christophermadden

Environmental art: watercolour tree

Watercolour: Tree

Watercolour on paper. 2023

A watercolour painting from the imagination, depicting a tree in a sinister landscape. The dark foreboding atmosphere of the painting is partly to reflect the atmosphere of the ongoing environmental crisis and partly to reflect the atmosphere of thinking about it.

The tree looks as though it has uprooted itself and is trying to get away from its environment by using its roots as limbs. Alternatively, maybe the ground around the tree’s roots has been washed way as part of environmental degradation (perhaps by floods caused by climate change or by people’s exploitation of the land), literally sweeping away or undermining the foundations of a sustainable environment. And what are those objects next to the tree?

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Mirror art

Mirror art featuring a mirror and two coloured hemispheres.

Mirror, wood. acrylic. 30x30x12cm. August 2024

A work on one of my recurring themes of mirrors.

In this work a hemisphere can be seen reflected in a mirror. The hemisphere is positioned so that its reflected image appears in exactly the same location as a second real hemisphere. The second hemisphere is a different colour.

It’s a simple yet arresting effect.

The reflective coating on the mirror is on its front surface rather than the more usual rear surface. This is to avoid the presence of the ghost reflections that are produced by the glass front surface of conventional mirrors.

I’ve been experimenting with mirror based optical illusions and effects like the one in this work since the early 2010s. The main difference between this piece and most of my previous ones is that this one is wall mounted. My interest in mirrors and optics in general date back about fifty five years to when I constructed an astronomical telescope (including grinding the parabolic mirror).

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Stilt Walker

Stilt Walker

Digital. 2023

A digital sketch of a person on stilts. The stilts have wheels.

Stilt walkers have been an occasionally recurring theme in my work since about 1975.

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Surreal sea creature. Drawing from the imagination.

A surreal sea creature drawn from the imagination.

Digital image. 6th May 2023

A bizarre sea creature created digitally in Procreate on an iPad. The shape of the sea creature is based on the number six, as the image was created as part of an exercise in which I sketched several images on my iPad based on the numbers between zero and nine. The concept behind the exercise was that by having to take into account the restraints of including a number in each image I would be forced to work with forms or shapes that I might not think up straight from my imagination.

When creating the sketch I was attempting to produce a bizarre, weird and sinister image. The result looks as though it owes a debt to surrealism, dada and the symbolists.

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Three lengths of wood on a rock – land art

Land art, Cornwall, UK

Wood battens, acrylic paint. Length: 2m (variable). June 2018.

This piece of contemporary sculpture or land art was created on the granite rocks on the top of Zennor Hill in Cornwall, near where I live. It’s composed of three lengths of 2×2 inch wood batten of the type used in construction and joinery, painted with acrylic paint.

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Contemporary art watercolour painting with digital additions

Watecolour painting with digital additions.

Watecolour painting using collage (April 2021) with digital additions (Oct 2023).

A spontaneous semi-abstract watercolour painting with additions in Adobe Photoshop (added several years later, so it’s not that spontaneous).

The watercolour rock-like object is collaged onto the sky, with the line work added later digitally.

The painting is meant to have a sinister edge to it, with the rock-like form being some sort of creature. I’m very interested in the way that people see some creatures as being cure (baby mammals, especially furry ones being a prime example) and other creatures as being repellant (even at the baby stage).

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Dada and humour: Duchamp Fountain with added spider

Contemporary Dada: Duchamp Fountain with Spider

Digital image. April 2023.

A digital image based on Marcel Duchamp’s Dada artwork, Fountain. Fountain is a ready-made in the form of a pissoir. The version of Fountain in the image is in Tate Modern in London (Duchamp created several versions of the work using different pissoirs. The original version no longer exists).

In this work a spider is trapped in the pissoir in the same way that spiders are trapped in baths.

The spider hopefully adds an extra touch of humour to a work that is already humourous. The humour partly resides in the fact that it’s unusual to see a spider where you don’t expect to see one (in an artwork), but at the same time the spider is exactly where you’d expect to see one (trapped in a piece of bathroom sanitary ware).

I’m a frequent visitor to Tate Modern, and whenever I look at Duchamp’s Fountain I’m struck by how esthetically pleasing the form of Fountain is. I’m not sure whether or not Duchamp thought this himself or whether he chose the pissoir with no esthetic considerations involved.

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Striding figure

Striding figure

Digital sketch April 2023

A monochrome sketch, created using Procreate on an iPad, depicting a striding figure.

The work is from the imagination and was created spontaneously with no specific concept in mind.

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Skyscape with plane

London skyscape with plane

Photograph 2023

A view of the sky over Docklands, London, from Alexandra Palace.

It’s late afternoon sky with a low sun reflected in the buildings.

The perfectly clear sky is featureless except for the presence of one plane heading for Heathrow Airport.

A detail showing the plane in the photograph

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Rectangle on legs

Rectangle on legs

Gouache, acrylic, collage 30x40cm February 2022

Is this a lopsided building on stilts or a rectangular creature lumbering across the painting?

The black rectangle was placed on the sky for no particular reason other than that the rectangle was close to hand. It then became whatever it is.

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Fur in contemporary art

Fur ellipse

Fake fur, card, acrylic. 30 x 42 x 8cm March 2022

At first sight this work looks like a dark ellipse painted onto a blue background. Closer inspection reveals that the ellipse is in fact made of fur and that it protrudes some distance from the flat blue surface.

A close-up detail of the work.

The fur is dark and matt, making its texture quite hard to see without close inspection. As a result most casual observers don’t notice. A close inspection is however rewarded with the realisation of what is being looked at.

This work exhibits my interest in interpreting perception, illusion and expectations.

Optically deceptive artworks in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022. The fur piece is the far one.

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Hammers bound together

Hammers bound together

Hammers, shoe laces March 2022

Three hammers bound together with shoe laces. The hammers are different sizes, creating a dynamic visual effect and implying a differential power status between the hammers.

The fact that the hammers are bound together renders them useless as hammers, making them impotent. However, maybe they’re not bound together to reduce their power – maybe they are bound together to create unity. Maybe the price of unity is a reduction in individual power. But is the price of unit a reduction in group power?

The hammers exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022.

The work is a study of power, restraint and impotence. It’s also a nice composition. The inspiration came in my studio when I placed one hammer directly on top of another one (By chance or deliberately? I don’t know).

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Distorting mirror art

Mirror art: three convex mirrors

Convex mirrors, papier maché, metalic acrylic 30x40cm March 2022

Three convex mirrors mounted behind paper maché painted with metallic acrylic.

The distorting and illusionistic effects of mirrors are a significant feature of a lot of my work. The mirrors in this piece are mirrors from bicycle rear-view mirrors.

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Contemporary sculpture – pliers and plaster (and paint)

Pliers Piece I

Pliers, plaster, acrylic paint. 12x1815cm. 2020

A sculpture composed of a pair of splayed handyman’s pliers and a painted plastercast of the inside of a coffee filter cone.

Pliers and other handyman’s tools such as hammers and spanners are recurrent features in some of my constructions.

The work is probably influenced by the Arte Povera movement, and the plastercast of the inside of the coffee filter may owe something to artists such as Rachel Whiteread (although I don’t think that she’s known for adding colour to her casts).

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Number Two in a series

Number Two in a Series

Digital print. Drawn in Procreate. March 2023

Titled Number Two in a Series, this is part of a series of prints based on images of numbers drawn in Procreate on an iPad.

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Abstract digital art created on iPad

Digital abstract painting

Painted in Procreate. March 2023

This is an example of digital abstract art, created in Procreate on an iPad using an Apple Pencil.

The brushes in software such as Procreate and Adobe Fresco are getting better all the time, allowing for much more spontaneous and expressive work than was ever possible in the past. The expressiveness of the medium is now such that I think that the results can legitimately be classed as paintings rather than just digital art.

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Contemporary sculpture – clothes rack stack

Clothes Rack Stack

Commercial clothes racks. 2022

An installation composed of three clothes racks forming a pyramid.

The pyramid of racks is this size purely because I only possess three clothes racks. Given a larger space and a larger number of racks the pyramid can be huge. You may notice in the photo that as well as a pausity of racks the low ceiling in the room mitigates against the construction of monumental artworks.

This is a typical example of a work that almost created itself (I thought of it while I was moving the racks so that I could dry my washing). I have often admired the interplay of the horizontal and diagonal lines in the racks while I was using them for their proper purpose, but it was only recently that the idea of stacking them occurred to me.

This work is probably partly inspired by the art movements of constructivism, dada and arte povera.

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Contemporary ceramics – organic cones

Organic cones

Glazed ceramic. 2007 30x30x40cm

A cluster of organic forms, possibly resembling aquatic lifeforms. The small indentations in the top of some of the cones adds to the organic effect. The worm-like appearance of the cones makes them a slightly disturbing.

The cones are hand-rolled clay.

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Pen and ink sketch – sweet chestnut tree

Dip pen and ink sketch of a sweet chestnut tree. Drawn from life.

Dip pen and ink. 13cm x 18cm. 4th September 1991.

This is a dip pen and ink sketch of a sweet chestnut tree in the Dordogne region of France that I drew from life on quite a cold day.

There are numerous sweet chestnut trees in this part of France, as they were cultivated for their nuts, which I believe were a major part of the local diet.

The tree was very old with lots of dead branches. There were also lots of leaves, which I think may have been growing on relatively new branches that may have sprouted lower down the tree when the tree recovered from a trauma of some description (and which nearly killed it off). Behind the tree is a ramshackle hut which appeared to have almost become part of the tree.

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Ants as a Superorganism

Superorganism.

Digital print. 2023.

A depiction of the concept of a superorganism.
A superorganism is the name given to such things as colonies of insects in which the members of the colony act together so that the whole colony functions as though it is a single entity, and in which the individual members of the colony are probably not viable to survive alone.
In the image hundreds (or maybe thousands – I lost count) of ants swarm across a rock and form into the shape of a huge single ant.

The subject of the image reflects my interest in both art and science.

Below is a detail of the work to show the appearance of the individual ants close-up.

The image was created in Affinity Designer .

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