Over the last week or so I have been concerned with the identity of painting. Specifically, I have been thinking about how the practice of painting can be deemed irrelevant if the paint itself contains enough conceptual prowess. This post really acts as a steam of initial thoughts towards a more refined idea of how paint and painting can be perceived. Well, there goes…
Painting no longer has to exist on a surface. Indeed, when applied to a surface, paint becomes condemned – Fated to be judged with the attachment of subject matter and blinkered by the boundaries of a canvas. Allowing paint to exist untouched achieves a coherent sense of liberation and purity, which can be applied metaphorically to political and social instances or regarded as just that – pure, untouched and alive with potential. Painting, then, no longer has to exist with an identity, as the raw medium of paint is able to obtain identity without even being applied to a surface.
That is not to say painting is without relevance. Painting is a language able to describe the invisible and allow an audience to engage, to connect and to regard the physical world qualitatively. However, if painting is approached conceptually, than that concept doesn’t have to exist within painting. It can, however, exist within paint. These images detail a concept that exists within paint but not painting. That is, a deliberate lack of identity for the sake of raw possibility.
Moreover, the very practice of painting is now disposable – It is interchangeable with other cultural, social and political endeavours. It exists between meals; is halted when your favourite program is on TV; dismissed in favour or dicking about on the internet; or not even considered due to the sheer breath of cultural activities available.
Still Life With Medium as the Subject
I myself am interested in the consumable nature of the paints I make – and how they can exist isolated from contemporary art environments – in shops and supermarkets, ready to be purchased and consumed. Indeed, I have considered popping along to my local corner shop and simply leaving a jar of paint or two on a shelf – a piece of conceptual innovation in amongst the chopped tomatoes and pickled onions. A jar of paint as an object is small, fragile and inconspicuous, but that it represents is loaded with possibility and transcendence.
…There! All done! It’s good to actually begin to solidify these ideas just by writing them down. Some of this stuff I’ll probably deem untrue or irrelevant over the next few weeks/days/seconds. Still, that’s part of the fun of it all!