Gentle Cinders (of a relationship)
wallpaper, ash, PVA, acrylic, newspaper clippings on MDF board

This piece has been ongoing since the third (official) week on this project and I have been working very hard at it. As you can see, there are three notable elements to it, which in collaboration makes a 'trinity' of destruction and deterioration. I do not believe in God myself but I think that the notion of the son, the Lord and the Holy Spirit is present here.

Gentle Cinders began as an average square off cut of MDF that was sanded and brushed off before a series of diagonal strips of wallpaper (averaging at about 3 x 6/7 ") were affixed with PVA to it. Once I was confident that they had dried I began to form some sort of composition using thick black acrylic to sweep tone across the bottom of the board. I then worked white acrylic into that and swept that across the majority of the board, mixing most of the paint to tones of grey.

The next process was to plan and organise the painting(s) that would form on top of this base. Between the time it took to collect these three intertwined subjects and link them to something relatively subjective and put them on the board, I took some time to reflect on my own losses and discontent. This led to thoughts of damaging, infliction, angst, in which have been reflected in the method used to carve and tear away parts of the wood, the paint and the underlying wallpaper. The wallpaper tore in a beautiful fashion. This process of decollage has been a revelation in my own discovery as beforehand I would have considered it a preposterous act of senseless destruction upon your work and could not imagine ever wanting to deconstruct any of my own work. However now I brave this process as it is exciting to challenge myself to work upon such a rough surface.

This act of decollage persisted until I was satisfied (and exhausted of the tedious process of carving text) so then I quickly cleaned up scraps and tears that flaked off so the surface was a usable surface to paint onto. I then performed something rather spontaneous to the surface; at the end of the day, with the sun setting and light disappearing I turned the board on its back and spilled ashy water onto the middle. I watched as the yellowy graying tainted the torn wallpaper as the water dried. I continued to add more ash flakes on top of the water and watched carefully the process of which it dissolved and dispersed. The following stage was the painting of Mark Speight.

Mark Speight was a memorable childhood television presenter who was friendly, energetic, motivated and bouncy too. I remember him over the other presenters of smART as he stood out with his shining grin. At that age, you tend to adopt characters and television personalities as your friends as you eagerly tune in to watch the show. But through the clean, happy appearance of his stage performing, Mark discreetly lived a desperate tale of addiction and eventually devastation. Upon the death of his former fiancée, who mysteriously died from serious burns after getting into a boiling hot bath, Mark was soon to soar to the top of the polices enquiries. He was soon to find himself fighting a legal dispute over allegedly supplying her with cocaine which is perceived to be a catalyst to this tragedy. Although no cocaine was found in their apartment at the scene, Mark revealed to the media that they were indeed drinking wine, mixing sleeping pills and taking cocaine on that night. This shocking truth comes as little surprise to me that Mark and his fiancée Natasha Collins were or could have possibly been addicted to cocaine, yet the tragedy brings great sympathy as Mark was later to fall into pieces over this catastrophe, resulting in his suicide no sooner than a week or so after the ordeal.

I chose to paint this man in tribute to his influence on me artistically. I have no doubt that he, along with Neil Buchanan (of Art Attack) was significant influence to me as a child and I am honored to have been brought up in their era(s) of television.

The second painting that was applied to this piece was of my ex-girlfriend, Kaylee Duke. I broke up with her days before the Speight incident and somehow felt that my own tragedy collided with this occurrence. It wasn’t for a week or two before I could handle painting my ex, and even when I had begun it was awfully upsetting. However, I always intend for my work to be in some way relieving and rewarding in solace. I painted Kaylee in hope that it would make it easier to get over our relationship and move on, which is easier said than done.

Apart from some tweaking of the surface and the current paintings, the next step in this piece was the bird. Before the bird was placed, I applied many words collected from the media (newspapers). The bird, copied from photograph, was marked out as the other two were marked out, with acrylic, however with the bird I had decided to be a little more experimental by mixing PVA in with my black and white paint. This not only stretched out the quantity of paint but also gave it slightly obscure attributes. I am happy to pursue this technique as it is versatile in the sense that it forms a sort of translucent form of layer painting, which is perfect for this type of work.

After completing the bird to a moderate level of detail, careful not to take the main focus off of Mark’s portrait, I finished off Mark Speight by touching up his ears and hair. It was finally complete and I removed it from my room as soon as possible.

This piece is a collection of three entities that occurred in the same week that affected me on a personal level. The first was the breakdown of my former relationship, which rattled me to the very core. Although the break up was on good terms and wasn’t the worst that could of come of this, I still feel worse than I had anticipated. Kaylee meant so much to me and after painting a portrait of a vocalist that she adores for her 18th birthday, I knew from that point I was going to have to paint her. Like everything I do in life, I took the last chance to do this. The second, Mark Speight, and the story of his tragedy and death shook me greatly and moved me. It is shocking to think that life can build up and tear down a man with such positive charisma, and his fall is just as sad as seeing the corpse of a bird lying at the side of the pavement. Death is just life.

The dead bird was the last of the three, and really ties the subject together. It is a symbol of the larger cycle of life, of helplessness, and how insignificant death really is. Just like natural selection, some survive, some pass away, and in this notion relationships become a comparison within questioning when seeing this image. In another point of view, I am suggesting that relationships are a lot like natural selection in the fact that at the end of it we move on, in seek of replacement, something better.