When not sat a desktop PC at work (which commitment coincides with the term-time of the typical UK academic year), I tend not to have any great desire to log in and use a computer, thus blogging about matters cultural and one’s creative practice (as distinct from Instagramming on a mobile phone) tends to take a back seat, as has been the case since late June.
However, the painting produced thus far over the ‘vacation’ has reached a point where it sort-of demands to be blogged in order to maintain that particular aspect of the process of creative practice and to maintain a currency of presence in cyberspace.
To this end, I now (re)present the five examples of a body of paintings that have been developed over the course of the last couple of months, which take advantage of the seasonal availability of greater and brighter amounts of natural daylight in which to produce ‘white paintings’ (other project ideas and further developments of bodies of work in progress have accordingly been placed on the back burner until the autumn).
The objects represented are a selection of objects, vessels, moulded in air-drying clay from existing vessels, and display certain wonky characteristics such as finger and thumb marks and imperfect forms resulting from this process of hand-making which seem to coincide with the Japanese aesthetic of ‘wabi-sabi’, hence the titles of the works.
The vessels are composed in subtly changing configurations of relationships in the manner of most artists who work within the genre of still life and are painted in a manner that aims to communicate something of the nature of the fleeting play of natural light as it describes objects in space and the surfaces upon and against which they are arranged.
‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #1’
oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/July 2018
‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #2’
oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/July 2018
‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #3’
oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018
‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #4’
oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018
‘Wabi-sabi Vessels #5’
oil on canvas/16″ x 20″/August 2018
James Rowley Artist 