For a while I worked as an Art Consultant at a gallery in Soho.  It amazed me how passively people interacted with the artwork they were looking at.  Someone could spend thousands on a painting and only spend a few seconds actively engaged with it.  Like it or not, many collectors, even educated ones, tend to buy art by the square foot and whether it matches the sofa.  I’ve always tended to be at odds with this aesthetic.  I’ve sat looking at a single image for ages, getting lost in the paint.  Wall based work has always been problematic for me as the singular experience has always been so important to me and something hanging on a wall tends to be too passive for me, then again, I’ve never really thought of my work as art with a capital A.  When you have to hold something in your hand and manipulate something in order to see it, the viewer experiences some of the same intimacy the artist has with the creative process.  They become responsible for the artwork, a co-conspirator, forced to become involved on a deeper level, to look deeper and more thoughtfully.

The gallery I showed with at the time would continually ask me to do larger, wall based pieces because they are easier to sell and tend to fetch higher prices.  I found that the lager works I made tended to be more detached, less autobiographical and subjective.  I didn’t necessarily dislike doing this kind of work but it was made for an external audience whereas my Icons are made solely for myself.  Once completed, they enter the zeitgeist but I make no conscious effort to communicate or explain anything (except now on this blog, ironically).

Quite often when I work, I paint or carve some element with no clear idea what I intend to do with it.  In a way it’s like creating my own objets trouvé.  An image may lie around for months or even years before I understand what I want to do with it.  Digging through my studio I am sometimes pleasantly surprised by an old, problematic friend.  Sometimes the answer never presents itself or informs other works without resulting in a completed work of it’s own. This piece is a prime example, the figure was painted about ten years ago and, while I liked it, I had no idea where to take it.   Ultimately, it inspired a series of small icons in which I had a lot of fun playing with ideas about the relation of the figure to ground, something that still is an important aspect of my work.  Each of the works below is about six inches tall.

For a long time the original panel with the figure was hanging over the bathroom door at the gallery.   Last year I looked at it and suddenly the surrounding image presented itself and down it came, my found object.