Word of Mouse

The Impermanence Series

25/10/2015

When I last updated in August, I mentioned that I had been working on some drawings exploring impermanence as a deeper investigation into themes inspired by Buddhism and Buddhist imagery. I felt quite drawn to these principles, especially as I had been encountering a great deal of uncertainty and change in my personal life. It seems somehow poetic then, that the result of these developments, culminating in a series of five digital collages titled Impermanence Series, should be receiving an airing as my final exhibition of work before I leave Manchester for pastures new. Even more so as the images contain drawings made in and around the area I'm moving to! The new work will be in display at the Manchester Buddhist Centre's Arts and Imagination Festival show 'Touched by the Dharma' throughout November 2015.

I have always found my work driven by responding to the environment I find myself in and so it's no surprise that place and my movement from one to another should be featured in my work. I can only imagine what inspirations I will find following my relocation to the Essex coastal town of Leigh-on-Sea but as it has already found form in my work I think it's a fairly educated guess that it will affect the future of my creative practice, whatever that may be!

Impermanence Series 3 - October 2015

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Everything is Changing

17/8/2015

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Having taken a laid back and flexible approach to producing work for The Serenity Series, (as would only be appropriate for the subject matter!) I didn’t set out with a goal in terms of how many pieces I expected to produce.

This is especially true as I didn’t really feel there was a very clear aesthetic link beyond a general idea and that the whole thing had happened quite accidentally. Since recognising how influential Buddhist iconography had been and then choosing to learn more about it however, it feels right that perhaps having reached a better level of understanding it would be time to move on. Upon completion of a seventh canvas in May, I was able to collate the images and realised that actually, the little ‘family’ of apparently hotchpotch pieces did have quite an identifiable visual link and didn’t just rely upon the conceptual to unite them at all.

Driving on in a conceptual vein, I have decided to begin exploring notions of impermanence, a key principal I have discovered in Buddhism, and personally very relevant to some of my recent experiences. Whilst I very much enjoyed reconnecting with painting and mixed media, in moving forward I have again reverted to drawing and sketching. This has seemed especially appropriate as the theme I have now chosen to explore encourages recognition of our desire to ‘capture’ moments in time which are necessarily fleeting. Photography is an obvious tool for attempting this, recording a fraction of a second with the highest shutter speeds, however drawing, and the time required to sit, observe and translate the three dimensional and dynamic world around us into a static two dimensional form brings with it an interesting dichotomy of process and goal. Interestingly, it also embodies another Buddhist ideal; that of mindfulness and integration of ones experience with the present moment.

I’m not yet certain where these new sketches will take me though I’ve titled the book ‘Everything is Changing’ and I’ve enjoyed their creation so far, which can only be a good sign! I’ve now added some them to the Sketchbook pages of this site and have recently published two new poems, (linked below and also on the More Words of Mouse page) which instead engage with the concept of impermanence from a literary perspective.
In writing this update, I have also just noticed the title of my last posting; how right I was!

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Winds of Change...

31/5/2015

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Having completed the last painting for the Serenity Series at the end of January, (Hangzhou Magnolia) I had a fairly good idea of an image I wanted to work with next, so I got stuck in quite quickly on a new piece in February. It would be untrue to say I have worked on it every day since then, but it has been a fairly lengthy process as I have re worked several parts of it on more than one occasion. The piece is developed from both a photographic record and a pencil sketch made on site at the Chong Shan Si Buddhist Monastery in Taiyuan, China. The painting further explores the image of a carved wooden figure I was interested by at the temple complex when I visited in August 2013.

Photograph, Chong Shan Si, Taiyuan, August 2013

Pencil on Postcard, August 2013

Chong Shan Guardian of the South, Acrylic and Collage on Canvas, May 2015

The sculpture is one of the Four Heavenly Kings, huge figures that are often represented at Buddhist temples as guardians of the buildings. Zēng Zhǎng Tiānwáng (The King of the South's Chinese name) is the 'one who causes good growth of roots', which seems particularly relevant for a spring painting! He is also ruler of the winds and is associated with the colour blue, which I have tried to emphasise in the work. His symbolic weapon is a sword held in his right hand, that he uses to protect the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha as an interpretation of the laws of nature in a system designed to reduce suffering.

The concept of allowing the growth of strong roots is one I find interesting and can apply to more than one area of my life at present. It seems especially relevant to this whole series, which is certainly proving to be a 'slow burner' as I evolve my own understanding of it from slight bemusement (Why am I making these?) through questioning the value of them (is this a bit self indulgent?) and now on to recognising that there is an intrinsic value in producing work that people can simply enjoy looking at without trying to address any wider social issues. (If you're not familiar with my older interests, that statement might make more sense if you look at some of the PlaceMaking and This Place Is project work). Of course, there is always slightly more concept than that, even with work that has an obvious aesthetic appeal and I have been interested to watch these pieces pop up almost as elements of visual grammar to punctuate my own changing approaches to life. Learning the purpose of slowing down and taking a little more time over life objectives (letting strong roots form perhaps) has been a key feature of recent months for me whilst questioning our modern, Western, hell-for-leather-must-be-done-yesterday attitudes and how productive that kind of lifestyle can really be in the long term. The slower, seemingly more purposeful, Eastern attitudes I have encountered in my work and leisure travels in recent years are certainly exemplified in the Buddhist imagery I've been using.

CRITshow; May 2013 (thanks to irenasiwiakphoto.co.uk)

It seems The Guardian of the South has been sending the winds of change in other directions too and it was with surprisingly little regret that this week I also made the executive decision to call it a day for CRITgroup, the artists' networking group I have been managing since 2011. Due to changes in various practices, other creative commitments and a myriad of other 'life things', attendance had dropped off recently, and despite continued verbal expressions of interest, it became clear that the group was no longer providing the same motivation and stimulus for many. We tried changing to a bimonthly schedule but the meetings did not become better attended and I no longer felt the investment of time and energy was generating a sufficient level of return for either my, or anyone else's practice.

In many ways, the initiative has been far more successful than I could have hoped and it feels like a genuine achievement that so many people interacted with and through the meetings. I feel we can take real pride as a group in the many genuinely productive sessions we enjoyed, as well as the high points that were the collaborative projects and the group CRITshow (pictured in the slide show above), 2 years ago in May 2013. I am also incredibly grateful on a personal level to all the speakers who gave their time to share work with us, and to everyone who contributed in other ways, be that through full engagement with a collaborative project, helping out with bits of administration and organisation, or simply providing an interesting opinion. One thing must end for another to begin however, and I'm sure we'll all stay in touch. Who knows, maybe now we've chopped out a bit of creative dead wood, our roots can grow stronger and there will be some new, hardier shoots in the not too distant future.

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A Gentle January

13/1/2015

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Heart Sutra, Acrylic on Canvas Board, 2015

It is then with a quiet simplicity that my first post for 2015 shares just one piece; the newly completed Heart Sutra; Go Beyond. This painting is a development from a Peaceful Places photograph of the entrance arch at the 'Big Bell' Buddhist temple in Tamana, Japan, in the summer of 2013. The text on the arch refers (I am reliably told) to the Heart Sutra, one of the most important Buddhist mantras. It is translated by the 14th Dali Lama as “go, go, go beyond, go thoroughly beyond, and establish yourself in enlightenment.”
The painting also includes visual references to designs that feature frequently in surface pattern on Persian textile and ceramic pieces, themselves inspired by Chinese representations of lotus blossoms.

The winter months are, for just about every species of life on planet Earth except humans, months of rest, recovery and rejuvenation; an important opportunity to build strength and resources in order to make the most of the more naturally bountiful seasons. I have been trying to learn from this observation and have attempted to keep my usual expectation to be continuously and both-feet-first into multiple projects in check. This is certainly in keeping with the essence of the Serenity Series, which has become, from apparently nowhere, the main thread of my recent creative practice.

Entrance Arch, Big Bell Temple, Tamana, July 2013

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Winter Spice; a Variety of Projects for December

2/12/2014

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Tamana Buddha with Rainbow Lotus, Acrylic on Board, 2014

A few little ‘nuggets’ in what will probably be a final update for 2014! The Serenity Series continues to trickle out like a little brook bubbling up from its source; slow but steady. I’m currently about a third of the way through a new piece in this body of work which combines elements from the 'Big Bell' temple in Tamana, Japan, (also featured in the piece ‘Tamana Buddha with Rainbow Lotus’) and an interpretation of Persian textile designs, themselves inspired by Chinese stylised depictions of the lotus blossom. I’m hoping to find time over the Christmas break to complete that, which would give me 5 paintings to the series and would seem like an appropriate point to pause and consider the direction that it could move in next. I’m slowly coming round to the idea that these are not, as I have previously described them, a self-indulgent tangent, but are going to form a fairly important part of my practice, if not an especially prolific one. I’m finally allowing myself to relax into it and not be overly concerned right now with the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’.

I’m not even pressuring myself to necessarily get lots of them produced or work at a specific scale, or worry about consistency. I’m really just letting it come out as it feels like and I’m sure the confidence to do this has come from recent discussions at CRITgroup. Voicing doubts and finding that others are perplexed at the cause of them is very liberating and I feel I’ve given myself permission a bit more as a result to just let it flow.

As well as this I was delighted to agree to help out a running friend with a design for the logo and branding of a charity event in the planning for January. This is really only just happening over the last 24 hours and certainly not in any state to be shared, but it’s good to be working on a variety of areas, with distinctly different styles. It’s an overused cliché that ‘variety’ is the ‘spice’ and all that but it’s certainly the best way I have found of staying interested in life! The work I do for this project will be far more illustrative and will be more in the vein of the design work I did earlier in the year for Up & Running.

Ladies T Shirt Design for Up & Running

The most exciting update however; and a really enjoyable end to my creative year came in the form of a weekend of PlaceMaking workshops with students of the International School of Creative Arts in Wexham, near Slough.

We actually started off with a day out in Central London, where as well as gathering a range of research drawings and photographs, the group used This Place Is PlaceMaking boards to respond to two specific locations; The British Museum and the North side of the Thames near Embankment. These were recorded and used along with their other materials on day two (back in the studio), where they generated small scale sculptures designed to reflect their perceptions of and relationship with London. I was genuinely impressed with how sensitively they engaged with the concepts presented to them and they appeared to turn out idea after idea quite effortlessly. Their self-motivated approach to generating outcomes was also notable and their intelligent discussion of the outcomes did not undermine the successful visual communication that they had all been asked to carefully consider.

It’s impossible to pick favourites so this is a fairly random selection just as a flavour. Please do check out the project pages to see all the work and read a little about the ideas behind each of the sculptures.

That's all for now. December is upon us and shaping up to be as busy as ever. It seems like only a month or so ago that I was reflecting upon the conclusion of 2013 and wondering what was in store for 2014. It hardly bears thinking about that a whole new twelve months will soon be upon us! Nevertheless, I'm optimistic. Finding out is half the fun!

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Maintaining Serenity

10/10/2014

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It was with mild embarrassment yesterday that I noted my last post was in August. The cause of this embarrassment was mostly due to the fact that at the time I was using my own blog as a quick example to a student, upon whom I was pressing the importance of regular updates to engage with an audience. Whoops. Physician Heal Thyself. Fortuitously, I was also but a few brush strokes away from completing the fourth painting in the unexpected tangent that has been The Serenity Series and so today I felt I actually have something to post about. In my defence, September is always a very busy month (Yes, I know, we’re a third of the way through October) and so it’s been a genuine challenge to squeeze the painting in at all, let alone find time to write about it!

Yongzou Lotuses, Acrylic on Canvas, October 2014

As mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been experiencing some bittersweet feelings about my current practical direction, which is quite removed from my previous work in a Social Practice discipline. The paintings of The Serenity Series are developed from the Peaceful Places collection of photos (still on display at the Earth Café) taken in China and Japan during 2013 and I really didn’t expect anything to grow from these. At the time, they were really just a way of recording my experiences, as is the way with much travel photography and I felt quite self-indulgent to be producing pieces that are not aiming to achieve some form of social purpose. At the last CRITgroup meeting, I found it useful to discuss my discomfort around working on pieces that didn’t seem to have this social function.

Whilst I was pleased to know that others could identify with having experienced something similar, the fact that the origin of those preconceptions were questioned by others was also a reassuring point of view. Why can’t the act of producing a creative outcome be at the same time enjoyed by both artist and audience? Though I am yet to fully resolve this in my practice, the discussion has at least given me some motivation (permission!?) to carry on. This new painting is titled Yongzou Lotuses and is composed from photographs taken at Yongzuo Temple and pencil drawings made on site at Chong Shan Si Buddhist Monastery, both in Taiyuan, China.
The recent work has been part of a bit of a reset period for my creative practice, I think and this is something I always struggle with. Though I recognise it is perfectly natural for things, work, creativity, life generally, to reach natural conclusions or fallow periods, I find it incredibly difficult to not do something. Whilst I know that rest and reflection is essential for progression in many fields (here I am specifically relating this to my experiences of running and training plans!) that doesn’t mean I’m any good at it. I’m coming to the conclusion that this recent series of paintings is something of a displacement activity as much as it is an exploration of the photographic material; something creative to do while I rest my artistic muscles and store up some psychological glycogen to power me into a new socially creative phase. I do have some genuine ideas for this that are slowly coalescing around the edges of my consciousness. Needless to say they involve running, community engagement, art, and… well I’ll see if I can squeeze some cake in there too and hit all my favourite things in one project!

I do have one ‘Social Practice’ update of course, since my last post; the aforementioned invitation to return to the Hulme History Society to run a PlaceMaking workshop with some of their newer members who hadn’t participated in the project previously. There won’t be a physical exhibition of these images but you can see all the new contributions in the Hulme Revisited gallery.

Only Happy When I'm Running, Digital Illustration 2014

As the boundaries between my passions continue to conspire to shift and blur, I have also completed some new illustration work for Up & Running. I was asked to produce some T-shirt designs for their own brand clothing range, Sub4. These haven’t been produced yet but I think I’m safe sharing one of the designs that won’t be used… It also illustrates one of the factors that is encouraging me to shift focus and plan some new projects to get people in cities interacting, exploring, creating and, of course, running!

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More on Places; Peaceful, Imagined and Revisited

4/8/2014

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Tamana Buddha with Rainbow Lotus, Acrylic on Canvas Board, August 2014

The decorative detail on the right of the composition is an interpretation of designs that feature frequently in surface pattern on Persian textile and ceramic pieces. The particular design I developed this from was in fact based upon Chinese decorative arts and is an interpretation of the lotus flower.
It seems hard to believe that it was a full year ago since I was actually at the temple, but this slightly sad realisation is somewhat tempered by the knowledge that I have continued to enjoy the experience through the production of these pieces.

Today I finally made time after returning from various summer travels (none as exotic as this time last year when I was still in China!), to complete the latest in what is now a series of three acrylic paintings titled The Serenity Series. The series is based on photographs from the Peaceful Places collection, and I started to produce the paintings following positive feedback on the photographs. This piece, titled Tamana Buddha with Rainbow Lotus is an impression of a large statue of the Buddah at the 'Big Bell' temple in Tamana, Japan, which I visited in July last year. The giant statue is situated at the top of a large flight of steps (see below) and cut a striking figure against the (almost) cloudless sky.

Big Bell Temple, Tamana, July 2013

In other news, I have continued to be productive in alternative areas. Just occasionally, though I've always felt it is something to aim for, you get to combine passions. Sometimes, one can be lucky enough to actually get paid for this. In June I was fortunate to be commissioned by Up & Running to produce a design for the front cover of a promotional give away notebook that they plan to publish before the end of the year. As an avid runner, I didn't need asking twice and it was a genuine pleasure to spend time working on the brief in close discussion with one of the directors of the company. It was a smooth process as we understood each other well and this is the resulting piece. If you want to get your hands on a copy you'll need to head in to your local Up & Running store (there are branches across the UK) sometime from the beginning of the autumn season and see what the deal is! Even I'm not sure yet!
Hopefully I will be working with them again soon to produce artwork for further projects. Watch this space for that one, but in the mean time I must try and make the most of a few last days of holiday to get a bit more painting done! I have a couple of new ideas for The Serenity Series already on the simmer!

Illustration for Up and Running Promotional Material

Though the PlaceMaking work has taken something of a back seat to the The Serenity Series of recent months, I have also been invited back to Hulme History Society to re run the I Remember workshop I first delivered to them in 2011. As they have many new members who were not involved in the original session, they have asked me back to work with them again in sharing some new perspectives on the local area. This will take place in a couple of weeks, on August 14th and I shall look forward to sharing the resulting photos soon!

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May the Fourth (be with you)

4/5/2014

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April was a busy month for a variety of reasons but one of the main things that seemed to take up most of my time and head-space since my last update in March was my first ever attempt at running a marathon. I did this on the very clement April 6th at the Asics Greater Manchester Marathon and in so doing aimed to raise money to fund arts workshops to be delivered to users of mental health charity Imagine. This is a local charity, based in Liverpool but with ongoing work nearer to Manchester in Salford too. I was keen to support a small organisation as I believe this means donations go further and one of the additional benefits of doing so is that it is possible to work closely with staff to ensure the cash goes exactly where you want it to. Having raised over £400 for Venture Arts last year by running a 10k race (my first of those too!) I thought I’d push it a bit and set a target of £500. I was absolutely delighted that I managed to inspire such generosity from friends and colleagues alike who between them have smashed that target absolutely to pieces by more than doubling it. It was then lovely to receive a thank you card and letter from the charity director and arts group service users and even better because what I didn't realise is that the existing arts group for Imagine is actually based in Liverpool, not Salford. They are now however, in a position to use the money we raised to initiate a whole new programme for delivering arts workshops in Salford which is a massive deal in this age of budget cuts for the arts and for health and I feel confident that my supporters have really truly made a difference to individual lives without their donations getting sucked in to a huge charity with massive overheads and generic budgets. If you are interested in more details about race day, you can read the update I wrote for the charity on their own blog page.

While my feet have been busy, my fingers haven’t been left out and I have also been continuing to work on The Serenity Series, the working title of a new project that accidentally grew out of some photographs I took in Asia last summer, which then grew into the Peaceful Places collection. The latest of these pieces is a mixed media canvas (acrylic and collage) titled Impression Taiyuan and is developed from photographs and drawings made in two Buddhist temples in Taiyuan (in the Shanxi Province of China). I have no specific plans for the exhibition or evolution of this new body of work at the moment and am quite happy to just let it grow to see where it ends up. It’s quite refreshing to be producing work for the sake of it again as opposed to trying to achieve a specific goal, be that social or professional, so I am making the most of it!

In other creative areas, I enjoyed a talk at CRITgroup this month by astrophotographer Dave Wilkinson and am especially looking forward to welcoming my teacher, mentor and friend Peter S. Smith to do the same in May. You can read more about Dave’s talk on the CRITblog and there will be more on Peter’s work soon after the next meeting on the 28th of this month.

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