The conceptual lab/studio today has been about forcing a break in the patterns of mark making—a deliberate act of artistic sabotage. I've started calling it a 'paint salad,' this process of chopping and sorting different mini-snacks of experimentation, forcing myself to experience and review texture, play, and chance. The goal isn't just to make marks, but to stop controlling and predetermining them.
Experiment I: Withdrawing Control
This first action is focused entirely on relinquishing the hand and embracing the sheer refusal of the material to adhere to a fixed pattern. The process begins with sanding back boards and immediately working wet-in-wet. What I’m loving about this is the uncontrollable element of paint in water. It’s the material defying a fixed script.
This surrender leads directly into methods for withdrawing control, drawing inspiration from Surrealist techniques like Decalcomania, Parsemage, or Frottage. These are crucial because they explicitly prevent control over mark-making. The work has to become a record of 'what happened,' rather than 'what was intended,' making the final outcome a collaboration with gravity and fluid dynamics. It is interesting to learn about and read about 'ontology'
"The relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny is fundamental to evolution, and at its heart is a simple premise—that variations in the timing and rate of development provide the raw material upon which natural selection can operate."
Gould, S.J. (1977). Ontogeny and Phylogeny. The Belknap Press of Harvard Universitty Press.
It is interesting to think that this 'individual mark development' is ontology and the series or ainting field mark context could be considered phytology.
Contemplation 1: Sam's Contamination and Opacity
The material play quickly bled into a broader, conceptual focus on visibility and self-reference, which I explored through what Sam Jackson calls "Contamination 1." The prompt was to paint the last image on my phone's camera roll in black and white.
For me, the contamination came as a nest of images: I painted the image of the phone (displaying a photo of ripped-up book pages) onto the actual book cover itself.
This created a set of Russian dolls, perpetually self-referencing and looking outward—the feeling of looking at a mirror looking at a mirror. It brings to mind the layered observations of the Dutch masters vermeer and, more critically, the digital nature of contemporary image sharing. The repetition, the echoing of shapes and ideas, directly suggests the echo chambers of Instagram or the conceptual pressures of various art schools. This loops back to the central question of the work: our right to opacity, and the resistance to total conceptual transparency. In a culture demanding constant sharing, the work is becoming a negotiation between Privacy versus viewer.
Contemplation 2: Painting About Presence
The next step is to continue this self-referential cycle with Contemplation 2: a painting of our painting. This moves beyond the digital echo and fully into the internal mechanics of the studio.
As Richard Tuttle suggests, "painting now is about painting." This challenge forces the work to turn inward, reflecting not just on the external image, but on the internal act of painting itself—its structure, its material decisions, and its history within the studio.
To materialise this, I took the original painting, placed it on a chair, and made a painting of that entire setup. The chair acts as more than just a prop; it is a powerful metaphor for holding space and presence. Phrases like 'take a chair' or 'pull up a chair' evoke the role of the other—the viewer, the audience, or the critical dialogue—that completes the work. This is about making the process (the 'paint salad' and its experiments) the actual subject matter and placing it firmly in relation to an assumed presence.
Moving forward could i use photographs of these images as sources for fursther images. This device feels gimmicky... what does gimicky mean? not abstracted enough? too transparent?
what about using images in cyanotype/video? Images of themselves?
or fold the images and create other artwork....
