one more time with feeling…

Art has always been a means of escape for me, from myself, from my surroundings, from a page, whether from a boring Sunday afternoon or from classes as a child, from meetings or conferences as an adult.

In my blog, touches of sense… this search for freedom is constant.

While what is most important for me is to recapture the sensations that I have always had since my childhood when making art, I have come to accept that working on my craft is necessary.

I find myself a little perplexed when I think about this issue.

Perhaps thought isn’t the answer, I shall follow my instincts.

I am suddenly reminded of a quotation of Leo Van Lier:

“To perceive we must act; to act we must perceive. Activity in one’s environment brings forth the affordances in those environments.”

Dreams drawn

Engraved on a corner of scrap, the drawing takes form.

Escaping from dutiful participation, I am engrossed in crude line, simple colour, unplanned sketch.

This art is still alive to me.

Resistant to academic form, I make do with child-informed imagery. It has a keen edge.

I brandish it now.

It remains stubbornly ignorant of rigour, it appears quite oblivious to science.

From, a sunlit window-sill, a dull page opens up distant horizons to us....alone.

I am there again, revisiting a forgotten encampment. There is warmth, there is fire, there are a thousand stories to be heard. She was always there for me.

How can one explain that however far one goes from oneself one always returns to one's imperturbable essence, one's dreams...

Wherever my path shall lead, I am, as ever, prepared for uncertain journey. I will need little luggage.

Left with the memory of some beaten up biro, a last pencil stub, and a sunlit window-sill; I will be free.

Dreams-drawn will know no bounds.

touches of sense…2014

Any scrap of paper will do.

(The scrap above, on which the image of an old man is drawn, is an example.)

This class has got nothing to do with me.

I shall be elsewhere.

touches of sense…2015

Shriek

So those were my conference notes. I had almost forgotten. They appeared in disorder, on my desk.

I focused my attention on drawing escape.

It appeared in the bottom right hand corner.

Shriek.

I know it when I feel it... There is a starting point. It isn't a photographic image.

More than an image there is an urge. First strokes of a brush pen. I am taken up, defined in a curve.

First angles, first volumes of the body. Whose body? Whose body will it be? Verticality. Crosshatching.

Lettering, familiar scribbled lettering.

EXHAUSTED.

Change implement. Where's that red BIC pen? I need that red BIC pen.

I need it's cut into the paper. I need it's disresepect.

I had some time, some peace, some desire.

Going back to school.

I had been working on my drawing technique, academically, like I used to do at school. I hated it.

There are moments when my soul erupts in revolt at constraints which I have accepted being imposed on myself. There are moments when I feel the need to return to basics.

I feel reassured learning more about the voices of artists behind their work.

Picasso would altenate between "studies" - careful "drawing" and apparent flourishes of revolt.

A man who at times fell into despair when thinking of the appearance of photography.

What should an artist do when faced with "photorealism"?

"I might as well kill myself"... he thought.

Picasso decided to paint what he felt not what he saw.

touches of sense… 2018

feldgang ceyrat.

Publiée dans touches of sense… en juin 2019, voici ci-dessous une collection de photos prises pendant une promenade dans les Gorges de Ceyrat, près de chez-moi, avec des esquisses à l’encre et l’aquarelle. Le temps passé à marcher et à observer a été relativement court par rapport au temps consacré à la création des oeuvres. Ce lieu a une importance particulière pour moi car dans ces gorges se trouvent des sites d’escalades où j’ai passé des heures à travailler les voies sur les dalles, coincé dans les fissures et supendu sur les surplombs.

Les Gorges de Ceyrat, June 2019.

internet of things…

“

First published in touches of sense… in 2014, at a time when I began to build up and play with a palette of painting and remix apps on iPhone and iPad, I was both attracted and repulsed by the relative ease with which I could create visual imagery.

The poetic style of the blog post is typical of much of my writing which emerges like some of my art in a stream of consciousness.

Much of the artwork I created between 2014 and 2018 exists only as a series of digital files. The resolution of the images, the multimedia nature of the creations or their existence as part of a collaborative dialogue with a group of musician, poet, artist friends means that they have meaningful life only on a screen.

Nevertheless, I chose to include a few examples here as these images are an important part of my artistic journey and remain a source of inspiration for future play…

As I take time to review the different collections I see more and more connections.

Each image, each blog post has the potential to spark off unpredictable creative exploration.

A selfie.

I am already dead.

The instant is over.

I am passed into pixels.

Beautiful chimera.

I am young, I see myself acting, acting middle-age anger.

There is hurt in the glaring eyes.

I am reduced to a still.

I am framed in a moment 10:30 on Sunday 7 September.

I am a stream, a river of disconnected instants screaming for attention.

I am alive, I am dead.

Hope resurrect my youth with a swipe.

You see me as your thing.

We are as web of avatars, algorhythmic robots, waltzing in a cloud of particles.

I am made in your image.

I am target.

I am customer.

I am lover.

I am your object for an instant.

Save me.

Move me.

Scale me to your attention.

How will you divide your attention?

No matter.

Grains of sand

We are swimming in quick sand.

We are both grain and grinder.

Time slipping through our fingers.

Shall we drown in this sink-hole?

Save me

Throw me a rope of reality, of time spent together, of common history.

Let us drink together before we drown to drown no more.

Let us touch.

Let us breathe in the dew of distant lands the dawn awakening.

Cyclops

What shall we make of Cyclops, who would Google us up?

Should we believe his plea that he serves no evil?

How shall we avert his gaze, while we dwell on the island?

Must we seek to blind the Cyclops?

We are prey, toy-thing, free lunch.

Circe

Sleep, and doze, listen to the sweet songs, fix your eyes on beauty my friends.

She is yours. Your play-thing.

She is dancing for you.

She is already ancient, her face is made up.

She is Circe.

Notice how the wolves are packed around her court.

They are as docile.

Beware the enchantress.

They are wolves and we are become swine.

You are myth, an odyssey to be written.

Attend to ancient heroes.

Awake and sleep no more.

touches of light, preciously preserved.

First published in touches of sense….August 12 2021,

The heightened attention, the heightened emotions, present during an afternoon’s walk with my eldest son are expressed in images: expansive panoramas, tree-lined avenues, the sculptural boughs of a tree, a sun-lit path.

Few words were spoken.

Few words are necessary.

A page escapes to leafy paths.

An instant of communion with a Cézanne.

A5 sketchpad, framing expression of infinite dimensions.

Kilometres becoming scaled in centimetres.

Touches of light preciously preserved.

Unfocused focus washing weariness away.

Ephemera rendered eternal.

Taking a moment to contemplate.

Pause, gaze, breathe in, remember.

Moving, losing sight, feeling loss.

Remembrance.

That moment.

That minutiae.

Words tramp through grass like Wellington Boots.

Stop stomping around.

Present movement moments evaporate.

Fine edge, broad sweep, fanned lines.

Found in nature.

Lost in flow.

Time absent in presence.

Touches of light preciously preserved.