Three New Paintings

Heaven's Pressure

Oil on canvas 56 x 84 cm

New Landscapes

oil on canvas 25x60 cm

Altarpiece

Altarpiece for the Pigment and Oil with the Madonna and Child Enthroned

Following my desire to construct something for the interim show I created this altarpiece. The idea was to play with the relationship between image & material (the church and painting) moving a traditional medieval style altarpiece into something that brought the paint into the iconography.


In a way I wanted the Madonna to become a icon of the church and that style of painting while the child has become a material icon. The subtlety of this transition still leaves an intensely religious and recognizable image, yet, there is something untoward happening.

The dissolution of the traditional early renaissance aesthetic is visible towards the sides of the central panel where the figures are collapsing/dissolving into abstraction and the whim of paint. This leads out to the 4 outer panels which are purely abstract and indulge in the gesture and character of paint, removing the typical iconography found in these panels such as the Crucifixion and annunciation.

The function of this contemporary altarpiece in the context of their availability in galleries and museums is as a redevelopment of previous work. It plays with the images of religion we already hold in our minds. While society has become much more secular leaving the whole idea of an altarpiece seemingly redundant paint has in some ways gained more significance over time, the value of the religious icon may be lost but the material has survived and can become an icon itself.

Elements of My Thesis

The Value of Ruskin's Ideas in Modern Painters Volume I for Contemporary Painting

Early Chapters:

Ruskin’s Value as a Critic. 1

Ideas of Truth and the Issue of Imitation. 1

Ruskin’s Idea of Relation and Post-Modern Painting. 5

Relation and Truth as a Critical Practice

Some passages...

Ruskin’s unique value as a critic still resonates with painting today due to his devotion to art and his vivacious support of many artists, primarily Turner. Ruskin’s criticism presents a symbiotic relationship between painting and theory, which provides a more progressive approach that contemporary criticism, which often has the two at odds with each. Ruskin’s desire to educate the masses and write for the public gives his criticism a clear and enthusing power.

In a critical sense we can expand on the idea of the flaneur, which can lead the painter to become more than just immersed in the sensory spectacle of life but perhaps the historical and cultural context of the present too. By taking on this role and travelling through paintings own narration one can attain greater variety of knowledge and therefore express their ideas with more Truth.

‘It has become custom to place oneself within the temporal framework of the unstoppable progress of history from which point one can survey the social field: looking forwards and backwards’ (Frank Reijinders 2003, p20). Paintings today can be cultural hybrids composed from various references from the past and the present and these can come together within the subject creating an advanced version of Ruskin’s ‘Relation.’

However, while artists such as Peter Doig, and Carlos Maria Mariani borrow references from various sources and periods there are also possibilities in re-examining ideas by theorists such as Ruskin in a contemporary context. In doing so the painter may find ideas that resonate with them, such as Ruskin’s idea of ‘Relation’. If the artist then mixes these older elements with present theories and expectations they can create new methods of valuing the quality of contemporary painting. In turn these rules provide painters with the ability to push new barriers and begin radicalising the aesthetic in response.

Prayer

Watercolour A3

Continuing from Free Fall I used the image of a praying woman in a similar way. There is something lonely and eerie about it and the paint is fragmented in a way akin to the visual effects of the scans I have been looking at.

Couple of Roman studies

A3 Pencil Drawings

Free Fall

Oil on canvas 40"x 30" approx

I wanted to use the new aesthetic I was developing from the weather experiments with figurative work. I found isolating a free-falling figure in a void created a interesting spacial ambiguity and gave a religious tone to the image; which I enjoy playing with especially due to religions involvement with the history of painting. I developed a method for distorting the image to try and achieve the visual effects of the weather data.