2023
With poor health (and studio time often severely limited by the amount of time I can spend out of bed), I often need a project with a clear idea, that I can see through in a couple of hours (to the sort of level of satisfaction that makes me feel the time was well-spent when I have other necessary and worthy jobs calling for my attention).
Windows 1 was such a Project. I had been ruminating for days about the human obsession with ‘apertures’
– doorways as visual metaphors,
– my bedroom window as a view to the outside world (that I am often barred from partaking in),
– the voyeuristic appeal of peering through letterboxes and gaps in fences,
– how they eye loves a vista seen between a set of gateposts,
– the glass-less window of a ruined bothy or at the end of an old tunnel.
Windows have the power to re-frame information, and frames have the power to ‘complete’ work.
So when next in the studio, I found a piece of thin black card and tore an aperture into it. I then pottered around the studio, pulling out things from shelves and drawers, laying it over the top thoughtfully and using it to ‘re-frame’ and re-present old work – completed canvases, abandoned sketches, warm-up doodles, works in process – and also, for good measure, some of the objects that sit around the studio in abundance – colourful sea pottery, various interesting igneous rocks from Fife and Skye.
The continuity of the frame allows the eye to make comparisons between each piece, being able to appreciate the differences and similarities. To be able to see them in new ways.
The fact that the frame is plain, of cheap material and asymmetrically shaped gives no connotation of the usual sense of a frame as a mark of ‘completion’, or even a sign of ‘value’, ‘purpose’ or ‘significance’.
In Windows 2, I took the same approach, but digitised the frame and carried out the same process in Procreate, with selections from digital artworks – both completed pieces, and unfinished or abandoned work. This of course produced a ‘cleaner’ finished product, without the technical challenges of photography.
If I were to expand this process to a third stage, I would probably combine both methodologies, and use a digital frame in a digital art package, but including photographs of traditional media work and curated objects alongside the work that had ben digitally painted.
Windows 3 followed the same line of thought, taking the digital frame and filling it with photographed textures (within a limited colour palette).
