christophermadden

The Scream

The Scream

Gouache on watercolour paper 24 x 23cm July 2018

A gouache painting featuring a head with giant screaming mouth. The head has no body, and is situated in a desolate landscape.

The scream is an existential scream, no doubt indebted to The Scream by Edvard Munch.

The person in this particular Scream has no body, only a head. This is possibly to show physical impotence in the face of something terrible: the person can’t even try to run away.

The barren and desolate landscape in the painting could be a metaphor for the existence in which the figure finds itself. Maybe an existential crisis in the face of an overwhelming but possibly meaningless universe (as in Much’s scream). I don’t actually believe in a meaningless universe, by the way, because I believe meaning is automatically generated by the existence of the universe. No religion needed.

The painting probably reflects aspects of existential environmental anxiety, as the destruction of the environment has been a concern of mine for almost sixty years.

It’s definitely a work of psychological art

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Contemporary art and climate change: Stranded Object

Contemporary art and climate change: Stranded Object

Ink, gouache, digital, paper. 28x19cm. July 2018

A work about climate change and global warming.
The work contains definite ominous overtones. These are probably linked to the general atmosphere of foreboding that permiated society when the artwork was created in 2018 and that still permeate society today, chief amongst which was the phenomenon of global warming or climate change, which more and more threatens to disrupt the earth’s entire ecosystem and to turn civilisation as we know it upside down. And this is just the beginning.
I’ve been interested in environmental issues since the 1960s when environmentalism was chiefly concerned with the various threats to wildlife as a result of human activity. Climate change or global warming were not generally in people’s awareness back then.
Whatever the object is in this painting, it is abandoned or marooned on a featureless landscape that probably represents the devastated earth following the ravages of climate change and environmental destruction. The fact that the object looks very large is probably symbolic of the enormity of the threat that climate change represents.
The imaginary object in the image bears some resemblance to an organic form, possibly a part of an animal’s anatomy – perhaps a horn or a jawbone. The slender forms that protrude from what may be the teeth of a jawbone or could possibly be legs, turning the form into something like an upturned crustacean. Whatever it is, the object has the feel of a decaying life-form. The object also has something of the feel of an unnatural artefact – perhaps a piece of rubble following the destruction of a building (with the slender forms representing metal rods in reinforced concrete).

Having said all that, the work was not created with any particular symbolism or meaning consciously in mind. I’ve worked backwards from the finished image to find its possible meaning. I’m sure that it also has meanings that are purely to do with the workings of my own brain.

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Dog Walk: art installation composed of dog poo bags

Dog Walk: dog poo bags

Plastic bags arranged on path. Unspecified contents. Video. Cornwall. June 2018

A video of an environmental art installation in the countryside that comments on the behaviour of some dog walkers.
The work features an avenue of discarded dog pooh bags.
The work was inspired by the experience of going on many walks in the countryside and coming across discarded black plastic dog poo bags: sometimes hidden, sometimes in full view. There’s a theory that the dog owners leave them there to be picked up on their return, however, many of them don’t do it.
The work was created near St Ives, Cornwall.

Update, 2021. This work has taken on more relevance since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as more people purchase more dogs, which in turn produce more excrement. The fact that some of the new dog owners are quite casual about their ownership responsibilities is reflected in a marked increase of discarded dog poo bags.

The image above shows a related dog poo installation in an art gallery (visualisation).

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Fin – art in the environment, Cornwall

Fin: art in the environment

Photograph with digital drawing, September 2018

A photograph of a natural granite rock formation with a drawing of a fin-like object added to the photograph as though it is attached to the rock.
The rock formation in the photograph is on the Penwith peninsula in west Cornwall, a few miles from St Ives. The large rock on which the fin is drawn is a rocking stone, known locally as a Logan stone. The stone is said to move slightly when pushed correctly.
The image is a finished artwork, despite the fact that it resembles a concept study for a sculpture in the landscape. The drawing of the fin is deliberately inconsistent in terms of photographic realism with the rest of the image.
Having said that, I’m not ruling out the possibility of an actual sculpture.

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Stone eye: surrealist sketch

Stone eye

Ink, gouache, digital. July 2018

A surrealist sketch of a gigantic stone eye resting on the ground. A mysterious pipe-like cylinder extends upwards from the eye. A similar eye in the distance shows the pipe-like structure extending unfeasibly high into the air.
The image is almost definitely influenced by surrealist art, including the surrealism of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte.

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Hammers – photomontage for sculpture in the environment, Cornwall

Hammers: sculpture in the landscape

Photomontage visualisation. Cornwall. June 2018

A visualisation of a concept for a sculpture in the landscape.
The landscape in the photograph is the Penwith peninsula in west Cornwall.
The hammers are meant to project a sense of overbearing force, the fact that there are several of them possibly implying organised force (such as military force). Hammers, to me, have a certain anthropomorphic quality to them, suggesting a degree of human identity – a long thin body with a head at the top. The blank facelessness of the heads of the hammers in this image suggest a mindless power (I’ve done other works in which hammers have faces).

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Land art, UK. Cornwall

Land art on a granite outcrop, Cornwall

Wood, acrylic. Zennor Hill, Cornwall, UK. June 2018

One of my temporary sculptural works or interventions in the landscape near St Ives, Cornwall.

There’s a tendency for land art to be either very ephemeral and transient (such as Andy Goldsworthy’s work with leaves) or very permanent (such as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty). The photo below shows my work becoming very ephemeral indeed by floating up off the ground as if defying gravity. The photo was achieved by taking several photos of the wooden batons being held in the air and then photoshopping the holder of the batons out of the picture.

Land art also has a tendency to involve circles, probably because of the circle’s links to some spiritual concepts (such as the circle of life, yin and yang, the cosmos etc). Spirals and other sinuous or organic forms are also common for similar reasons. I’ve chosen to go the other way with this work, employing very mechanical straight lines (as a comment on the common phrase “There are no straight lines in nature”) and primary colours that in nature are normally only seen in small concentrated quantities in such places as flowers and birds’ feathers.

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Square and circles : gouache and watercolour

Composition in black, red and white

Gouache and watercolour, watercolour paper. 24 x 21cm. July 2018

This is a composition from a series that explores the dynamics of stability and instability.
The black square in the image suggests stability, while the red circles, with their lack of roundedness and their off-kilted positioning, suggest instability. The smoke effect adds to the sense of disequilibrium, as does the white “ghost” circle.

The painting has no specific right way up, which all helps with the feeling of precariousness that the work generates.

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Abstract monochrome watercolour painting incorporating a plastic found object

An abstract monochrome watercolour painting incorporating a found object

Mixed media (watercolour and plastic). July 2018.

An abstract monochrome watercolour painting in which the watercolour resembles smoke eminating from a white circle.
The found object in the artwork is visible through a hole that is cut in the painting. The object is the mixing palette that was used for mixing the paint in the painting.
There’s a certain amount of humour in this (to me at least), as the found object was an incredibly convenient object to find. I just had to reach over and pick it up.
I like the way that the palette isn’t obviously a palette, as an obvious palette in an artwork is a bit self-referential and solipsistic.

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Art in the environment, Cornwall

Transience

Wood and acrylic paint. Land art on Zennor Hill, near St Ives, Cornwall. 25th June 2018

Land art sculpture composed of lengths of painted wood battens (the type of wood commonly used in building construction).
The sculpture was created by positioning a small number of battens in the landscape, photographing them, repositioning them, rephotographing them and then merging the photographs.
As a result the work has an interesting relationship with time. The sculpture never existed in its entirety as depicted in the photograph, each batten only being in position for long enough to take a photograph. The sculpture only takes on its final form when the twenty-five minutes that it took to position and photograph the battens are compressed into a single instant.

A work of transient land art near St Ives,Cornwall: an intervention in the landscape, or art in the environment. The wood battens are about a metre long.

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Surrealist photomontage – wellington boots with arms

Surrealist photomontage – wellington boots with arms

Photomontage. June 2018

A photomontage showing arms emerging from the tops of a pair of wellington boots.
The arms are sinking down into the boots, as though the footware is devouring the owner of the arms. The theme of predatory footwear is one that I’ve explored several times over the past few decades. Another example can be seen here – shoes with teeth.
Or are the arms emerging from the boots? An example of ambiguity in art.
This photomontage was created while I was exploring various options for creating a sculpture that included wellington boots. I feel that these boots have a strong sculptural presence, and I’m quite surprised how under-represented they are in the field of sculpture.
The image, which I think probably falls into the category of contemporary surrealism, is meant to be both humorous and unsettling.

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Shoes with extended laces – photograph

Shoes with extended laces

Photograph. June 2018

This photograph shows a pair of walking boots with their laces extended away from them.
I took the photograph when I noticed the boots on the floor (they are my boots). The laces and the lighting from the window create a strangely unsettling effect, to me at least.
The photo was taken while I was visiting Oban in Scotland – on the same visit as this slightly surreal photograph.
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A surreal chance alignment of heads (unedited photograph)

A chance alignment of heads

Unretouched photograph. May 2018

A photograph of two people standing in a way that makes their heads seem to merge in an unsettling and humorous way.
The bizarre, surreal effect of the photograph is enhanced by the uniform bright red background and the colour and style of the clothing. The glasses help as well. The photograph was taken on a ferry between Oban and the Isle of Mull in Scotland, May 2018.

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Sculpture involving light – a translucent sphere on a marble column

Sculpture involving light through a translucent sphere

199. 10x10x20cm

An abstract sculpture exploring the effects of light using a translucent resin sphere on the top of a marble column.
In the photograph the sculpture is positioned on a slate base against a rough painted granite wall to give the work a robust organic feel.

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Land art – buttercup field with hidden object

Land art – Buttercup Field, Rosemorran, Zennor

Video. 27sec

A video of a field of buttercups that contains a hard-to-see object near the centre-left.
The object is revealed at the end of the video.
The video is on a recurring theme in my work – an investigation into perception, reality and illusion.
The video was taken behind my house at Lower Rosemorran, Zennor, in Cornwall.

Spoiler alert – the nature of the object in the video is revealed in the next section.
The scene in the video contains, on the ground amongst the grass and buttercups, a square mirror. The mirror is hard to see partly because of the distracting proliferation of buttercups, but mostly because the mirror is positioned so that the light from the sky doesn’t create give-away shadows or highlights (buttercups that are reflected in the mirror can look abnormally lit compared with the rest of the buttercups if the angle of the light is incorrect).

Below is a photograph of the wider field in which the work took place.

The work is filmed in an almost cliched, very peaceful and calming field full of spring flowers, which to me makes a nice setting for a work that at its most pretentious can be interpreted as being a prompt for questioning the nature of reality. At its least pretentious however, it’s just a nice visual joke.
Mirrors and reflections have been a common features of my work for many years, with the first probably being this artistic experiment from about 1970.

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Surreal anthropomorphism and a kitchen sink

Anthropomorphic kitchen sink

Photograph. June 2015

A slightly surreal, slightly disturbing (to me) anthropomorphic photograph of a kitchen sink. The texture of the sink’s surface along with the staining round the plug hole and the shape and position of the overflow give this image an anthropomorphic quality in which the plug hole may be an eye while the overflow could be a nose or a mouth (or a mixture of both). If this sink does indeed resemble a human face the fact that the face only has one eye in the centre of its head suggests a cyclops.
The plug hole and overflow can also be seen as being suggestive of other human orifices of course.

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Abstract watercolour painting: White Circle

White Circle

Watercolour on watercolour paper. 30x20cm. May, 2018.

An abstract watercolour painting that plays with the tension between the absolute stable state of a circle and the chaotic state of the rest of the image.
The perforations along the edge of the paper are an integral component of the composition, being part of the disruptive tension the work.

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Contemporary ceramic sculpture – organic form

Contemporary ceramic sculpture – organic form.

Height: 25cm. 1995

A ceramic sculpture that is slightly suggestive of a fungus such as a stinkhorn, although the work was conceived as a purely abstract sculpture.

Below is a view of the sculpture from above, in directional lighting. This view shows well the dramatic differences that differing viewpoints can make when viewing three dimensional artwork (or anything else for that matter).
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Ceramic sculpture

Contemporary ceramic sculpture – organic forms

Ceramic forms Between 2cm and 25cm tall. 1995

A group of works composed of clusters of coloured ceramic cone-like forms.
The forms are individually rolled by hand as cones and are then distorted to create a sinuous waving effect.
The forms were conceived as purely abstract, however they have an organic feel to them with something of the suggestion of marine or aquatic organisms. They could be worm-like creatures emerging from the sea bed and waving in the ocean currents.

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Sketch from the imagination – dancing teapots

Sketch from the imagination – dancing teapots.

Ink and watercolour on paper. 7x9cm. April, 2018

I like to sit down with a sketchbook every so often and draw whatever comes into my head. Surreal objects with bird-like features are a recurring theme. These slightly surreal dancing teapots are a good example.

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