In March this year I was delighted to be invited to show some paintings with the Pyramid Gallery in York, UK. I have a long history with this lovely gallery - they used to exhibit my machine embroidered pieces back in the 90s and they were good enough to try out some of my earliest abstract paintings a couple of years ago. Since then my work has developed a lot and Fiona, the gallery’s assistant manager had been following my progress on Instagram and asked me if I’d like to have a solo show with them. Of course I jumped at the chance, especially given the lack of opportunities to show work lately. You just can’t replace seeing art in the flesh!
A friend of mine visited the gallery last week and took these fab photos of the show and I’ve written a short piece about the work which you can read below. The Cacophony Of Ages is on until July 4th 2021.
‘The title for this exhibition came from a painting that I did last year but decided not to include in the exhibition as it didn't quite fit. 'The Cacophany Of Ages' is really just a fancy way of saying 'the noise of history'. I felt that it captured the essence of what I was trying to convey in this body of work which, loosely speaking, is a sense of the history of stories and conversations that our lives are built on.
I always work intuitively in that I don't have a specific idea that I'm working towards when I start a piece. There might be a vague idea like 'I want this one to have big sky' or 'I'd like to use yellow in this one' but beyond that anything can happen. Having said that there are obviously certain elements that I use consciously in every piece and that give the paintings cohesion as a body of work, in this case buildings or other man-made structures.
I've been putting buildings in my paintings for a while now – initially I was painting purely abstract but I started to feel dissatisfied with the lack of any kind of narrative. My earlier paintings started to have a lot of chimney-like structures in them and this is what led to the idea of using photos of real buildings. The roots of this idea, I realised, are in the 'moorland and mill chimneys' landscape of my childhood in Rochdale, Lancashire. I'm drawn to all sorts of architecture – industrial, derelict, domestic, coastal – and on reflection I think the main attraction is about the kind of shapes they make against the sky. It's important to me to use pictures that I take myself (apart from one photo of a factory near Newcastle that was taken by a friend) because they're an important part of the story and I want it to be entirely my story. All the photos I've used in this collection are taken in Nottingham, Sheffield, Norfolk and Northumberland. I either collage the printed pictures onto the painting, or use a photo transfer gel.
The text I use in my work isn't intended to mean anything but I like the way that it draws the viewer in – most people will want to try and decipher what it says (I would!) Some words are discernible but they are generally waffle and nonsense – streams of consciousness, lyrics from a song I'm listening to whilst painting. For me they give that sense of story, of narrative, and visually evoke the feel of graffiti or words scratched into walls or wood which I liken to modern day cave paintings. Also, simply, I like the way they look!
I use a lot of different media in my paintings and am constantly trying new ways of adding colour or creating texture. This helps to keep me engaged and interested in the work I'm doing, and it adds to the interest of the surface. I use collage often, usually painted or printed tissue paper and lately pieces of old dressmaking pattern which give the surprising contrast of printed lines, words and arrows. Often when I'm evaluating a piece I'll say to myself 'is it interesting enough?' I want the viewer to have plenty to look at, both the obvious and the subtle details - textures that you can only see in a certain light, metal leaf that catches the eye at a particular angle. I also relish the creation of enigma in my paintings, things to get people thinking. It doesn't matter what conclusion each individual comes to – for me that's the beauty of abstract work, it allows the viewer to tell their own story.
