Fifty years ago!

Fifty years ago I painted this  (an oil painting on hardboard) ...... I am not a painter, it was something I did at school  - now I work with found objects and in a sense this is a found object much like the slide transparencies that I have been working with! When my father died a few years ago the painting came back to me and has remained wrapped up in storage. It's a strange feeling unlocking things from the past.........

this is a detail

I am wondering where that girl who painted this has gone? I don't remember painting it at all! It must have been from an illustration in a magazine or book! Why the man in a boat? It's a mystery! So it's about things lost and forgotten rather than memory - a kind of mourning for lost youth maybe!
Is this my next project? - I have taken the first step and attempted to clean it up - the background has yellowed considerably during the years it hung in my parent's house (they were both smokers) - the photograph hides the yellowing which is interesting. I'm not sure where I'm going with it yet.
I have propped it up in the studio and will live with it there for a while and see what happens!

Beach play

I’ve been absent from my blog for quite sometime and I feel glad to be back. I’ve been suffering from a lack of confidence in my work – not sure what direction I’m taking and it’s worrying me because this is the final year of my degree course – it’s been going on for so long – 6 years to be exact – it is now strange to think of it ending – but maybe this is the beginning also!

I am disillusioned with contemporary conceptual art –I am confused to say the least – not motivated in the slightest and need to get back on track.

It doesn’t help that I am working with the British Art Show as an invigilator and guide –even though it is hugely enjoyable talking to a mixture of  irrate, confused, and interested  visitors about the work in the exhibition – it seems  rather an over exposure to the contemporary art scene! So I’m now thinking why bother? Isn’t there enough stuff that people don’t understand in the world? But that’s not right because I do want to finish my degree. Most of all I want to make work that is honest in my final year! Work that the audience understands without a couple of pages of background information.

I had a tutorial last week and showed my tutor some of the photographs I took during the summer, of the ‘found sculptures’ – he suggested that maybe I could make some interventions myself with found objects

so today I went to play on the beach………

I found a washed up orange and some lovely pieces of driftwood and thought of Gabriel Orozco

It certainly blew the cobwebs away and washed away the blues - I then went on a long coastal walk along the Rame Peninsula, one of my favorite spots – it’s done me a world of good!