I've been writing a bit about painting recently. Oddly enough, it actually took a couple of years of writing this blog to get going on painting analysis; I started writing mainly about film, literature, and other assorted cultural ephemera (lesbian vampires); I would continue making my own work in watercolour and oils, but painting remained outside my writing.
Category: Art
On Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Birds
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: The Counter (oil on canvas, 2010) "At Ease As The Day Breaks Beside Its Erasure And At Pains To Temper The Light At Liberty Like The Owl When The Need Comes Knocking To Fly In League With The Night." Lynette Yiadom-Boakye With a borrowed Tate membership card in hand, I recently managed to… Continue reading On Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Birds
On Marina Abramović and Pornography
“Simone was tall and lovely. She was usually very natural; there was nothing heartbreaking in her eyes or her voice. But on a sensual level, she so bluntly craved any upheaval that the faintest call from the senses gave her a look directly suggestive of all things linked to deep sexuality, such as blood, suffocation,… Continue reading On Marina Abramović and Pornography
On Paula Rego’s Feet
“And, they tell us, we at home Live free from danger, they go out to battle: fools! I’d rather stand three times in the front line than bear One child.” Euripides, Medea (431 BCE) So it’s been one year and nine months since I finished my MA at Chelsea College of Arts, and in the… Continue reading On Paula Rego’s Feet
On ‘Chroma’
"Blue of the bugloss, and self-sown cornflower; Blue of the sage and winter hyacinth; Pink and white roses blooming in June; And the scarlet rosehips, fiery in winter; The bitter sloes to make sweet gin. Brambles in the autumn, And gorse in spring."Derek Jarman, Chroma: A Book of Colour - June 1993 (1993) This is… Continue reading On ‘Chroma’
On Severed Heads
“Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I said it; did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now .… Continue reading On Severed Heads
On Everyday Filmmaking
The Mundane and the Magical: Filmmaking of Every Day Nalini Malani: ‘Can You Hear Me’, film projections, Whitechapel Gallery (2020 – 2021) I would like to write an article about the intimacy of everyday artmaking. This is not that article; the following text is adapted from a proposal I've recently submitted to a writing prize… Continue reading On Everyday Filmmaking
On Andrea Rocha
Andrea Rocha: Cutting Skin, Cutting Paper Fig. 1: ‘Wash Your Hands’, photographed collage, 2020 Two energies, or two competing forces, are at work in the photographic montages of Andrea Rocha (b. 1964, Rio de Janeiro). These warring visual phenomena, which we could refer to as what Sartre called the real and the ‘irreal’, can… Continue reading On Andrea Rocha
On Saint Sebastian
Detail of 'St. Sebastian' by Sandro Botticelli, 1474 Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constantly under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph; and the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art as a whole, yet certainly of the art we speak of… Continue reading On Saint Sebastian
On the MA Show
Rosie Dahlstrom: 'Delphyne and the Oracle', performance and installation, Chelsea College of Arts, July 2019 From 26th June to 4th July, we finally got into our MA Show spaces at Chelsea to start installing our work in time for the grand opening on Friday 5th July. Then the show was open to the public from… Continue reading On the MA Show
Sertraline Dreams 