Caged or uncaged wonderers
Gabriel Orozco (The general) does not ask : "How much of life is he missing? Or How much good will has he already spent? No, his idea of a boomerang carving lines in the sky when thrown doesn't need to know 'how far can he throw but how he can catch his own boomerang. Perhaps this neglect of competitive spirit is identifiable with someone else but not him. He is firmly adept at the commercial side of the Art business, but he reminds me of something I've always wanted to aspire to : Art is the current versus the waves, and in spite of the balls and chains of social decoration you have to decide which works for you. I won't tell you what I have chosen, suffice it to say that i can understand and appreciate human circumference that personalizes any cycle of life.
Painting In Anger
I accept the micro-climate of anger fueled anxiety that comes with the territory. No one is let off glass-ceilings, over orthodoxy, conformism and intolerance that creeps into the every part of ones practice. The Painter's of the past and no doubt the future, are formidable adversaries that remind me of the journey full of hazards and limited disclosure, but they are all in ones mind on remembering the last 160 years of modernist Painting. So how does a Painter today risk his livelihood and his integrity? By respecting what is respectable convenience but having little to do with it. Anger and trauma sometimes gets the creative juices going, but outright hostility towards a precarious eco-system of Art can be irreparably damaged by the severing of an Art artery like the medium of Painting. Can we really let the Art World jettison Painting to the past, locked-up in museums? Can we let our children down by not having the medium of Painting a living and breathing entity for them to enjoy in the present and future? Why is Painting an endangered species? Could make you even more angry right? What price are we paying to make CA prevail? Why has form rendered Painting the fall guy to encourage the former Eastern bloc countries to join-up Conceptual Art's thinking?
Both Colour and Painting?
Colour and Painting are 2 different concepts altogether, but in order to take down Painting ,colour had to go too. But why the reverse telescope? Why do we see Painting much reduced and not magnified? Why have certain colours been written-out of the colour spectrum script? Where have all the rainbows gone? Who told us about the redaction of Painting and colour? Why was there a disconnect? What manifests the 'in denial' aspects of colour and Painting 'relegation'? Why has our colour and Painting lexicon been reduced to're-educate' the Art world? Does anyone know (outside the Art world) that colour and Painting has been so badly treated? The peace of colour crystallised by Paint must be publicly resuscitated to restore confidence in the Art world! Painting and colour will re-generate with or without the Art world.
The function of self-imposed restriction
Paint and colour can occupy the trenches and the glittery ballrooms, by restricting ones work to intense but narrow criteria to re-balance the Medium of Painting. Close self-scrutiny redresses the endless melting-pot of homogeneous painted images when it should be a cauldron to boil and explode onto the red carpet as well as on the canvas. The 'Painting crunch' is manifested in our epoch as a self-imposed exile and a stage to expose the Art world's negativity to Painting and colour. The tension Painter's evoke today is about the Painting eruption that is close at hand. Our medium has never felt so alive with potential energy, and we use our 'expulsion' from the high table by using it as a 'muse' to re-formulate the rites of passage of Painting's ancient heroic ancestry, whilst pouring the unique torrent of the heroism to come. 'Garetts' still don't rule, they support our flight from and the create the deliverance from the mainstream.
The Stage
How to be reductive over Painting? How to stage the pretentious deliverance of the medium? What can colour metamorphosis inspire us to do and to feel? How to avoid the deconstruction and formula making of form? How to avoid the dilution of the message? How not to be trapped by the beginnings and the endings of form? How to overtake it? Destroy it? How to conquer it? Or how to respond in a 'blow-back' regeneration, a phoenix rising from the ashes of sunset to sunrise? How to androgenise the 'gaze' with sadness fear but also happiness? And here we are talking about re-capture of ones own human arc, just like 'the General'.
Colour
Colour is a redemptive light naturally fueling the living force of free energy, sourced naturally and costing nothing. It is a distinct dimension spilt by me to colour the landscapes etc that I want to understand. colour is anonymous yet purposive. I choose to a full heart of colour, embrace it fight for it and never yield it . I choose self-inflicted blinkers instead of being 'blind' or being blinded to it.Painting is my chosen form of 'alarm clock', that runs on my batteries that need replacing with every Painting I do. Colour is the spark in the dark, the risk in the mist and I'm very proud to have found a way to befriend it.