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| RTomens, 2022 |
As you know it's rude to approach someone in another country and speak English to them, unless their language is English. I do my best to learn the language when going to other European countries, by which I mean enough to say 'Please', 'Thank you', 'Two coffees' and 'Can I have an ashtray?'. What more do you need?
It's fitting that my language-learning skills are hopeless considering I spend a lot of time mangling English letters with a typewriter to the point where they almost become 'meaningless', unless you wish to read 'meaning' into my Vispo, in which case, feel free.
As with most subjects, I fail not through inability, per se, but the lack of patience...and discipline. In other words, I cannot be bothered to study. Anything. Including an artform. This, I swear, has stood me in good stead when it comes to avoiding 'the burden of influence'. I think. But. Past exponents do influence me, naturally. My eclectic (?) nature, however, means I do not become obsessed with one artist to the point where I cannot help copying him.
Can English Be A Basic World Language? began with the urge not to type, but to paint and collage instead...get my hands dirty for a change...well, my fingers at least. Having laid down the background colour/texture, I paused for some time. I knew I was going to cut out letters and looked for a source with enough consistent headlines (same typeface), settling for a collection of Picture Post magazines. One headline read 'Can English Be A Basic World Language?'. Hmm...there's something in that...snip...snip...paste, paste...a solid block of black under the first group of letters...yes, all paint was to be black.
How about holes in the black shapes? Perfect holes are notoriously difficult to cut (scrap that, it's just me not being bothered to study the inevitable YouTube video called How To Cut Perfect Circles Out Of Paper). So mine weren't perfect...and neither were my blocks of colour. But as I've said before, a few times probably, perfection is never my ultimate aim. The crucial factor being my casual attempt at a perfect line or shape whilst my subconscious rebel won't allow for such a thing. This battle between Perfectionist and Rebel plays out as I work. I'm aiming to be one and nearly always end up the other.
So there are blobs...edges that aren't clean...it's me, folks, a little...wobbly...dismissive of mechanical craftmanship...except where building planes is concerned, then I want absolutely the best mechanics. I'm a nervous flyer. Even studying the language books to learn how to ask for coffee in German cannot prevent me imagining worst-case scenarios. As Woody Allen said, it's not flying I'm scared of, it's crashing.
The pen lines were an afterthought. I do like drawing straight lines, as you'll have noticed in some of my work. Here they serve two purposes; one being to put something in spaces which I didn't want to leave empty, the other being to create a tension between the relatively clean, formal, structural patterns and the messy paintwork.
Vielen Dank für Ihren Besuch auf der Website.
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