Mixed Media – Page 7 – The Consulting Artist

Art On My Back

I’m heading into London for a preview of the new Tate Modern wing. I’m wearing a jacket which Arturo Vega and Ted Riederer screen printed for me. Carole and I watched the production process.

The logo was designed by Vega in support of the 2011 Merge Festival, which I was fortunate to play a small part in. I recorded a song onto vinyl, titled Human Resource, which became part of the festival.

Arturo Vega is now dead, and his excellent visual design work lives on. Keira has a t shirt he printed, so does Neil Usher, who cowrote the song, and I have the original test pressing of this logo.

Passing Strangers : Revisited

A few months ago I painted a small sketch titled Passing Strangers. The picture was intended to represent the fleeting, impermanent nature of the many relationships we experience as we pass by each other. Maybe there is eye contact, maybe a smile and a greeting, maybe just the tiny, shared disturbance of atmosphere.

Since first painting Passing Strangers, I’ve thought more and more about transition and impermanence and as I’ve continued to think, I have made more versions of this work.

Passing Strangers II : I made this and left it in my local town. It has since disappeared. Maybe it has a new home, maybe it ended up in the bin? I don’t know, and it has transitioned.

Passing Strangers III, IV, V, and VI : I made these using pages from an old book, a marker pen and some chalk paints. The book pages have some fragility about them and the chalk paints are easily smudged. There is impermanence in these works. Number 3 is sold and now resides somewhere in the UK, numbers 4, 5, and 6 have also been sold and are together in the USA.

Passing Strangers VII, VIII, IX, and X : These four pieces are made using acrylic paint, pencil, ink, and gold leaf. Numbers 7 and 8 were left in my local town, numbers 9 and 10 are currently available to buy in my Etsy shop.

More to follow?

Warmth

I wanted to experiment further with the abstract ‘river’ patterns I’ve been playing with recently. My intention is to try different colours and materials too. I was curious to see how gold leaf would sit alongside acrylic paint, so I mixed up some reds and yellows and painted them randomly onto a pencil grid I marked out on this canvas board.