Works on paper

Environmental art – black flower sketch

Environmental art. Black flower sketch.

Acrylic and watercolour on paper. 2023.

An acrylic and watercolour painting of a black flower.
This painting is an example of my work relating to environmental issues, a subject with which I’ve been involved since the late 1960s. In this painting the flower’s petals are black, the flower’s stem is black, and the grass is black. The flower’s petals are shrivelled and misshapen and the stem is crooked. It’s an image of foreboding.
In contrast to all this blackness the centre of the flower is reflective gold. But it’s a dull gold, which may act to reinforce the bleakness of the black rather than creating a glimmer of brightness. It’s ambiguous.
The gold centre to the flower and the spiky petals give a hint of a dying sun or star, with the accompanying implications for life on earth (such as the flower). It’s a dying sunflower.

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Abstract in acrylic and gouache

Stripes with smoke

Acrylic and gouache on paper, collage. 14x14cm. September 2020

An acrylic and gouache abstract painting composed of a square of brightly coloured stripes embedded within a smoke-like form in gouache. The coloured square is revealed through a hole in the paper on which the smoke is painted.

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Geometric abstract painting on paper of coloured rectangles

Stacks. Geometric abstract painting.

Acrylic on paper 26x61cm. July 2020

A geometrical acrylic abstract painting composed of two separate rectangular areas each with a stack of smaller coloured rectangles embedded within it. The rectangles in the upper area form a ladder while those in the lower area are more brightly coloured.
The amount of white paper on which the shapes are placed is important, as the forms seem to float on the surface rather than the surface simply being the base onto which the image is painted.

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Geometrical abstract acrylic painting on paper

Geometrical abstract acrylic painting – yellow square blue diagonal

Acrylic on paper 8.5×8.5cm on a 21x29cm sheet. July 2020

An acrylic minimalist geometric abstract of a yellow square on a black background, with a blue diagonal. The interior of the square is very dark grey, not black.
The paint is high viscosity acrylic, so it has a slight texture. The edges of the forms in the painting are generally sharp due to the use of masking film. A very small amount of bleed under the film was allowed in places (by not pressing the film too firmly onto the paper) so that a few imperfections could occur, thus preventing the forms being too clinically precise.

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Minimalist abstract – black square with circle removed

Black Square with Circle Removed

Gouache on paper. 30x30cm. June 2018

Part of a series of abstract minimalist paintings of black squares with a circle missing from a corner, in this case along with the part of the square that is separated from the main body of the square by the circle.
This painting is a study of presence and absence. The black square has the quality of a solid, impactful entity while the white circle and top left corner give the impression of absence or negative space.
In other images the black square itself conveys a quality of negative space, suggesting a black void in the centre of the image.

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Watercolour study: stability and uncertainty

Stability and uncertainty: watercolour study

Watercolour on paper. 20 x 20cm. 2018

A watercolour painting created as part of a series exploring the depiction of simple, precise geometric forms (such as the triangle here) using techniques that introduce imprecision to the geometry of the image.
A study of order, stability, uncertainty and potential disintegration.

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Head on fire

Psychological contemporary art: Head on Fire

Pencil sketch on paper. August 2018

This sketch, drawn spontaneously in a sketchbook, contains obviously strong psychological symbolism. It shows a floating head on fire. Are the flames the hair? Or are they the person’s thoughts or state of mind?

It’s an image with associations to psychology, mental health, mental illness and wellbeing.

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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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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 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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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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Dark Cone – pencil drawing from the imagination (with ink additions)

Dark Cone
Pencil drawing with ink additions on paper. June 2017

A pencil sketch from the imagination of a dark cone set in a featureless landscape.
The slightly blurred quality of the pencil marks in this drawing combined with the sharper and darker ink lines create an unsettling atmosphere in the image.

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Spontaneous watercolour sketch from the subconscious

Watercolour sketch from the subconscious

Watercolour, gouache and ink on paper, with collage. 2017

This painting was an exercise in creating something from the subconscious without any preconceived idea about what I was about to create.
It turns out to be a slightly sinister landscape, in the centre of which there is something that may or may not be a living entity. Early on in the development of this sketch this object looked more like a strangely shaped rock, but the addition of colour to it removed it from the rest of the landscape and turned it into something separate from the landscape. The blue dot in the image, which is a collaged circle of coloured paper, gives the possibly living entity an air of sentience, as it seems to be contemplating a strange sun or moon in the sky.

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Pen and ink sketch of cows

Dip pen and ink sketch on paper.: Cows, Cantegral, Dordogne, France

Dip pen and ink on paper. September 1991

A sketchbook page of cattle grazing in a field.

The sketch was drawn in situ, using dip pen and ink.

Dip pen and ink is a favourite medium for sketching. Different nibs on different paper produce different results. I’ve got a supply of hundreds of nibs in case they ever go out of production!

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Anthropomorphism in contemporary art

Anthropomorphism: dandelion seeds with human bodies

Pen and ink sketch on paper September 2015

A dandelion seed head in which the seeds have anthropomorphic human form.
The image is disturbingly ambiguous. Is the fact that one of the seeds is drifting away from the seed head a sign of freedom or simply a sign of fate? And what can be read into the fact that the humans in the anthropomorphic seeds have no heads?
Anthropomorphism is a common theme in my work.

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