tom johnson : artwork

this will unfortunately be a somewhat minimal description of this weeks production. i spent a large portion of my time this week working into the oil paintings, adding details and generally enjoying the whole process. im becoming far more comfortable with my vocabulary in this context, which will leave in a good position to attempt some more ambitious paint works in the coming months. woodworking also featured with some prominence this week.. i squared and sanded what are now two more laminated panels as well as constructing a cage to try out a three dimentional version of the knot picture which i have since started work on. i found part of a door in the street last week and spent my saturday evening working on to some extent what i would like to be a moderately thoughtless painting, although of course this is impossible.. the intention was to produce a painting in which to loose myself in the pleasure of producing various colours. a little self indulgent i know but ill explain my mot

on monday i had a group critique with, as u may suspect, John Wood. This is intended as a catalyst between students, this leading to various trains of thought and opening up your thought processes for discussion. Unfortunately, in affirmation of the 'Lazy Artist' cliche, most of my peers deemed us unworthy of their time but in spite of this i feel the whole experience was highly constructive (for all 4 of us). a little sellfish i know but i'll brush over the work of others, as if i were to start discussing this too then there would be no end to the rambling and would slightly defeat the object of a record of my production. this by no means should imply i gained any less from the discussion of the work of my peers. the session raised a number of points i have rarely considered in the past, or at least in this particular manner.. i think most importantly what happens after uni, the presentation and more importantly perhaps, its reception and also the sale of work and the poss

the string knotting piece worked quite well i think, it gives a loose impression of landscape or a field of vision, perhaps some tighter working to give suggest constructions.. anyway i will be trying out some gloopy translucent substances on it this week. the other piece is at least in part the result of wanting to do something with the tacky old gold frame from the stitch canvas stretcher.. . i decided to have a go at translating an image into wire, i have worked alot at producing three dimensional forms so i wanted to see how a flat production would work.

studio another week, another photostitch of the studio

so this week i spent a fair portion of my time painting, im steadily becoming more comfortable with using oils.. i had never before got round to playing with linseed oil which is a little step closer to the vague visions of some kind of organic stained glass quality i would like to achieve. so heres some shots of progress and also, some ideas for the presentation of the work... i want to use various fabrics and materials to first and foremost break up the infuriatingly dull and done white backdrop but more importanting to me at least give the images a sort of cultural reference point or some depth subtle depth of narrative. the week was briefly interjected with woodworking when time and location allowed. i want to try making some slightly less orthodox stretchers as a working tool for the angles and also as frames to try out a few ideas with strings and this organic stained glass thing. as well as these, i decided to make a more substantial laminated panel seeing as i found it interest

just a few photos of the wilhelm sasner piece up and running.

i decided to make tuesday morning the end (for the time being at least) of the stitchcanvas piece in fear of the temptation to just keep on adding bits, fiddling, tweaking and whatnot.. so here it is as it stands, although i will tighten the dangling strings.. . that done i decided to have a little mess around with some paint, i was toying with the idea of producing some maps along a similar thread to paintings i made last year but possibilities of the inclusion some of my text.. here is one of several results, unfortunately, due almost entirely to the spontenaity of it (namely the shoddy and thoroughly warped card i was working on) i decided id carefully file that thought away and move onto something ive been mean to do for some time. oil paint is something i have tended to avoid in the past, through convenience or choice im not entirely sure but regardless, i wanted to get back into using it and at the same time inject some life into some of the images that tend to remain hidden away

for now, production is a little slow. but here's another w.i.p of the stitch canvas after roughly 45 hours work and the studio at the end of week 2. studio

Although i have managed to work on some of my own things, this week my time has mostly been occupied by helping install a Wilhelm Sasner video piece 'The Other Church'. Several students along with myself helped make the space suitable for projection. http://www.bathfilmfestival.org.uk/2008-festival.html?f_di=Wilhelm+Sasnal