A painting from a series of abstract acrylic artworks featuring strongly linear black forms interacting with curving coloured forms.
Although the black linear elements in the painting are abstract their composition give the impression of a living entity such as an animal or a person – an effect that is heightened by the coloured curving forms, some of which hint at anatomical features such as eyes or ears.
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A sculpture fabricated from expanded polystyrene packaging – an example of upcycled art.
Upcycling, or the repurposing of waste or redundant material, is a common phenomenon in art, especially recently since the rise of environmentally orientated art or eco art (and the invention of the word upcycling).
Of course the practice is probably as old as art itself.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice the sculptural qualities of pieces of polystyrene packaging.
I call the work Polystyrene Idol because the shapes of the polystyrene in the piece are suggestive of the carved idols of some cultures. In the context of Western culture such an idol may be seen as an idol linked to the cult of consumerism, especially because the polystyrene is the material that protects consumer goods when they are in trannsit, and it is also the discarded waste material once the consumer goods have been acquired by the purchaser.
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A watercolour Rorschach pattern, or inkblot test pattern, with a panel of stripes in acrylic collaged onto it, giving the impression of a mask.
The type of watercolour paint used to create the Rorschach diagram (Daniel Smith lunar black) creates a particularly intricate and textured inkblot pattern.
Below, the image framed.
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An abstract acrylic painting featuring a strongly linear black form overlaid by curving coloured forms (some of which are collage while others are painted directly onto the paper).
Although the black linear elements are abstract they convey the impression of a dynamic animal form. This is heightened by the coloured curving forms, some of which hint at eyes or of other anatomical features.
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This sculpture or assemblage is almost an accidental artwork.
The nails in the sphere were put there to attach other objects to. The G clamp is there to hold the two halves of the sphere together (It’s composed of two hemispheres glued together.
One of the skills needed in art is the ability to see the unexpected.
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A wall hung artwork in which a matte black hemisphere protrudes from a flat matte black surface. Due to the darkness of the surface the protruding hemisphere is quite hard to see (although in this photograph it is lit in a way that makes it reasonably visible). Even less obvious than the protruding hemisphere, the matte black circle at the centre of the metallic area is actually a hemispherical indentation. This indentation is very rarely noticed by observers.
The work is an investigation into perception, optical illusions and expectation.
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A semi-abstract figure drawn from the imagination with no preparation.
I have a feeling that my semi-floating figures like this owe something to the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon.
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A sketch of a semi-abstract figure in a landscape. The figure is of a type that I’ve drawn on and off for the past thirty years, so it obviously has some sort of significance.
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An assemblage of blocks of wood painted very matte black on the sides and bright white on the top, positioned so that they almost suggest a formation, but not quite. Developed from a chess piece that I created, in which similar blocks formed a more regular chess board formation.
This photo was taken at my solo show in the gallery at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall.
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Op art has got many detractors, as can be deduced by the number of artists who have created optical or geometric art who very specifically claim that their art is not Op art.
Personally, I like it very much, partly because of my interest in optics. I tend to view it partly as a scientific endeavour, with its forms expressing something of the underlying nature of perception.
This image has more than a hint of Victor Vasarely about it. It didn’t look particularly like a Vasarely until I’d nearly finished it, when I applied a ‘bloat’ to the vertical parallel lines on the image, making them bulge (The image is digital, so that’s a very easy thing to do). Suddenly there he was – Victor Vasarely!
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A general view of my solo exhibition in the gallery at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall.
More of the work in the show. Don’t forget to notice the hammer and nails.
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A sculpture constructed from vinyl records.
The star-shaped object at the top of the tower, which looks like a radio transmitter, is composed of pawns from a chess set (a recurring theme in my work).
The work in my solo exhibition at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, Cornwall. May – June 2022
There’s another work composed of vinyl records here.
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Image of a hand with unfeasibly long fingers
This image is an exercise in digital manipulation of photographs of the human body in order to show the way in which familiar parts of the anatomy can take on sinister or comic form (or both) with the application of small variations due to our hypersensitivity to the dimensions of the human body
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An image of a swarm of ants forming the shape of one giant ant.
The image is intended to convey the scientific concept of the superorganism, where the individual members of an animal community (often insects such as bees, wasps or ants) cannot exist as individuals but have to function as part of a larger unified communal entity.
The concept of the superorganism is similar to the concept of the hive mind. The hive mind is perhaps more closely identified with neural activity rather than physical activity, and in human society is associated with the concepts of collective consciousness, group think and other thought processes. Hive mind activities such as group think are not necessarily positive.
The work reflects my interest in science, evolution, the natural world and the environment. It is based on a conncept and image that I created in the 1990s for the Guardian newspaper.
Some people argue that human society is a superorganism, generally on the grounds that we live in an incredibly complex society that is full of specialisation of roles, and that society would fall apart if some of these roles were to fail to function. This definition however doesn’t take into account one of the prerequisites of a superorganism, which is that the individual organisms within the superorganism can’t survive alone. Humans can easily survive even if our complex society collapses – there are people all around the world doing that very thing right now.
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A pen and ink sketch of a tree drawn from the imagination, with a collaged sphere painted in gouache.
The sphere is meant to have a slightly otherworldly quality about it, as though it’s from a different dimension or reality.
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A projection of the work Expansion II.
An impression of what the work Expansion II would look like projected onto a wall of the National Theatre in London.
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A sculptural work composed of a number of 12 inch vinyl LP records arranged on the floor. The records are placed on blocks to hold them above the floor.
These photos were taken at my solo exhibition at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, in 2022.
Part of the appeal of this work, to me, is in the fact that the vinyl records of which it is composed are ruthlessly precise and austere in their physical presence – perfect discs of shiny black plastic – but that they contain in themselves the information for producing music, perhaps the most ethereal of art forms. The manner in which the discs seem to hover above the ground seems to link the physical nature of the records with the floating, insubstantial nature of music. The physical delicacy of the analogue information storage system which contains the information about the music on the disks (the grooves) is also significant.
There’s another work composed of vinyl records here.
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Some of my work on display in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, in 2022.
The abstract paintings are from a series of gouache and acrylic works on paper featuring simple geometric forms in flat colours. The works are all linked by, amongst other things, the use of the curved shapes with bulbous ends that exhibit an unusual organic quality.
The three works displayed below the paintings are all sculptural works that feature mirrors.
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An artwork depicting an anglepoise lamp with a rainbow emerging from the lamp’s shade. When the rainbow reaches the tabletop it forms splashes of coloured water droplets as though the light from the lamp has turned into liquid as an act of metamorphosis.
It’s got a bit of the Patrick Hughes about it.
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An assemblage composed of a kitchen sieve placed in front of an old framed mirror. The reflection of the mesh of the sieve in the mirror creates interesting Moiré fringes as it interacts with the actual mesh.
When a person looks at their reflection in the mirror through the mesh of the sieve the observer experiences a degree of psychological distancing from their reflected self, almost as though the reflected person is in a strange cage.
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