COG 31 web
'City of Glass 31 - (A Study in Violet)'     180x200cms

 

'City of Glass 31 - (A Study in Violet)' was shortlisted and exhibited in the 2015 Lacey Contemporary Art Prize, London and longlisted for the 2016 Jacksons Art Prize.

 

Monday 1 June

I have no doubts now- it is one piece, there is a massive design and subversions of reality, space and scale, rhythms of verticals and angles controlled by the horizontals. This morning, I made a few subtle changes to the figure, strengthening the drawing of the figure making a sharper angle of the flare of the coat on the left-side. Then I started to enjoy the painting. I had a great chat with Janie M McDonald about the painting and it's connections to New York and the novel* The left side is elegant, sophisticated, the language of painting and abstraction, as Janie commented, 'a reflection of New York's glossy capitalist veneer' The right side is gritty, dark, menacing- the street. Just like the New York, the raw and the refined side by side.

This is going to be my entry for the John Moores Painting Prize.

Cleave: to separate, to join together..

A recurring theme throughout the series, the possibilities (and complications) of working with 2 canvases..

I need to redraw the head, arm and especially the hand tomorrow, but some exciting things happening ..it's full of movement. The anti-clockwise movement of centre yellow stripe, flicking upwards though the coat is counteracted by the clockwise movement of the black lines of the figure, linking to the violet-black curves in the top left corner via the black triangle on the bottom edge. Stillman returns - with the figure, the relationship with the title and Sherlock Holmes is more explicit...location and narrative fused together...the angled line along the East River becomes the angle of shadow on Stillman's coat....scale subverted....menacing...'Noir', an almost title..

A difficult choice- both paintings work alone but are they stronger together, a fusion of the figurative and the abstract?

 

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* 'The New York Trilogy, a novel by Paul Auster