A question of chemistry

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"

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

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

An unexpected update

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…

Mirror world

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.

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

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.

About to be writ again

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.

The answer

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

New layers

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

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.

Not much order here

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

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

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.

Hold onto this

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

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

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.

Small and cracked

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.

Esto también pasará - revised

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.

Esto también pasará

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

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

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

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.