Untitled blog post from "macro & micro"

Reading the letters at the front of this month's Artists' Newsletter, I thought I was reading Artist's and Illustrator's Magazine, not AN! Don McNeil's letter provoked a lot of feelings in me. It is true that current art taught in colleges is based more on ideas, but skill and the craft of making are still taught on many courses. I don't agree with a lot that Anthony Jones wrote in his letter, but he did hit the nail on the head referring to Patrick Heron's idea of "visual presence". When I was studying at the RCA (PEP in the Printmaking Department) Chris Orr said something profound which confirms this: "The image must be shit hot". The Printmaking Department was an exciting place to be - etching for example, such a traditional technique yet imbued and synthesised with a quirky, innovative approach encompassing other forms of expression: performance, installation, sculpture... "Visual presence", or "shit hotness", is the elusive element of the work I strive for; I suppose my work is not only about ideas but about the process of putting paint on a surface or, with regard to my videos, translating those formal concerns into the moving image. I come from a traditional education in drawing, painting and art history. I was fortunate to have drawn from life one day a week for seven years (from A' Level - MA), it was an integral part of my practice and discipline. At the moment my work is landscape-based, some would call it abstract. What role did the hours measuring and dealing with line, form and composition play in the development of my current practice messing about with paint and video? It is not common-place to study life-drawing anymore. Is it important? What effect has the demise of life-drawing had on the work being produced today? Conversely, if the work is accuratelty drawn but lacks "visual presence" what value does it have? Ian McKeever wrote this in his collection of essays In Praise of Painting: What is it about certain paintings, that they are able to get right under the skin? Often they are the paintings which one would least expect to do so. How and why do we find such intimacy with certain works? At times it feels as if they had been painted specifically for oneself. They leave the mass and weight of art history behind them and become an inexplicable part of one’s life. That sums up "shit hot".

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=11547