Me at Harris Museum Exhibition

The curator said he wouldn't take these photos unless I could prove the paintings were mine. I thought of passports or driving licences or utility bills. Instead he looked me sternly in the eye and asked me whether these paintings were mine. I said yes without flinching and he took the photographs.

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Harris Museum pieces submitted today

Yes, it's that time of the year again. Last year I felt my Harris Museum submissions were a little conservative in subject and small in size. The pieces I've this year submitted are large (48 x 36 inches) and more engaging. I want to be able to see my paintings from the other end of the hall so that I can grin broadly and gesture vaguely in that direction when and if asked what I have submitted.  

There will be a big shindig on Friday 12th with wine and cheese. I have six complementary free invites to the private viewing and am likely to still have them on Friday unless my luck changes. I told the nice lady that I had no friends and she did not believe me which is a sort of complement I think. 

Red balloon or red cherry?

I've started putting images on this website whose name I have temporarily forgotten. This site sells items on which said images have been imprinted. Also big posters but mainly things like duvet covers and iPad covers and other household items. I laughed like a drain when I saw a virtual iPhone cover with one of my paintings on it. The iPad covers are wonderful. Redbubble.com! without the exclamation mark is the name of the company. Do a search on mark peatfield and tap on one of the images to see a cushion with my painting on it. I found this a blast but your mileage may vary.




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Location:Luton

Blue nude

I listened to Puccini while painting this and a neighbour said she how loved the music because it made her feel safe. I forget the words I used but I began with 'Isn't it strange then how' and  ended with a list supporting the thesis that nearly all popular serial killers listen to classical music. Apparently I like to nip some things in the bud.

Lost inventions and fantastic creations

All installed and ready for Friday. The exhibition is coming together really nicely.






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Location:Blackpool ish

Invite to Lost Inventions Fantastic Creations.

Invite to exhibition in Blackpool. Should be awesome! And I get to reclaim the space in my flat currently occupied by my 'Ego Machine' sculpture. I keep smacking my head on the 'Sphere of awareness'.

Oblique strategies - do not be afraid of clichés

I am wondering what to paint next. I might over do things if I do another ego machine. I have a life size model hanging in front of me. I looked outside to the Centenary chimney stack and was filled with something like affection. There is something very fine about the view from my flat. Consulted Eno's Oblique Strategies and was advised not to be afraid of clichés. So be it. Must be feeling a little soppy because I can confess to loving that view. Manly tear - just the one.




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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

Give my creature LIFE!!!

I've just finished assembling a model of the Ego Machine for a forthcoming exhibition in Blackpool called Lost Inventions Fantastic Creations.  Nearly works though it probably couldn't pass the Turing Test. That's okay because I couldn't pass it either. Lol  

New painting up.

New painting up. The Sigh - a good humoured take on Munch's The Scream. Lol.

 The Sigh 

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New painting planned.

Feeling pretty hellish right now. This is going to be a large canvas. Going to do an exorcism with paint.

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A toe in the media maelstrom.

Watch out Kayne.

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A 15th Century model of Consciousness.

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

The displayed plates were reproduced from Volume 11 of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia which itself was a literal translation of the  Encyclopædia Britannica of 1902. An article titled ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, detailed the cultural traditions of Uqbar and its environs in Asia Minor. The article also gave a short account of the significance of a 15^th century manuscript discovered in an Algerian coffee shop in 1930.

The plates reproduced from this manuscript apparently depict a mechanism that models man's consciousness though the accompanying textual fragments state categorically that the mechanism does not simulate but rather is a man's consciousness - "one mechanism at once in work and stopped under partial draping of breathing flesh."

The following extracts are taken from the article.

Consciousness

The mechanism transcribes sight and sound onto a spinning disc whose spinning serves also to stabilise and propel. Impressions received by the main funnel and embedded ocular apparatus are conveyed via vibrations to a needle that engraves the disc surface. The recorded sound impressions are transmitted to the Consciousness Sphere via the vibrational energy experienced by another needle. A single lens attached to the Sphere reads visual impressions from the disc surface. The mechanism function therefore posits that Human Consciousness is nothing more than Awareness. Specifically, awareness of the recorded contents on the disc surface or what we may now interpret as the Mind or Ego.

Madness and Suffering

The disc spins continually and the ocular mechanism and auditory needle are, for the most part, fixed onto the surface of the disc though both the ocular mechanism and needle, despite the operation of various damping mechanisms, can be thought to randomly jump the grooves on the surface of the disc. The Consciousness Sphere is therefore subjected to a continual stream of semi-random impressions, impressions which become more salient in delirium and madness though even temperate dispositions experience wayward thoughts numbering in the hundreds every moment.

Death and Sleep

The disc stops spinning periodically, an event which generally coincides with a regular absence of light. Spinning restarts when the light has been reinstated. Sometimes the spinning cannot restart. This coincides with a critical stage of mechanism damage whether by a gradual time related erosion or by sudden trauma. Sleep and death, in terms of awareness or consciousness are therefore identical.

  

Enlightenment

There is a small flexibility inherent in the ocular mechanism attached to the Consciousness Sphere which allows the lens to peer over the edge of the disc. The overlooking of the Mind/Ego disc can be thought to correspond to the state of Buddah/Christ awareness state achieved in advanced meditative states. The flexing of the ocular mechanism is difficult and effortful. Some manage to momentarily look over the rim of the spinning disc. Others contemplate the serene darkness and are forever changed. Most never achieve more than a reflexive twitching of the ocular mechanism and are condemned to understand existence through the Ego until the disc ceases spinning completely.

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. An early study of the Ego Machine
Yes, the Ego machine did exist and was observed and possibly built by a contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci's in renaissance Uqbar. These pages are to be submitted to an exhibition of Lost Inventions and Fantastic Creations to be held in Blackpool.

Panorama shot of exhibition at Blott.

This is unlikely to work but here goes.

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Blott 2014 Summer Exhibition review

A review of the Blott exhibition.
http://www.altblackpool.co.uk/review-blott-summer-exhibition/
The world is going to see a lot more of my steampunk consciousness mechanisms which, aside from a superficial resemblance, have nothing to do with Ernst.

Enough bright colours - the darkness calls

Painting a bright and cheerful Blackpool scene seems to have exhausted me. I now i feel i must paint something dark and gloomy to redress the balance. Not only that but i'm going to paint something dark and gloomy on a really big canvas. That will show them. It's going to be a little like the narcissism  picture only more so. As a teenager i was fascinated by Gustav Dore's tortured and twisted figures in Dante's inferno. Yes, i was a lot of fun as a teenager. I'm going to combine a twisted Dore figure with my steampunk consciousness metaphor to say something or other. Let's hear it for the 50 year old goth.

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Artist Statement - condensed but as profound as the long version.

ARTIST STATEMENT. You asked for it and here it is.

To be reproduced on a single side of A4 for the exhibition and to be sung to the tune of 'Rappers Delight'.

 I express a spectrum of unease and anxiety with colour and with metaphor - a two pronged attack on the problem of communicating what it is like to be human. 

   My industrial settings mainly use colour to suggest emotion though an occasional lone figure functions as a anchor to consolidate the viewer's emotional involvement in the picture. The figure is the artist who finds himself in a sometimes sinister but mainly beautiful world of colour. I enjoy colour more than I enjoy form. Form abbreviates and circumscribes colour. Sometimes imprisons it. So while I revel in colour I am acutely aware of the forms that lie behind it. I paint in large expressive fields of colour to fill in the gaps between the forms I see.  Sometimes I don't see the colour at all but the black featureless spaces behind the forms. There is darkness there but there are also the mechanisms of consciousness that negotiate these spaces of which I now describe.

This is how I would describe what it is like to be human to an enlightened race of benign intelligences. These intelligences do not see appearances. They are blind to make-up, to snappy suits, to painted nails, flat stomachs and bulging biceps. They cannot distinguish young from old, success from failure. They see a mechanism akin to a child’s gyroscope darting across a flat featureless landscape until the disc stops spinning.

The mechanism’s form is governed by its function which is the collection and storage of  'me'  thoughts. Its constituted of a recording component and a reading component. 

Sight and sound enters through a large funnel apparatus which transcribes, with vibrational energy, what is seen and heard onto an impressionable and rapidly spinning disc.

The visual component of what has been recorded is then conveyed to the seat of awareness (the seat of awareness or consciousness inhabits a metal sphere) via an ocular mechanism. 

A needle transmits via vibrational energy auditory impressions via an amplifying funnel which feeds into the metal sphere.  

Direct awareness the other in the environment is therefore possible only by seeing and hearing what has been engraved into the spinning disc. The contents of the spinning disc which I can now label 'ego' is a mandatory intermediary processing step in understanding the mechanism's environment. Everything, then, is understood via the ego. The disc continually spins and the ocular mechanism and auditory needle are, for the most part, fixed onto the surface of the disc though both the ocular and needle can be thought to randomly jump the grooves on the surface of the disc. Imagine the maddening cacophony of a phonograph on a yacht in a storm tossed ocean for three score and ten years and you have an inkling of what it is like to be human.

The disc stops spinning periodically roughly in coinciding with a regular absence of light. Normally, the spinning starts again when the light has been reinstated. The mechanism ‘boots-up’  or initialises to use data processing metaphors. Sometimes the spinning does not ever restart. This always coincides with a critical stage of mechanism damage whether by a gradual time related erosion or by sudden trauma. Sleep and death, in terms of awareness or consciousness are therefore identical.  

Normally the universe cannot be understood in a manner in which does not involve the ego. However, a constitutional flexibility in the ocular mechanism can, in rare cases, allow for the perception and awareness of the silent spaces beyond the rim of the disc. The flexing of the ocular mechanism is difficult and effortful. Some manage to momentarily look over the rim of the spinning disc. Others contemplate the serene darkness and are forever changed. Most never achieve more than a reflexive twitching of the ocular mechanism and are condemned to understand existence through the ego until the disc ceases spinning.

Mobile website compatibility

Yes indeed. The website is now mobile compatible. The website painting images shrink  to the size of the mobile screen or tablet. Very clever. Software that is. Not me. I just pointed and clicked until it worked. I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

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Original paintings for sale in the Blott gallery Blackpool

Yes, exciting news. Most of the paintings I completed last year are available to buy in the Blott gallery.  Canvases I have recently completed will feature in the in the Blott Summer exhibition which starts in June. The following photographs show what the gallery looks like from the outside and from the inside - just in case you happen to be in the area and you wonder, for second, whether you're in the right building.

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I almost forgot to post this

The following advert for the Blott Gallery appeared in Rolls Royce monthly. My ubiquitous Preston sunrise appears alongside works by the other Blott contributors. I think it looks rather fine and classy so I am quite chuffed. As my Father owns at least two Rolls I expect to hear from him quite soon. Val thought that this is just the sort of thing that belongs in my blog. She may or may not be a little tired of the drivel I otherwise write. I couldn't possibly say.



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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

My first big canvases.

I've just completed the second of two big canvases for the exhibition. One is Preston sunrise but big. The second is another one of my surrealistic ones with the funnels. Both were very challenging to do for different reasons. The first reason which did not surprise me was that bigger canvases  need more paint and more time to apply the paint. This means I have had to maintain a constant level of  enthusiasm on a piece that would've taken me maybe half as long on the canvases I normally work on. This was tricky. There I've said it. The second reason is that  I attempted to paint 3 large female figures in acrylic.  Acrylic dries very quickly. This problem becomes more pronounced on large canvases. On my large scale figures I would apply paint to the head and by the time I got down to the toes the head would be dry. No blending over large areas here. Not to mention that the subtle fleshtones I had lovingly mixed would be a rock hard lump on the pallette. From now on I'm going to go to paint in oils. The only former objection to using oils was that the smell of turps makes me dizzy. I now have this product called zestit which smells like lemons to thin the paint and clean the brushes. Next painting is going to be a portrait. I have my first commission!

Three new paintings. Much productivity.

Link to recent paintings

I am forging ahead creating more objects of desire for the upcoming exhibition at the Blott gallery. To relieve the monotony of painting chimney stacks, fruits and funnelly things I painted a couple of self portraits. I got that out of my system at least. Tricky thing self portraits. Consensus is that I look too intense and angry. I'm in fact just concentrating lots. I did a prototype portrait of me smiling benignly but it looked as if I had special-needs. A smile just does not suit some faces. Another opinion was that I've made the hairline on one portrait too vigourous and thick. I remedied this in the subsequent portrait where I have shown the accurate thinning. I'm not sure how important this is but the comment came from a authoritative source. I tired of my face after two portraits and the third painting in the recent paintings section on the website (link above) is another industrial landscape painted in colours inspired by the American colourist Milton Avery. I am now reproducing the painting Preston sunrise on a really big canvas for the exhibition. It occurred to me the painting has drama and the drama could be increased by increasing the size of the canvas. As the painting has little detail this is tantamount to just increasing the size of the planes of colour as it is the colours which convey the emotion. It worked for Mark Rothko so it should work for me.

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Location:Fishwick Parade,Preston,United Kingdom

Yay!! My pictures are showing in a gallery!

Yes, my pictures are currently hanging in the Blott gallery with titles and price stickers and everything.

Just completed two more industrial settings - well one is new and the other is a reworked old. Already posted on my Facebook page but here is the link for those who missed them.

New painting link

The other is in the Preston section and is called 'Red walls'.

Just bought some clippers to cut my own hair. As I get older I find it more and more difficult to deal with chatty barbers. You cannot win. If you engage they chat all the more. If you don't they take it out on your hair. I'm going to get beaten up if grow another pony tail ( I used to have one in the 80s) so I shall have to wear it v. short from now on.

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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

Two new paintings up

Link to paintings.


Both are trippy industrial landscapes intended for consideration for a forthcoming exhibition at the Blott studios. I'm spending more and more time at Blackpool so that the Tower is likely to replace the ubiquitous Preston chimney in my paintings. I'm well aware of the phallic overtones of these landscapes. All I can say is that I like the way the lightness of the sky is divided by and connected by darkness. That's my story.


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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

A historic moment for me!

First two of my paintings hanging in the Blott gallery for in 'situ shots'. I spoke to interesting guy who came to the gallery and who is an extreme fan of HP Lovecraft (and therefore can't be all bad) who said that I had done pretty well to get this far. He has Lovecraft's portrait tattooed on his arm which is courageous as his likeness is not commonly known and he was not a particularly good looking dude. I'm going to ask his permission to show said likeness and mention his name in a future blog. I am also a lifelong fan of Lovecraft's eldritch universe. Indeed one of my first paintings was my interpretation of the lurker on the threshold or the thing in on stairs or The thing which cannot be described .... I've actually forgetten which. It had many legs and a single red eye I seem to remember. Probably not the most appropriate author to be read to small children at bedtime but my father was also an enthusiastic Lovecraftian. I don't think it did me or my siblings any lasting damage.





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Location:Preston,United Kingdom

An experiment

Link to Nude in box

Sitting in a Costa in Blackpool dictating this and waiting for picture framing shop to open. The latest picture started out as semi abstract after Milton Avery but with colours suggested by Rothko - namely a subdued ochre against a rich ultramarine. Half-way through the painting I noticed how uninteresting the painting was becoming. You need big surfaces for colour abstract stuff - A2 just does not have the same impact as a canvas the size of a car. Rather than bail I added texture and zing to the colours. I quite like the result and might attempt another on a larger scale. I can feel a big canvas coming on. It was only a matter of time.

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Location:Adelaide Street West,Blackpool,United Kingdom

Officially in a gallery now

Welcome from Blott Studios

Phase 1 complete, phase2 includes selling an original and pursuance of world domination etc.

Stuff I'm currently working on right now. All very exciting stuff I'm sure you'll agree.



















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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

Blott Artist's studio and Collective

Link to gallery
A selection of my original canvases are to be shown in a trendy/edgy Art gallery in Blackpool. I stumbled upon this place on Boxing Day and felt immediately at home there. It displays real art. Not absolutely sure what I mean by that but I mean it very strongly. The art it displays aren't just objects meant to be sold - they are objects meant to say something. I think I mean something like that only more so. Anyway, very exciting. I am vindicated and can now die.

Note to self.
Big exhibition coming in May/June. Need to work on more pieces so existential demise will have to wait.

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Location:Winery Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

New painting: Kurtz

Kurtz link
Kurtz is, of course, the nutter in 'Heart of darkness' or 'Apocalypse Now' for the hard of reading. I use him to illustrate the extremes of madness caused by looking too deeply and to long at the ego. An Amazonian background would be more fitting but I don't see the horror the early explorers report. I see the setting for ' I'm a celebrity ...' and other banalities. An industrial landscape is more fitting in my humble but final opinion.


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Location:Winery Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

Calvary

New painting: Calvary New paintings link

The point of this painting is that the spectators at the crucifixion are looking beyond their ego discs at something bigger and more important than themselves. This rarely happens so I thought it was worth illustrating. The shock of apprehending the torture and death of the Son of God has destroyed their little life stories and they apprehend instead the life story of the Christian cosmos.


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Location:Winery Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

Over the worst of the man flu.

I'm slowly recovering, it has been touch and go. One last funnelly painting inspired from a lemsip induced delirium. A little like Coleridge's opium inspired visions but not so much. This is Ascension or Sermon on the mount or Calvary. Don't know yet.


This really will be the last one in this series for some time. I don't think they are good my mental health. I need to do something more traditional. Actually I've developed a visceral aversion to traditional so maybe not.

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Location:Victoria Road,Preston,United Kingdom

Forgot to post the link. Being near death evidently makes one forgetful. Hello


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Expressing the self as media object - and stuff

The painting is titled "Hello" and references the magazine. That's your lot. I have man flu and so am not long for this world. I also have raw nostrils. No one to look after me and, more importantly, no one to moan at.


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Location:Friargate,Preston,United Kingdom

The Art of Suffering. Oh yes!

New painting, first of 2014.
Art of Suffering

Suffering in this context is of course Buddah's suffering which has more to with attachment to ego thoughts generated by the mind and less to do with stubbing a toe or watching the X factor. Obvious really. I can hear Siddhattha now. "What the *%$* is that thing?

Other news, I've just bought a blender. Note to self - must not get carried away.

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Location:Winery Lane,Preston,United Kingdom