a body positioned to be seen

All images from the Guardian review of Ken Currie’s recent show in London.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/08/ken-currie-rictus-review-hiroshima-medical-paintings-flowers-gallery#img-3

What excites me about these is the theatricality, the clarity of composition and the dramatic colour pallet.

Lucian Freud paintings are so obvious a reference within the world of painting that I want to work within that I haven’t focused on him. He feels like a cliche, which i need to admit. Him and Fancis Bacon. The Leigh Bowery paintings are the greatest for perfoming presence in a painting of a live human flesh positioned in a precise geomertric composition. And looking at you.

The objective view of the body in these paintings and the fragmentary vibrating marks in muted colours is the direction my paintings need to take. The question of objectification of the nude and the hierarchies of artist and model are heightened here.

Bog bodies and cadaver specimens are attractive for the postures they hold and for the finish of the surface, nothing like a human body and more like a condensed polished patina. In this way the mineral properties of the painting materials and the dried form of the cadaver seem close in properties.

a cultured society is one in which the perceptive and expressive abilities of its people are cultivated through the use of their innate animal energy

A heightened awareness of displaying one’s body

be aware of a presence—be it human, animal or god—that is watching their movements and hearing their language

for performance to take place, the presence of the other is indispensable.  Nowadays this other’s existence is referred to as “the audience”.

systems of communication in which animal energy was utilized and refined

an awareness of the invisible body is required.

(1) energy production,  (2) breath calibration and  (3) center of gravity control.

to deepen an awareness of these three crucial, interrelated, “invisible” phenomena.

Alice Neel for the endless looking at weighted bodies and flesh covered skulls as people, as monumental fleeting specks. The images that I want most are the single figures with the gestural poses. The simplicity of the bare bones of the image containing a spark from the person observed. The time spent, shared, lived and past, set in the mythical timeframe of oil on canvas is ridiculously cliched and affirming and heartbreaking. 

All these images are from the excellent Alice Neel website http://www.aliceneel.com/home/