Define Creative Act? I think that what we imagine are new images and ideas come gradually - not springing into being suddenly as is often supposed. We set up systems over time, laying down working methods and becoming relaxed with equipment, rhythms and scenarios, (for instance collaborative workers like printers.) With this atmosphere in place we can posit ideas and open the gates to working up concepts which may only exist as peripheral feelings "perhaps described as being at the back of the head". However, only working like this is prescriptive, there should be something else, being vigilant for surprises and then being careful to recognize a chance happening (perhaps what might be considered a mistake or transgression of methodology) and then recognizing that glimmer of a new form, seizing it. [The classic example of this was when Lee Miller discovered the process of solarisation: initially an accident, which was then co-opted for art.] There is also the process of gradual refinement, a series of approximations toward some kind of expressed idea, until eventually the work achieves or finds its purpose. [Circling around a vague idea.] The idea of grabbing hold of the accident, being open to the surprise. Tracking the elements that have been consistently fascinating - in my case repetition, component parts, the ordering of the minimalist box. Clarity containing chaos.Very early work used the window frame of the photo booth as a self-contained device to show the narrative and also providing ready-made printed matter - providing easy and cheap repetitive imagery for collage, lending a filmic quality. Warhol was a favorite. Bach Oboe Concertos Concerto for Oboe d'amore in A major does it for me. Underlying pulse repeated rhythm, with a top lacing intertwined. Reasons for being drawn to particular forms of art are unconscious and emotional. "When Bach meets Warhol" could have been my alternative title. Connecting references: Andrè Adolphe Eugëne Disdèri (1819-89) Self-portrait, was a pioneer of the industrial portrait. In November 1854 he registered a patent for a new multi-lensed camera using the wet collodion process and producing eight small likenesses on a single glass negative. The resulting images were trimmed to fit onto the size of a visiting card; a standard 4 by 2.5 inches, and were known as carte-de-visite photographs. This invention had a dramatic effect on the market, prices for portrait photographs fell, the clientele expanded and the unique Daguerrotype process fell out of favour. Disdèri’s process opened up the possibility of the multiple portrait images for almost everybody by virtue of the reasonable price. The Emperor’s cousin Julie Bonaparte wrote in her diary in 1856: ‘It is the fashion to have your portrait made small in a hundred copies: it only costs fifty francs and it is very handy to give to your friends and to have their images constantly at hand’. A.A.E.Disdèri and the Carte-de-Visite Portrait Photograph. E.A.McCauley (1985) Warhol: Donna de Salvo, Tate Modern. ‘He created an art of endless permutation, reinventing the same images and themes again and again. His capacity to discover difference within what appeared to be the same uncovered a world of nuance in the everyday’. Thomas Crow, referring to the work of Warhol, suggests in ‘Modern Art in the Common Culture’ (Yale University Press 1996) ‘the result reinforces the idea that the repetition of the photographic image can increase rather than numb sensitivity to it as the viewer works to draw the separate elements into a whole’. Writing about the possibilities afforded by photographic sequences in the 1976 Moma Oxford catalogue, Marcel Vos comments on Jan Dibbets: “Our attention is irrepressibly drawn away from the representation to the manner of representation. Applied sequentially, photography gains an almost magical dimension whereby it transcends the laws of cause and effect. Besides, the structure of the sequence spans the fragmentary and descriptive nature of the individual photographs.” (Recent works by Jan Dibbets. Photography and the aesthetics of the Fine Arts.) Anne Hollander refers to the portrait of Ludovico Capponi (1500-5) by Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) "It's as if this background fabric were there to suggest things about the subject that his face and clothing may not convey…….. This is an example of painterly drapery used for its own expressiveness, looking quite unlike anything used in life for clothes or curtains……… We can see that fabric in paintings has come to refer to itself, to display its painted nature in the image and its elemental character in art." Hollander remarks about C17th painting: "The drapery in a portrait would be there for the picture's sake, not to record something customarily found behind the sitter in real life. You could say it was there for art's sake, to show that drapery by itself had come to stand for art." New Work 1998 A breakthrough occurred with the cloth, I realised that I didn’t need the portrait element. The portrait backdrop cloth is a visual convention linking the past with the future. And now it could behave uncontrollably it became exciting like paint exploding within a space. Chaos and control. I realised that I wanted to make works that were in a sense, portraits of material. This combined with colour opened an equivalent field to painting . The only reference to humanity became the fleeting trace of a hand or a brief view of a finger. By expunging the central figure, I aimed to shift the focal point. Fabric and the condensed energy within the patterning and colour sequencing became my prime concern. I wished to capture the ambiguous, static yet fluid movement of the curtains and allow these evocations of tension to assume centre stage, rather than merely exist as peripheral adjuncts to a whole. The inbuilt systematic and repetitive means of recording of the mini-theatre of the photobooth, meant that I could relax about larger issues of compositional space, as the grid dealt conveniently with the problem. Because of the severe minimalism of the booth all of this activity was contained within black borders and clipped portrait rectangles, these became the recurring components for my work. The Auroras 2001/2 These monotypes were made in 2001/2 and used etching scrim as the mutable inked surface that was printed onto mulberry paper. The characteristics of cloth are still clear. Starchy crisp beginnings gradually soften once the open weave becomes clogged with inks. Movement is implied in a similar fashion to works made in the booth. diptychs open up a situation where one part of the work can relate to another. Communication between the two parts refers to early painted diptych portraits (for example works by Cranach) and Japanese trptych wood cuts. << back