Made In Two Places

Unconscious Impetus

EC — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:18:43 +0000

Unconscious Impetus, water-based household paint, acrylic, permanent marker, polyvinyl acetate & paper on canvas, 90 cm's x 153 cm's, EC 2012

“Hopefully what we learn from our mistakes is that we shall go on making them” – Adam Philips

Details

Edge detail

Ideas come after.

Lair

EC — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:10:09 +0000

Water-based household paints, acrylic & permanent marker on cotton, 100 cm's x 100 cm's, EC 2012

detail

Material II

EC — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:25:54 +0000

Nyx, Water-based household paint, acrylic & permanent marker on canvas, 100cm's x 100cm's, EC 2012

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung

detail

“Mathematically chaos, it would seem, is metaphorically linked to:
Colour:
Redness is not necessarily a particular bandwidth of light, as the Newtonians would have it. It is a territory of a chaotic universe.
Life:
Life sucks order from a sea of disorder
Evolution:
Evolution is chaos with feedback.
The Universe:
The new geometry mirrors a universe that is rough, not rounded, scabrous, not smooth.”
- What number is God? By Sarah Voss

Nyx
“Night”
The darkness of the earth. One of the primal Greek Deities which arose from Chaos at the beginning of creation. According to Hesiod, Nyx and Erebos had intercourse to produce Aither (the Ether, or bright upper air) and Hemera (“Day”). Nyx was the mother of the Fates, Eris (Discord), Thanatos (Death) and Hypnos (Sleep).

Darkness is also about germination, the passive, female principle, sexuality, rest, peace, sleep, dreams and renewal. The positive symbolism of ‘silent night, holy night’ is as universal as the negativity of ‘ the dark night of the soul’.
- The Complete Dictionary of Symbols in Myth, Art & Literature edited by Jasck Tresidder.

Material

EC — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:56:58 +0000

Untitled, Oil-based/water-based household paints, permanent marker & correction fluid on canvas, 102 x 76 cm's, EC 2012

‘… Flow wants to realize itself, regardless of the surrounding material.‘ – On Growth and Form from Chaos, by James Gleick. Penguin.

detail

The irregular side of nature, the discontinuous and erratic side—these have been puzzles to science, or worse, monstrosities.
- Gleick, Chaos

MADE IN TWO PLACES • Paintings by EC

EC — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:04:13 +0000

Untitled, Acrylic & mixed media on canvas 17 x 21 cm's, EC 1996

Acrylic on paper, EC 1996 (From a group of works awarded a Sir Owen Rowley Fine Art Prize, 1996)

Untitled, Acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 153 x 153 cm's, EC 1996

Untitled, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 153 x153 cm's. EC 1996

“One can reach the center directly from any point of the compass.” C. G. Jung, ‘Approaching the Unconscious’ Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

“The history of symbolism shows that everything can assume symbolic significance: natural objects (like stones, plants, animals, people, mountains and valleys, sun and moon, wind, water, and fire), or man-made things (like houses, boats, or cars), or even abstract forms (like numbers, or the triangle, the square, and the circle). In fact, the whole cosmos is a potential symbol.” Aniela Jaffe, ‘Symbolism in the Visual Arts’ Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

The paintings above may appear superficially to explore Pythagoras theorem, Math and Geometry but are they linear or less emotional? The paintings below may be perceived as more emotional and expressive with the use of fluid, scrawled writing, free association and looser paintwork but is it just a blurting out of emotion or is there an emotional logic to it?

In a sense these paintings express the duality of logic. They are not ‘Black and White’. Neither on it’s own can be said to be purely concerned with emotional or intellectual cognition. Within each there is the expression of the emotional – that qualitative experience, applied in a non linear and irrational or intuitive way. To describe the non linear processes going on (in painting) in a purely rational way is nonsensical. One cannot paint rationally at the expense of the emotional and feeling mind because that rationality is paradoxically informed by feeling. The feeling mind informs the rational one.

Untitled, Acrylic, charcoal and varnish on canvas, 153 x 153 cm's, EC 1996

Untitled, Acrylic, permanent marker & household paints on canvas, 183 x 153 cm's, EC 2011

Untitled (Belief - Destroyed), Acrylic & household paints on canvas, 183 x 153 cm's, EC 2004

Deliberately choosing delicate papers and making surfaces that are fragile – there is the story of – and potential for – loss. I like to paint on raw, unprimed canvas. Many of my canvases start with writing. Sometimes a poem written directly on the canvas, sometimes memories, the personal, something important to me, fragments, exclamations, free associations and automatic writing. I may write in charcoal, pencil, water-soluble or not, pen or permanent markers for example. I may lose something in order to discover, or uncover and reveal. Some forms, marks or words are lost in the many layers of paint but they leave a trace. Like some memories. These parts become integral to the work and the story. The layers build. The paint/the words are lost. Found again and lost. Peeled back or seen through another glaze or layer. Revealing and hiding what went before and seeing where the journey of painting takes me. Unconscious motives, memory, perception, trauma, past, present, real, raw, unprocessed or processed, a mere trace. I am not interested in the episodic or narrative. I am interested in paint itself and the act of expression.

The writing, the research – it is all somehow surpassed by the act of painting. Something is internalised and processed and a new language happens with the act of painting. It is intuitive but not a blurting out. The act of painting itself is paradoxical and dual, in that it involves thinking and feeling or intellect and emotion.

The Divine Proportion, or Golden Section, has many relationships and properties found in nature, art, music and mathematics. The Golden Mean (or Golden Section), represented by the Greek letter phi, is one of those mysterious natural numbers, like e or pi, that seem to arise out of the basic structure of our cosmos. Unlike those abstract numbers, however, phi appears clearly and regularly in the realm of things that grow and unfold in steps, and that includes living things – Matila Ghyka, The Geometry of Art and Life.

“The thought of the universe is dual. It is logically intellectual, directing the regularly functioning universe. In the second place it is emotionally directing the manifestations of the universe towards life. We might say it is masculine. We might say it is feminine. Together, in inseparable co-operation they both constitute the duality of logic. When life is born it is born in the co-operation of this duality and because of this duality. At the birth of life the inclinations to both the logically intellectual and the logically emotional are bestowed upon life. The process of life is to be found in the co-operation of intellectual and emotional logic” - E.Saarinen, The Search for Form in Art and Architecture.

Untitled (28,11)

EC — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:21:30 +0000

Untitled (28,11), Water-based/Oil-based household paints, acrylic & graphite on cotton, 150 x 150 cm’s, EC 2011

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein

Detail

Often things are lying hidden in the Unconscious. You have to leave yourself open so that these influences may surface.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. – C.G.Jung

The ‘I Ching’ is based on the hypothesis of the Oneness of man and the surrounding cosmos. - Jolande Jacobi, ‘Symbols in an Individual Analysis’ Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

My thoughts turned to the The I-Ching or Book Of Changes as I was painting this. I’ve got a copy of the translation by Richard Wilhelm with foreword by C.G.Jung. It talks about ‘discord’ and ‘divergence’ in a particular hexagram, saying that yellow is the colour of The Mean (Philosophy of The Mean). The Philosophy of the Mean links to the Buddhist Middle Way. There are links between The I-ching, Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics.

“The emptiness of the atom”

The Book of Changes also speaks about discord and divergence ‘containing the hidden possibility that tensions have already been resolved.’ It talks of ‘Astronomical opposition’ and ‘The two movements that are in direct contrast’ but that also work together. This is relevant to this painting and to my thoughts on emotional and intellectual cognition.

‘How to both join and separate things?’

The title for this piece comes from the I-Ching itself. It is named after two hexagrams – Nº 28, ‘Ta Kuo’ or ‘Preponderence of The Great’, which talks about extreme forces, collapse and the centre of gravity being a thick beam. The other hexagram is Nº 11, ‘T’ai’ or ‘Peace’ and refers to ‘The Receptive’ and ‘The Creative’. Nº 11 states that The Receptive is essential to The Creative. Hexagram Nº 11 also talks of harmony. It speaks of the dividing of time and the ‘marking off of infinite space’. We make maps in the chaos, we mark off time and the seasons and find patterns in our Universe.

This piece was exhibited at IMPRINT, a Fabelist Festival at The Serpentine Gallery’s Centre of Possible Studies, 21 Gloucester Place W1U 8HR along with fellow Fabelisters including; Abigail Box , Chantal Powell , Carlos Martyn Burgos, Carrie May, Darren Macpherson, Dean Melbourne, Hormazd Narielwalla, Nicola Anthony, Polly Bagnall, Tinsel Edwards, Twinkle Troughton, Tahnee Lonsdale & Zoe Catherine Kendall

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Gallery

Press

Curator’s Note

Dead & Alive at The National

EC — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:47:54 +0000

Oil-based pencil on paper, EC 2011

Graphite stick on paper, EC 2011

Christmas Eve

EC — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:46:12 +0000

Pencil on paper, EC

Although she was the one to leave, she did not do the leaving.

She was 16. She walked to the bus stop holding a bag containing a toothbrush and some clothes. She passed her father. He smiled. She was supple and broken all at once. It was Christmas eve and everyone else seemed to be together. There was a weight in her gut that she had not known before.

Getting off the bus she saw an old man sitting on an icy step. He wore a thick grey coat, mittens and green hat full of holes but his feet were bare. They were gnarled, turning blue-grey as they rested in the snow. She walked into a patisserie and bought a cheese and spinach pastie and a cup of tea and took it to him.

Graphite on paper, EC 2010

She walked to her new home.

Sometimes she would curl up and shake and the cat would come and sit with her. Sometimes she’d put vinyl on their record player and listen and draw.

People would come and go.

Graphite stick on paper, EC 2010

Somewhere an old pattern knitted itself into her life.

(EC, 2011)

Incongruity & Inconvenience

EC — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:12:55 +0000

It’s about paint. The sensual stuff. The handling of it. It’s about gesture. It’s about layers. It’s about risks. Being prepared to lose something to something else. Finding something out. Working something out.

‘Be free from compulsion’ and desire for a certain outcome.

Detail of in progress. Water-based/Oil-based household paints, acrylic & marker on cotton, 5 x 5 ft, EC 2011

The whole becomes broken up and the details become their own entities in an incongruous whole.

Detail of in progress. Water-based/Oil-based household paints, acrylic & marker on cotton, 5 x 5 ft, EC 2011

‘How to both join and separate things?’.

Detail of in progress. Water-based/Oil-based household paints, acrylic & marker on cotton, 5 x 5 ft, EC 2011

‘Evaluate’.

Detail of in progress. Water-based/Oil-based household paints, acrylic & marker on cotton, 5 x 5 ft, EC 2011

Detail Of Destruction (In Progress)

EC — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:10:09 +0000

Detail, Acrylic, Water based & oil based household paints on canvas, EC 2011

It’s always a stab in the dark it seems. A lonely thing to paint. I dragged it out of my small studio and hung it on the wall.

It is not finished.

Assimilation and destruction.