For 30 years now I have had a ‘Gutter Habit’.
I try to keep this hidden and discreet but I guess it’s there all the time, in a way to order and control readymade colour, I’m not proud of it, it’s just something I have to incorporate into my life now after all this time.
I prefer to focus on the oil paint which is really the deeper more complex driver or carrier of what I do but like other artists paint brushes- the gutters allow a painting to begin.
I pour gloss paint through holes inside them into wet oil paint monochromes.
I mix up the oil paint anticipating how the gloss colour will be dropped into it; this is very complex as it is to do with anticipating fracture and movement in the future and how this movement and the incompatibility of these two materials will embrace or hold a specific idea and sensation; it’s never just a technical procedure at the end….my ‘gutter habit’ is just the first stage of getting a painting going which is why I don’t focus on them I guess; a way of beginning or setting up a specific situation or condition for a painting.
But the gutter habit started with being frustrated with the lyrical figurative head paintings I used to make, I simply punctured a container filled with paint and crossed them out.
Out of frustration and enjoying an idea of cancellation. I was also looking at Sigmar Polke a lot, and Bernard Frize and Ian Davenport who all used pouring in different ways when I was a student and also Francis Bacons use of chance.
Also importantly I was looking at the gutter trough like sculptures that Linda Aloysius was making at this time, these had a big impact at this time.
Also I had a job stamping ‘made in England’ on thousands of paint brushes and this moved easily across into drilling hundreds of holes in lengths of guttering; the gutter habit caused a big muscle to develop on one arm only and both taught me about real repetition, humour and absurdity.
I loved how real life experience linked up with looking at post minimal American artists. As time went on the gutters have accrued and although they appear like works, they are only at best studio companions for me when painting alone. -