I'm quietly hoping that this is some kind of sign or promise. In the meantime, i'll keep banging on that drum!
Parisian souvenir
Above is a small painting i made while living in Paris. I didn't keep much of the work i made while staying at the cite, but i decided to hold onto this one. I remember standing in front of this little painting late at night with a cheap pair of scissors provided by the studio (or that a previous resident had left behind) and i started to scratch at the surface and think.
I was thinking about a hero and Leon Golub came to mind. I always admired the scale of his works and the difficulty of the subjects he portrayed and i was so surprised when i watched some videos of Leon on youtube to find that he was a gentle man of small stature. All i could think about was the amount of energy it must have taken to create such colossal works of art.
However, his later works are the works for me. Later in life, when Leon's health was failing, i read that he returned to drawing in sketchbooks as he no longer had the energy to work on large-scale paintings. Although this may sound like a closing chapter, it is much more to the tune of a man who adapted and succeeded. Recently, Leon's late drawings, which had previously been overlooked received their due attention with a major travelling show titled Live and Die like a Lion? curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York. The later drawings are full of dark humour and fun and games, and as a result are all the more appealing and enjoyable. Anyway, i don't quite know what etching the man's name into paint means, only that i felt the need to leave it there from the moment i wrote it and i'm still glad that i kept it. Here's one of my faves of Leon's below.
Leon Golub - Alarmed dog encountering pink, 2004
Looking through glass
I spent some time in Paris in early 2010. It was winter. Everything had a greyness to it. After a while, i stopped shooting in colour, and instead switched to black and white. I found the experience of living in Paris to be that of the stranger. I was always looking at things through a lens, looking at the reflections in the window of an underground train, wandering through glass museums or watching the snow leopard at the zoo. It is only in hindsight that i can now recognise how much of an onlooker i was. I could go days without speaking a word. There is a certain sense of blankness that exists with the experience of looking and an aching impossibility when one perceives that the world around them is often captured rather than lived. I sometimes think of abandoning photography all together, yet i am quite certain that i never will. Both the difficulty and joy of photography is that while i can never truly remember or forget, a photograph presents an other place, one that i can return to again and again. It places me somewhere in between looking, seeing and creating, which is one of photography's most powerful charms, and a reminder of why i continue to paint.
Beneath every picture lies another picture
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Some things don't survive the process. Most of the paintings shown here are now either hidden beneath other pictures or turned into confetti. I document my painting process regularly, which can become a painful reminder that i should have stopped there with some works. But painting for me is a process of painting out the things i love the most and learning to let go. At the end of some days when risks have been taken and irreversible changes are made, all i am left with is a bare studio floor with nothing but paint splodges, exhausted brushes and a feeling that i can never quite describe - its a roller coaster. The transience of this process is often hidden by the permanence of paint and can only be seen in the wrinkles and layers. A finished picture tells so many lies.
Father and son car drawings (and one car painting)
J.G.Williams - Holden Ute 2008
J.G.Williams - Diahatsu 2008
J.G.Williams - Celica 2008
P.J.WIlliams - Dad's car photos 2010
P.J.Williams - Celica 2010
Being Father's day today, i thought i would celebrate a project that i started with my father a couple of years ago. Basically, I asked Dad to make a few drawings of the cars he has owned over the years with the intention of incorporating his drawings into my paintings at some stage. He has quite a passion for motor vehicles and is a keen follower of the tv series 'Classic Restos', which i have watched with him from time to time. Today, for his Father's day gift, my sister and i organised a '64 MGB day hire and he was...well...super pumped! Can't wait to acquire a few J.G.Williams inspired MGB drawings and who knows where this one day will lead.
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