An intinerant’s repose – works from the plague year
2020: Philip Bacon Galleries Show
Recently I have been using clouds to form atmosphere and control the metaphorical space on the canvas. Clouds are a rich field to plough with infinite variations in shape and colour to inform the all important tonal mood – the poetic nuances of the painting.
Nuanced it must be as the cirrus and cumulus clouds scuttle across the basin of the sky and are ever in movement. The fugitive clouds over St Peter’s today would be not unfamiliar to Julius Cesar. For me the movement of clouds defines the immutability of time and some images become repetitively insistent.
Years ago in the 70’s and ‘80’s I would routinely search out the old rubbish dumps around country towns. I expected objects to find me and they did for use as metaphorical material for yet unimagined projects. One day amongst the municipal refuse I found a mattress sprawled in front of me. It was used, dirty and old. One end was propped up to give it’s squalid circumstance a curious domestic warmth.
With the post-modern fashion for explanatory statements by artists I feel reserved when explaining my work. In these paintings affections are based on accumulated memory hopefully conveying a sense of personal poetry and the brush scumbles away at such lofty goals.
It is worth restating that when it comes to considered paintings, the less said the better.
Tim Storrier