Using Colin Crumplins approach of making work I painted random marks on Japanese paper using oils. The paper was then folded and a print produced adjacent - the butterfly technique. Further paint was added and the process repeated.
The idea is then to seek out some form within the image that corresponds to another 'found' image. In this instance the strongest link for me was fighting crows. An image was sourced and I then produced a scaled up drawing from a photograph of two fighting crows. These were then cut out and placed underneath paper and a print made by passing the roller over the paper.
It was a first and not particularly successful outcome. Not enough variation of shapes, tone and line in the top image and lack of clarity and definition in the image below. This could work better using thicker paper cut outs of the crows - it is all a bit messy and does not present the distinction and delineation of imagery in relation to the reasons why and to what purpose work is created in this manner.
Also, this way of working would be unable to remain within my area of study into the oak tree due to the process. Still deliberating about this approach in relation to my practice and subject area.
Acorns 1991 by Colin Crumplin
Method of working
After covering half the canvas with
acrylic paint by hand, he then flips over the uncovered portion to form a blind
mono-print (the equivalent of a child's butterfly ink blot). The resulting
marks are then 'read', (think of patterns left by frost on window panes, or tea
leaves at the bottom of a cup) and the image suggested used as the starting
point for a new painting in oils. These embryonic 'beginnings' are photographed
and carried around in a small notebook like precious intimate objects until
they 'speak' to him. A second canvas often the same size is then stretched and
an image suggested by the first projected onto it. This may have been found in
a picture library, a magazine or simply by a chance thumbing through a random
book, or be a photograph taken by himself. Unlike its expressionistic and
playful d oppelganger , the second 'hyperreal' painting is executed in
meticulous detail in oil -the paint of artifice and illusion -rather than quick
drying acrylic. The two halves set up a dialectical tension as if between the
left and right sides of the brain. A series of oppositions is established; a
dialogue between the cognitive and the intuitive, the primitive id and the
civilising super-ego, the fluid and the constructed, the child and adult. It is
as if each half needs the other, as in any good relationship, to become more
than simply itself.
Print taken using polysterene disc scored with a ballpoint pen.
