G.I. Could you give us some background on the Bartok inspired pieces?
B.C. In accordance with my usual practice, I played recordings of these quartets while I made the paintings. They are difficult and demanding pieces for the players. Inevitably that complexity is reflected in the painted marks. I particularly am inspired by these quartets which are definitely viewed as the 20th century rival to Beethoven's Late Quartets. It is impossible to describe the process in my mind while I am working, other than to say that there is a continual dialogue between ear and hand. Listening to the internal conversation.
There is a programatic element in that each of the six quartets is allotted a colour; moving around the colour circle from Red No.1:
to Violet No.6:
The motive for enclosing the musical dialogue, mostly in black and white, in the middle with the selected colour around the edge is an idea that I took from the painter Francis Bacon:
I am getting more and more interested in enclosing the dramatic area(s) in the painting with flat areas of colour.”
G.I. Picasso seems to have had a profound influence on your art, both in mark-making vocabulary and your use of collaged print elements. Could you expand on that?
B.C. Yes Picasso has has a huge influence on my life and work since the very beginning with facile line drawings in my philosophy notes in 1970. He probably made only a small number of really great paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, among them, but his whole life’s work is a total masterpiece. I love his imagination, his energy, his conviction, and his striving always to go beyond.
In his painting he used sand, paper collage, nails, chair caning to make strong sculptural statements that brought the painting back to the surface in Synthetic cubism and contrasted with the more sensitive painterly mark making in Analytic cubism.
In his sculpture he used found material to great effect in plaster, wood, metal, card, paper etc to make simple bold statements in 3 dimensional space.
G.I. Your work is highly politically charged. What are your views on the use and potential power of visual art as a weapon of social change?
B.C. I don’t believe that you can disentangle true art from ethics. Our beliefs effect everything that we do.
I certainly don’t believe in politically didactic art. Any message in my work comes from a need to express myself, as a reaction to events expressed in newspapers. The motive is to show and expose through a dialogue with the tabloid image.
I don’t know whether what I do has any power to influence social change. I feel in a position of powerlessness as an individual but I am also deeply motivated to make works which engage with larger events in the outside world employing means which are as oblique and cryptic as I am able.
This image is a redaction which is work in progress (less is more); does it need the business of painted words to make its point. Is the most powerful visual message in the ‘juxtaposition of unanticipated elements’: I don’t know? But I feel an urge to do more!
But yes I do want to change the ugliness and deceit that we witness every day in the reporting of world events. It obsesses me and so it comes out in the pieces that I make.
G.I. What are you working on at the moment?
B.C. I have been working on this painting which has been recorded in progress:
Kreutzer - Binary Late Covid
I was working from the Kreutzer Sonata by Leoš Janáček String Quartet No. 1, this resonates with Beethoven’s renowned piece of that name initially dedicated to the violinist George Bridgetower which in turn inspired Leo Tolstoy’s novella of that name.
The short film which is being created from the process will be shown on the screen in the front window of the gallery for the public to view in the street outside.
This painting is work in progress in my workshop at the moment:
Fate - Gull Late Covid
I am working from the cliche of Beethoven ‘s 5th Symphony with its motto ‘Fate’.
The development process is being recorded. These images will be sent on a memory stick, in the near future, so that there is the possibility of making another short film that can also be seen in the front window of Oriel Q.
In my workshop in Frome these daily Tabloid front pages are ready to redact.
B.C. The plan is that I will return to Oriel Q to work on the front pages in the gallery between 10am to 4pm each day from Wednesday July 21st - Saturday July 24th.
Anyone who is interested can come and work with me there to react to news on these Tabloid pages through image, word, collage etc. You are welcome also to bring your own materials, front pages etc to work in the Gallery space, within permitted Covid restrictions.