Five things this Friday – 16 February
Blasts from the past – five works, one every five years starting from my foundation course in 1989/90 up to 2010.
1 1989/90
A still life painting exercise from my Foundation course. Oil on hardboard. The carved figure is one my Dad made.The other objects are some sort of nut, a plastic toy space gun and piece of grapefruit peel.
2 1994/95
A drawing made a year or two after my finishing my Honours Degree. I was making small plaster objects of geometric house like forms. I used cardboard to make the initial mould and then latex to make a reusable one.
3 1999/2000
acrylic ink and paint on paper
Not too sure when this was made but it’s around this time. I was a living in Devon and working from home. A drawing of sorts. I think it was a one of those pieces of paper where I was cleaning my brush or using up excess paint, a by-product of sorts, but I like it.
4 2004/05
Electric sugar acrylic on mdf approx 1200 × 900mm
Made while house-sitting for friends in London. Fortunately for me, one of the bedrooms was in the process of being decorated so I had a free studio for a month. It’s a decent size woek, and I was still very much into gestural mark making. The title comes from a Tom Waits lyric, “…and over in The burnt yellow tent By the frozen tractor, the Music was like electric sugar”.
5 2009/10
Fissure acrylic on canvas 200 × 250mm
A work from my “One for you, one for me” project, where I asked people on my mailing list to cover my costs to make two works. In return they’d get one of the works and I’d keep the other. I exhibited all the paintings in my studio at Toi Pōneke and randomly selected the works for the supporters of the project.
In looking at these images I’m struck by how different a story would be told if I had chosen five different images. Quite how representative they are of my practice as a whole is really up for question. In fact it’s safe to say they offer momentary snapshots and these are the ones that caught my eye today. Another day and it could be five different images and a totally new story.
And on a different note, it’s quite something to realise I’ve been making art for almost thirty years…