New Paintings

'The Simulacrum is never what hides the truth- it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.'  (Baudrillard, 1994; 1)

Hyperreality is a term used in semiotics, consisting of the inability to distinguish reality from simulation. Reality and fiction are blended together so there is no clear distinction between them.

The interface between the scanner and the printed photograph manifested within my ink drawings represents a blending and fusion between reality, representation and technology. The end result becomes a hybrid of both with gliches from the scanning process combining with recognizable areas from the landscape. 

Dan Hays, The Clearing, 1999, Oil on Canvas

Dan Hays' anti-romantic paintings make use of nature as his subject matter but the method is derived from imitation and technology.
Looking at a Hays' painting is not to experience a communion with nature but instead a sense of separation. The work is not really about the landscape, but seems to be more concerned with 'second nature' or the overlay human beings have imposed on nature via their technologies.

'The project is collectively titled Colorado Impressions, as digital image compression has striking formal associations with the Impressionist imperative to capture the essence of a scene as quickly as possible with a restricted palette of colours... this is a special relationship, where we can see digital photographs as proto-paintings, abstracting visual information, creating painterly effects several removes from the world.' (danhays, 2015)

Dan Hays, Colorado Impression 9c, 2002, Oil on Canvas

My recent paintings carry a strong influence to Hays' work via the process of simplification and the reduction of the composition as well as the influence of technology via the process of scanning and the subsequent interference and conflict with the picture plane.

In creating these paintings I chose to move away from the places that I had used in order to inform previous work: Mousehold Heath and the North Norfolk Coast. As a reference for these paintings I used a walk that I have regularly undertaken close to my parents house which takes the walker alongside the banks of the river Wensum for a stretch of around five miles. As with the previous two locations that I used to reference my work this is a space that I have regularly visited as a child and a young adult and therefore my intention was that it contained within it memories and associations from my past.

Photographic panoramas taken during my walk along the river.

River Walk, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 35 x 60cm

River Walk I, 2015, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 75cm

In creating this recent series of works I chose to experiment once more with the medium of paint in order to move away from the work that I had previously created using drawing and silk screen. I attempted to utilise the distortion via the process of scanning that I felt had been very effective within previous experimentation. 

In analysing my intention for the work and the outcome I would come to the conclusion that although effective in part, overall I would say that the results achieved via drawing and printing were more effective. Once more within this work as with previous works my overriding propensity to use bright colour has meant that I am no longer referencing the places which I am depicting within the paintings, the bright colours taking precedence over the other aspects of the composition. Similarly the crispness and graphic nature of the drawing and silk screen provided some way of unifying the compositions not present within these pieces. Although I feel that the fashion in which I have handled the paint is partially effective on account of its smudged and blurred nature owing something to chance process, I feel that overall the pieces would benefit by subduing the colours used a well as referencing them back to the original landscapes and places from which the imagery was derived.

'For me there is no difference between a landscape and an abstract painting.. I refuse to limit myself to a single option, to an exterior resemblance, to a unity of style which can't exist. A colour chart differs only externally from a small green landscape. Both reflect the same basic attitude. It is this attitude which is significant.' (Antoine, 2004; 1)

Gerhard Richter, Landscape near Koblenz, 1987, Oil on Canvas

One of the trademark styles of the German painter Gerhard Richter  (1932 - ) is his use of the form of blurring within his work. The blur serves as a perfect general metaphor for memory, its degradation and corrosion that is wrought by time, as well as recalling camera movement and errors of printing. 

'I blur to make everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant.' (McCarthy, 2011)

Gerhard Richter, Apple Trees (sketch), 1987, Oil on Canvas.

 

Like many other German artists of his generation, Richter references romanticism within his paintings. However road signs replace church spires within his landscapes, waves and clouds become fragmented, isolated, collaged and inverted. The fascination with the scene he is depicting is retained, but it is a fascination voided of sublimity, wedded instead to repetition and reproduction, an interrogation of the act of looking and the technologies through which this takes place. 

'In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. Objects made by humans could always be copied by humans. Replicas were made by pupils in practicing for their craft, by masters in disseminating their works, and, finally, by third parties in pursuit of profit. But the technological reproduction of artworks is something new.' (Benjamin, 2008)

In the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, (1936), Walter Benjamin discusses the shift in perception and its affects in the wake of the advent of film and photography. In particular Benjamin discusses how the manner in which we look and see the visual work of art is different now. Benjamin discusses the loss of aura through the act of mechanical reproduction itself. The aura for Benjamin represents the originality and authenticity of a work of art that has not been reproduced. A painting has an aura while a photograph does not; the photograph is an image of an image while the painting remains utterly original.

If in Benjamin's eyes a painting contains within it originality and authenticity whilst a photograph does not then how does this relate to a painting, print or drawing that has been subjected to technology whilst simultaneously referencing photography. My project began as an investigation of memory and the interface between the landscape and the walker passing through. A photograph is regularly used as a way of capturing a moment or a memory in time. A scanner may be used as a way of copying, recording and storing information therefore acting as a vessel in order to transfer and store virtual memories. By creating paintings which have been informed via photographs and scans I am curious to know how this would fit into Benjamin's ideas concerning authenticity. In my mind the process of technology would somehow create a simulated or inauthentic aura when it acts upon a painting. 


Antoine, J.P. (2004) 'Gerhard Richter: Landscapes.' New York: Zwirner & Wirth.

Baudrillard, Jean (1994) 'Simulacrum and Simulation.' translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: Universtiy of Michigan Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008) 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.' London: Penguin.

danhays.org (2015) Dan Hays (internet) available at danhays.org/coloradointro.html

McCarthy Tom (2011) 'Blurred Visionary: Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings.' The Guardian 22nd September 2011.