Starting Points < Trajectories < Misfires and Fight or Flight or Hold Your Ground?

Don't be fixated by the physical dimensions and the metaphysical (an overused term today) barriers and borders of Painting on canvas, it's a non sequitur! They may want to throw you out at the end of Columbus like edge of the world, but TATT consumes such limitations because it doesn't want to be backed into a metaphorical corner over the issue of Paint and the chemistry of cloth of linen or cotton woven for Paint application on a canvas, which I think is the universal and bespoke combo! ,Perhaps even that TATT may not want for Painters to be backed into a corner on the canvas because it assumes that Paint and canvas may fight back against its relegation of the medium during the Cold war.......in other words, TATT may be old hat by now?!!

But when a Painter is working the functional element of their work will be confronted by a number of choices that could define how Painting works on so many levels: Firstly, surrender and conform and become a submissive puppet of homogeneity on whichever is the most commercial type of Painting and reinforces TATT's view of the aesthetic limitation of the medium, secondly, to take flight and expel oneself from the whole medium and take up Ai Art etc thirdly,, to break-out further into the canvas, and finally, if you end -up in the interior of the canvas or start your Painting at the centre point of the interior of the canvas, you may find yourself in the middle of it surrounded and isolated, you may have to fight and skirmish with Paint in the round! Some actors and directors say that it is the ultimate performance (in the round in a theatre) and exactly in the perfect position to provide the full range of their talents! Isn't Painting surrounded by the same acclaim? Where their unique abilities are truly tested rather than petering out?

Once you have addressed those issues you 'll have to deal with a new species of possible outcomes : do you want to close your eyes and pretend that difficulties aren't there and suspend rational judgement by not countenancing that these issues aren't encroaching on your work, in mid Painting? Or fight your way out, or fight your way back or both in order to fight your way further in, both heart, mind and 'soul-guts'? Indeed, from the heights of the centre ground you can see panoramically from all the image you've made or are going to make where your opponent’s lie, and by holding the higher ground charge at those who oppose you from a moral and artistic 'higher-ground truest test' that enables you to have a position of strength because of and in spite of what TATT are saying! Moreover, who wouldn't want to cock a snook at TATT and blast it off private and public property!? Break out from TATT, break into the TATT, break away from TATT, scatter those weighed down with contradiction and defective short-termism...perhaps they will learn not to carry too much Art by 'big best and brash' baggage of techno babble and gimmickry (although deftly even intellectually packaged) whilst looking down their noses at those who have Paint and not blood on their hands...... and a shout out for all those Painters in war zones, keep your work as true as your courage! You are the future, the present and the past!

Paint doesn't bleed or break or snap, but keep your hands on your brush, actually lay your hands on your work to grip your culture, to raise it up and stay the course, in spite of all the carnage all around yet still remain defiant defending your perspective by taking aim with your paintings to put all your trials on canvas! Painting is one way of finding peace amongst the rabble and garbage, and to fill your inspiration free of all the hate and the anger! But hang-on a minute, we should be Painting for you and not the other way round!! Yes we can fill the canvas with all the stars above, and the human stories below, all in the 'metaphorical round' of landscape and portrait, figurative and abstract bouncing off and on the 'stage' in spite of the mindless pretty Painting of repetitious sanitised aimless 'other' that TATT wants you to churn-out?? ! ! Don't wait up for the floodlights, just use the daylight of Paint on your canvas!!

Cover all corners, fight your own corners, control your own borders of the canvas, complete your own principles, stay disciplined and faithful to your own set of parameters that you define by your own design, never measure your own canvas because you'll always want to burst beyond its limits . That's right, the idea is always to want to go further rather than be fenced off, and ‘Don't fence me in' and 'push it to the limit' actually becomes an advantage not a delimitation by TATT prosaic thinking. So, Realism or Abstraction 'has already been done' (yeah, so we invented the wheel but never developed it?) or where the myopic criteria of 'physical dimensions' "restricts the canvas" (but not the Painting) reveals an absence of imagination projected onto the canvas and therefore the medium of Painting itself!!!!!

Indeed, every Painting has the possibility to inspire the viewer's imagination of ‘what happens next, or what happened before, to further reach out into almost limitless potential, and of course, why not beyond the Painter's own imagination too? 'Flood the zone ' seems a little basic in this context, but 'pour out all the light' onto vast emptiness of space 'beyond our sight' could mean that we could see ourselves and what we explore in and out of our imaginations and report our findings with Paint beyond our naked eye? We need metaphorical 'Creative bi-focals' or natural explorative qualities through both our own introspective and extrospective values that need our human eye to regulate and understand what or how we have reached our Painting remit. But that's just it, Modernist Painting in the 21st century is the upgrade that sees beyond our naked eye by filtering it throughout and often in spite of our own technical achievements!!!??!!!! Painting is unique on so many levels but none more so than as a metaphor of what we can't comprehend by language or print, but guess what, TATT wants to 'write it off'!!??? Let me be 'paint speaking '- NAFF OFF!

However, let's not talk of Painting in a reverential way, it is not an artistic altar, it is how people before script and print were able to communicate, especially as we are not living in the garden of Eden, we have been kicked out of it! But it is our human imperfection, our failings that makes our work work! We can weave Paint upon a woven canvas deliberately, steadfastly, chance our arm, fast/slow, revisit and revisit, all dried-on canvas and sticking together, held together by some spare wood!!?

Hardly the stuff of religious or secular elevation, but some can actually defy our humble process and bring joy and magnificence to many over the centuries etc. Genius like Leonardo and Caravaggio, Matisse and Van Gogh, Picasso and Pollock etc have to be generationally re-appreciated, and the best way of accomplishing that is to learn how they did it by being a Painter ourselves!! But each Painter must establish that they are not a 'Proxy or a replica' of anyone, and that journey (hate that word in this context) you have to never give up the fight for, even when you are on your own, no especially when you are on your own, you aren't!!!!