the significance of the landscape drawings?
*What is the reason for using harmonious colours?
*Why, as ever, do I always seek to disguise my brush strokes?

Status update: nine days to go

2010-05-21T18:38:00.000+01:00

These ones are (yes) finished. (There, I finally wrote it.)

Don't need no sympathy
(16x12")

Don't leave a light on for me
(16x12")

Existing in the impossible space inside binarism
(16x12")

Neither moving not particularly thinking, just being
(20x16")

You were sometimes hard to find
(30x20")

This next lot are in all in progress.

Wait for me because I waited for you
(in progress, 16x12")

Just in time to say goodbye
(in progress, 16x12")

You came along and you pulled me through
(in progress, 20x16")

Drifting heavily through the slow night air
(in progress, 16x12")

Ain't it funny how the times flies
(in progress, 16x12")

Gaussian dispersal into nothingness, a mild, irreversible dissipation
(in progress, 30x20")

It won't be long

2010-05-13T11:04:00.000+01:00

At last I've managed to create something I quite like. The angles were formed with thread on the wet plaster surface, very quickly and with little pre-meditation. Now to see if I can build a series from this. Damn. I think I'm calling this one finished!

Hold onto this

2010-05-13T11:00:00.000+01:00

Another not right piece here. I think I was intimidated by its larger size. The composition and balance is all wrong and the leaf looks completely out of place. This has been sitting about for a few weeks and I'm no closed to finding a solution for it. The clock is ticking now, though.

Not of the past

2010-05-13T10:56:00.001+01:00

Hmm. Too much going on here by a good long ways. I've no idea how I'm going to fix it.

Canvas D strikes again

2010-05-13T10:54:00.000+01:00

It won't lie down and die this one. After weeks of staring at the broken plaster, I decided that it looked crap and hacked it all off. Where this will go next is beyond me right now.

'We're All Gonna Die - 100 meters of existence'

2010-05-09T16:57:00.001+01:00

'We're All Gonna Die - 100 meters of existence' Fascinating

Pixels by Patrick Jean

2010-05-06T23:41:00.001+01:00

Small and cracked

2010-05-06T15:23:00.001+01:00

This one has been stewing for a few weeks now. It has seen a lot of action, a lot of significant change. I added some drawing to it this morning, which I am in two minds about.

Canvas D

2010-04-16T12:07:00.002+01:00

This one has been on the go for a few weeks now. It's undergone a fair amount of change since it last appeared here and yet I am still uncertain of it. Somehoe it has become more of an assemblage than a painting. Is this what I want to do? Don't I want to actually use a brush on occasion? I think I may wish to.

The main relevant question here, though, is is this finished? Don't answer that, because I'm not going to. At best, I may call it 'almost ready' or something similar. None of that talk of being finished, thank you very much.

Space is the place

2010-04-02T15:29:00.001+01:00

In a week dominated by words, there has been little time for painting. And much of the time that there was was taken up with something of a misadventure, which is going to reming hidden for the time being, until it reaches even slightly something that I'm remotely happy with.

This piece was started mid week, listening to a steady diet of Sun Ra. It is a start, no more, and will be changing a lot in the coming weeks.

Esto también pasará - revised

2010-03-26T15:11:00.000Z

I should probably have held off until today to post this one. As it was, the changes I had planned to make to this when I last posted it were all that it needed. This one (whisper it) might even be finished.

More (almost) newness

2010-03-24T14:31:00.002Z

I've updated my site today. There were a few paintings that I had not got around to shooting, which I wanted to add. These date from mid-winter and were made when I wasn't quite certain where I was going and so instead reworked some existing pieces, whilst I mulled over ideas.

I've also added most of the on-going pieces that have been shown here over previous weeks. All of these can be seen in lovely big, zoomify-sized images.

A world of new

2010-03-24T14:14:00.002Z

New versions abound today. First up are the new versions of canvases A, B and C. These have been on-going for a few weeks now and I think may finally be nearing an end stage.

Canvas A has had minimal changes from the last time. I've added some drawing and a portion of a photo, no more. I don't think this one is likely to change again.

Canvas B, however, is quite a bit different from last time. Here there are more washes of colour, as well as some very obvious splattering, which does indeed have a slight unwelcome pink tint (note to self: always be sure and clean your implements). There are also two different layers of drawing, much of which I have now obscured, and a poem. Yes. A poem. It may be a touch pretentious. Deal with it.

Canvas C is the most changed. I was quite unhappy with this in its last guise and have therefore greatly reworked it: new plaster layering, a white wash, re-tinting the letters, orange splahes and a stamp. (I like stamps.) Lastly I added a little drawing. I'm still not certain how I feel about this one but time will tell. I've put it on the wall, along with the others, to consider over the coming weeks.

Esto también pasará

2010-03-24T09:37:00.001Z

This one has been hacked about quite a lot in the past few days. I've already covered over quite a lot of what I first did to it and I expect more of that is going to happen yet.

You will not die, it's not poison

2010-03-18T22:03:00.004Z

I've got a lot of ideas swimming about in my head at the moment. Adding typography to my paintings is one of them, the idea being to add order to what is otherwise chaos.

My liking for type comes from my work as a magazine designer and for me that absolutely represents my ordered side. I enjoy it greatly and trying to find ways to bring that into my painting is a challenge. So far, I've been sticking to painting simple large letters. Here I've gone for a different approach entirely. I'm really pretty happy with how this has turned out, although ideally the paper would be thinnner.

There are a few other things here worth mentioning. The first is an addition of a photo, which I attempted to merge into the painting. I'm not too happy with how this particular instance turned out and so have covered a lot of it up with the type.

Secondly, there are the wires that are strung between carpet tacks, hammered into the outsides of the stretcher frame. I like how this looks and will almost certainly try it again. Hopefully I can get them to rust as well next time, although that may well might require using chemistry, which will almost certainly hurt my head.

Number nine is not number nine yet might be the first finished

2010-03-16T15:01:00.002Z

This is the first piece that I think might be finished. It is the first one where I am happy with both the balance and number of elements. To begin, I laminated a bunch of dead notebook pages onto one part of the canvas. A few days later I began the plastering layer. Rather than wait for that to dry, I immediately painted into and over it but was unhapy with the results. When I added more, it got worse. I then mixed some drawing ink and PVA and splatted that around and about. It got worse again.

At this point I was on the verge of giving up on this one and letting it dry completey, before painting over the whole thing and starting again. Instead, I got out the palette knife and mashed everything together, except for the stringy black PVA strands. These I picked off and dumped over the notebook pages.

Oddly, this last-ditch, f**ck-it approach pulled everything together. So I added in the blank Instax photo, a few more orange splashes to balance things out and left it to dry. The next day I knew that it needed a large number 9 in the corner (I added two) and then a few more odds and ends.

The two most sucessful features for me where the last two added. The penultimate was the ink drawing, based on a light-trail photo I took last year. I've been trying to work drawings into my paintings since canvas A but this is the first time I feel it has really worked.

The final element, and the one I'm most excited by today, is that orange-ish strip in the centre. It is a long slot cut through the canvas, cross-stitched and backed with a mis-printed photo. The photo is stuck on the back in a D-shape, giving depth.

I've had this idea of cutting into the canvas in my head for many months, yet this is the first time I've put it into practice. It has worked exactly as I had hoped it would. This is great because I've got quite a few more variations on this idea I want to explore. So watch this space.

Canvas C

2010-03-13T17:26:00.005Z

I thought for this painting, I'd try a little harder to keep track of the stages it goes through. The previous two works-in-progress that I have uploaded here don't give quite as clear an indication of how they progressed, concentrating, as the mostly do, on details. Therefore this time I set out to make a record of the pregoress of this painting.

First up is the simple plaster background layer, with the main 'erosion' drips running across it. Once this layer hard dried, I cut out a space for the instax self portrait photo.

Next up is the lettering layer and a splash of black ink and some other little odds and ends.
Finally there is a skyline drawing, filled below with a faint dark wash. This is overworked with some strips of a mis-printed photo and some oil and water colour mixing. There is also probably more ink here.

As with the previous two canvases, this piece is not finished. I'm still feeling my way about with this and don't yet know where it will go. Right now I am in two minds about this piece. On one hand I like the more obvious layering of elements, which is one of the things I've been trying to achieve. On the other hand, it feels somehow like a student project, a little amateurish, maybe even slightly tacky. I can't put my finger on exactly what is giving me this impression, whether it is the overyl clashing colours or just that there are two many disparate elements. I'm going to have to think about this one for a while, before I come back to it.

Ekranoplan

2010-03-13T13:15:00.004Z

English Russia » Ekranoplan

Check the link. Many, many more shots of this bizarre beast.

Canvas B

2010-03-04T10:56:00.003Z

I started this one last week, you may recognise a small part of it. Since then, I've added quite a bit to it.
My primary intent here is to try to marry painting and photography. This is not the only method I've thought of for trying this, but it is the first to make it onto canvas. I'm not certain of its sucess. I'm also uncertain as to whether or not to work on this piece more. There are several parts of this that I like, however it doesn't feel finished yet.

As with canvas A, I'm going to put this away for a while and come back to it. (By which point I'm sure I'll be really wishing I had got the b straight.

Overcooked

2010-03-03T10:46:00.006Z

Canvas 'A', as I am rather obviously calling this at the moment, has been simmering away for a few weeks. I think I might have been cooking it too long. There was a point last week when I was happier with it but I've gone past it now. What I really need to do now is to put it away somewhere for a few weeks and come back to it fresh. Maybe it will be cleared then.

Lagrangian point

2010-03-02T17:05:00.001Z

I've spent ten years filtering my creativity though the ordered side of my personality; the chaotic side was utterly banished. It was never a conscious choice, in fact almost entirely the opposite. I became disconnected from my art because it was an expression of only half of who I was – an utterly ordered person is not the same at all as one who walks the line between order and chaos.

An Lagrangian point is a point in space between two astral bodies where their gravitational pulls are equal and so cancel each other out. A third body placed at this point will be attracted towards neither and will remain stationary. This is where I want to be, in between order and chaos, feeling the pull of both but moving towards neither.

A happy 'accident'

2010-02-27T15:16:00.006Z

For the past few weeks, I've tinkered away with the brown painting. Some time during the middle of this week, even though it is by no means finished, I put it aside to begin work on a new piece. Firstly, it felt like the brown painting needed a little time alone to simmer but secondly, and more importantly, there was something new I really wanted to try. It stemmed from a conversation I had last month with my friend Richard, when he suggested that one way for me to move forward may be to try to combine my painting and photograpy. Since then, I've thought of several ways to do so and this new painting is going to be mt first attempt at acheiving this.

For this post, I'm going to put that aside to concentrate on a small detail that I am enjoying particularly on this new piece. This idea was lifted from one of the things that happened on the brown canvas.

What I've tried to do here is to bleed one of my lovely, lovely orange paints out of titanium white, to wash across the canvas. A river of orange, so to speak. Later I added in some black ink, which has rather taken over. However the ink is water-soluable and is unlikely to remain where it is for long.

I like both the startlingly stark colour combination, against the relatively plain background, and the way that the colour cuts through the background texture.

Of course, looking at it again, I realise that it looks like I have a pet bird that eats orange paint and likes to stand on the edges of my paintings…

Accidental

2010-02-25T16:10:00.004Z

Accidental, originally uploaded by Dr Craig.

The colours and the layers and the textures.

N.A.S.A (Ft. Tom Waits & Kool Keith) - Spacious Thoughts

2010-02-20T21:23:00.008Z

A new beginning

2010-02-20T12:24:00.008Z

I'm starting with a detail from the first new painting I've tried in a long time. I don't know where I'm going with this, whether or not I'm barking up the wrong tree. My aim now is to try to marry together my two warring artistic instincts: the controlled, retentive side and the other that desires little other than freedom and chaos.