Tuesday 14 September 2010

Not looking for beauty...

I see paintings everywhere.

In the rubbish on the beach, in the skies, in the raindrops dripping down the window pane. It’s a curse, like seeing dead people.

I found this one on a beach, there’s something almost Jackson Pollock going on in it – in the spray of colours, around the splash and swirl.

Just some rope and a tangle of frayed nylon cord on the sand. Odd that something so disposable, so wasteful, can be so beautiful. It’s just litter really, somebody else’s throw away washed up on the tide line.

Standing gazing down I’m captured by the randomness, the chaos, the tangled, jumbled order of it. How strange I must look staring down at some rubbish at my feet - not looking for beauty but finding it.

I want to pick it all up and paste it to a canvas - shells, twine, sticks, sand -- then hang it on a clean white wall.

I wonder, could I?

7 comments:

  1. I don't get Pollock. He seems more interested in technique than product. I prefer Willem de Kooning. And yes you could.

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  2. Yes I see your point but WDK is a bad Picasso and a bored Cezanne.

    I have spent a lifetime trying to overcome an obsession with technique - and failed. I think Pollock is random but in a controlled way.

    But what do I know for sure?

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  3. ... after all - I see dead people.

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  4. Mike King commented on Facebook:

    I see Mermaid in that pile of string. Ariel from the Disney film, see the red hair running down her back? Talking about artists, have you ever seen any of John Squires stuff? It's rather good

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/may/13/ston...e-roses-john-squire-art

    me - I can see the mermaid too

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  5. Philip Morgan commented on Facebook:

    It's better than Pollock. Pollock was more interested in unstructured structurism and got lost in the application of the technique.

    me - everyone's a critic

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  6. Alan Spence e-mailed

    Is it the real thing or not the real thing? that is the question! Is it nobler to see post modernist de-structuralism
    through the eyes of a half demented, post expressionist Demi God than it is to just
    simply play in the sand on a cold and lonely, wind swept beach.
    Keep seeing dead people Andrew they offer us all a way forward.
    Just as a matter of interest, do you see them in colour?

    Thanks Alan

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  7. I have never understood all that splashing and dribbling that Pollock was so adept in.

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