I'm not Paul Nash

An idea came whilst reflecting on the aesthetic / anaesthetic duality. If something anaesthetic dulls the senses, the aesthetic experience wakens and stimulates the senses - not pleasantly necessarily - but one is made aware of how one feels in this moment. The aesthetic experience isn't dependent on any prior knowledge or understanding. For example, we don't need to know the source or location of a sudden loud noise to be startled by it. In a gallery the spectator responds to the presence of the physical object without needing to read the label on the wall.

As I write today, in November 2020, a new painting sits propped against a wall in my back room at home.

All art is conceptual but this is one of my most consciously conceptual pieces; idea driven, meaning the quality of the finish, the extent to which it is pleasing on the eye is secondary. I consciously went for a brutal, torn aesthetic. Like it had been up all night helping police with their enquiries. Most importantly, it shouldn't make sense.

It started out as two separate pieces, painted very quickly without much deliberation, on plywood board each about 24 inches square.

Here I am painting the panel on the left.

Next I cut up the panels, put the pieces on the floor and shuffled the different elements to explore potential arrangements.

I gouged out some marks in the wood with a chisel, chopped it up some more, threw black paint at it, turned it around.

And kept going. Cutting and re-arranging the composition until I had what ended up propped against my wall. Two panels had become eight. It didn't make any sense but it wouldn't anaesthetise anyone.

With the surface of the panels scarred like flesh the image the painting that had emerged reminded me of a landscape blasted by war, of charred, broken limbs and barbed wire. But the title doesn't reference war. That would make too much sense and I'm not Paul Nash.

I had the idea to just keep working on the piece endlessly, without ever finishing it, but I decided this one was finished, as convention dictates to become saleable commodity.

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