Jazz Green : Artist Journal

Posts tagged ‘abstract photography’

slow painting

June 5th, 2011

in december 2008 i wrote i had started some incidental abstract paintings on some scavenged pieces of wood, surfaces that have been gradually built-up, partially obscured, then revealed, slowly reworked & edited over the course of about two years. it was never my intention to finish these paintings in a week or a month – painting them has been a slow, drawn-out process, as i added some colour here and there and then left them for quite a while, before attending to them again, effectively lost then found again – a succession of related ‘incidents’ contributed to the visual outcome of these paintings.

here are some surface details of one of the incidental abstract paintings…

abstract painting - surface textures, orange, brown, grey

as ever, the colours are muted, faded… and the surface textures a little aged…

abstract painting - rough surface textures - rural industrial environment

drawn from hereabouts perhaps, in the rural/industrial environs…

abstract painting textures - chalky, bluish white, greeny-grey, earthy brown

a chalky, bluish white, a greeny-grey and a dark, earthy brown…

abstract painting - surface textures, brown, grey, stone

elements of stone, dark earth and slate grey-black…

detail of abstract painting on wood - eroded weathered orange, brown, grey

a slab of tawny orange, light grey and a thin brown stripe…

close-up of abstract painting on wood - grey brown texture

dark brown-black and a scrubby, scratched layer of grey-green…

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the dilemma of having to give paintings titles, which should either reference the process or the subject matter… square forms, surface elements, hidden layers, interior/exterior, industrial blocks, stacks, containers, structures, doors, windows, walls, a flawed facade..?

this painting ‘incident‘ is called ‘orange slab, dark brown and various greys’, 30cm x 30cm, acrylic on wood…

Orange slab, dark brown and various greys - abstract composition, grid structure painting on wood - by artist Jazz Green
orange slab, dark brown and various greys, 2011

if these incidental paintings represent anything, they are another small record of my enduring fascination with weathered surfaces and the working dialogue that develops as i have created them – the slow emergence of a simple grid structure or rectilinear form, much influenced by the originating ground or surface (wood) – unlike say, the relative smoothness (or ‘not’) of paper or the regular weave of canvas (i like the texture & colour of raw canvas, but i seem to go to great lengths to deny its material existence in my paintings)…

some visual clues scavenged from the journal archive might hint at some of my surface influences…

photograph - weathered wall facade, wood textures - brown black grey

photograph - weathered wall facade, wood textures - brown grey

photograph of old rusty metal shutters - brown rust grey

photograph of rusty metal corrugated iron - brown blue grey

photograph of weathered wood - rust white crackled grey paint

photograph of weathered surface - decay white grey striations

photograph - weathered surface - decay green mould algae

photograph of rusted iron bars intersecting dark space - like a drawing

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all images & text © jazz green 2005-2011

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Reunion Refresh @ Reunion Gallery, 5 Feb – 22 Oct 2011
(incidentally, there will be two ‘incident paintings’ on wood in the reunion refresh exhibition)

HWAT exhibition 2011 @ Harleston Gallery, 18 June to 11 July 2011

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a minor road painting incident

February 7th, 2011

recently spotted in a small norfolk town with an unfortunate name, and i had the camera to document the road works in progress…

double yellow lines - minor found abstract painterly incident on the road

a council roadworker with an keen eye for absolute precision in road painting, even if it doesn’t entirely match… i was left briefly pondering, is this normal for norfolk*..?

more double yellow lines - line paintings seen on the road

but this wasn’t the only painterly road incident. further along this minor road there was another occurence of fresh double yellow line painting… what would this exact colour be in pantone..?

double yellow lines roadworks - abstract paintings

it seems that council yellow comes in many shades, or else it fades very quickly…

double yellow lines - painting abstract art

and sometimes remedial action is taken later on, in trying to match the original colour…

double yellow lines painted on the tarmac - abstract art

but i am saving my favourite photograph for last… here in close-up, a unique road work composition in a medley of mellow (and not so) yellow hues, wonderfully crackled textures and mismatching layers, subtly embossed by the pattern of tyre treads, my found painting (or print) of the day…

this image has some definite kerb appeal and more than enough art historical references, should one wish to analyse it any further…

double yellow lines textures - tarmac -abstract painting

this post is written with much reference to and respect for the artist over at the aesthete’sfoot blog, aka the opposite of tomato, an artist who has brought an intriguing, conceptual dimension to what could be loosely termed ‘creative kerb crawling’  in his two years (or more?) drawing project, to visually document discarded drinks cans in all their myriad convoluted, crumpled and flattened forms – see also the curious incidents of the double black (not yellow) lines.. he now calls himself the darjeeling fop… well, that’s the line painting finished – time for a brew..?

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*normal for norfolk; a somewhat derogatory slang term used by medics, often shortened to NFN, as a means to identify in the Doctor’s patient’ notes that the unusual symptoms or behaviour presented maybe the result of the patient being, relatively speaking (so to say), someone wuss abit darf, nut roight in the hed…

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on art, wabi sabi, and the garden

October 15th, 2010

here are two small abstract paintings on paper from the series now known as chromatids (derived from colour, identity and dna)… there are one hundred of these and i do not think these two particular paintings have had a public viewing before (they can also be viewed ‘actual size’ here)…


LXIII and XLVII, mixed media painting on paper, 15cm x 15cm

striations, as it turned out, were the most direct, uncomplicated means of exploring elemental colours and textures on a very small scale – they also began to be about developing a narrative within the process, of texture & surface and how the colours related and interacted within the ragged, irregular edges of the paper – the pattern of striations echoed what i had observed in the rural environment, scenes composed of the weathered, worn surfaces & rough edges that most appealed to me visually. these close-up, abstract photographs were all taken in early 2008, shortly after being given a new camera to play with…

recalling again how this series of one hundred paintings first came about (it was a dull, drizzly day in early november 2008) has caused me once more to muse upon the japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, an appreciation of the understated, the transient, ephemeral or imperfect. for myself, understanding the aesthetic or philosophy of wabi sabi, it seems to first arise within, in a sensing, a feeling, an intuition or an awareness, that momentarily surrenders up the ego in reverence for the object or scene, that acknowledges the relevance of time or location upon it, and that it can be experienced any time or anywhere if one is mindful enough to see it…

there is definitely something in wabi sabi that speaks very much about my own artistic inspiration, something that i can trace right back to my mixed media collages, but i am not sure one can faithfully make an artform of it, for wabi sabi is what it is…

in early 2005 i had sketched out a mindmap about the the perception of the landscape and the environment, in which transience, impermanence, stillness and the effects of time surfaced as major keywords. much later, in september 2007, i once again found myself contemplating where i was headed within the environmental nature of my art – and i was reminded of things that are discarded or rejected, that situations do and will change, that nothing is permanent. i had also briefly referred to solitude a couple of months earlier and the importance of time in the making of my art.

i didn’t write anything in this journal for a few months, except for the posting of some photographs of a painting that i had completed, a painting appropriately entitled shrede (an archaic spelling of ’shred’), implying a slow scraping back or paring down of layers, and what remains, tattered, torn and fragmented. the outward signs of impermanence and an inner sense of solitude eventually led on to a very meandering, philosophical path eastwards, towards all things quiet, gentle, calm and ultimately zen, one that made me realise that an awareness of situations or things could actually mean something much more than the sum of their parts – it did not need a name, but it offered up some new interpretations…

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over the last week a few hours have been spent out in the garden, on some required ‘tidying-up tasks’, pruning back overgrown hedges and shrubs, fixing up fences (there is always more work to do, it seems). back in the summer i took these two photographs of a blackbird’s nest that i had discovered in one hedge, images which i later accidentally erased (hence the previous post on rescuing deleted images from a camera) but i have found them again, safe and well…


[a blackbird's nest, 18 july 2010]

the same two blackbirds that i had observed nesting in a tangle of clematis earlier in the spring had made a new nest in a different location – just a small incident of nature quietly at work…


[baby blackbirds, 25 july 2010]

in this autumn clear-up i have subsequently discovered many more birds nests of varying sizes and designs, suggesting that the parts of the garden which were left the most undisturbed had become something of a sanctuary to nature… but i did wonder if any of the garden birds would be returning to use these nests again in the spring; i found the answer to whether birds do or don’t reuse their nests on the RSPB website…

yesterday, i spied this intricate slug drawing on a leaf…

does this exude a little of the wabi sabi aesthetic? it is part of the boundary fencing that my neighbour had put up a few years ago (sans chamber pot, of course) – i rather like it, even though it is far from perfect…

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