Category: Painting

Old Spectrum Paint – 20 years in a shed…

paintold

Old paint never dies….

In 1993 I was back home in Didcot, Oxfordshire and a musician friend Pete Astor who I had done record covers for commissioned a wall hanging.

He gave me a £100 and I said I would put in to materials…it was a friend’s gesture of support as I was on the dole at the time.

I bought the paint tins from Atlantis in London. I painted the canvas for him then…

I met a Spanish lady and we ran off to Edinburgh and the paints were placed in a suitcase in my father’s shed.

In 2013 I was clearing the shed following my parent’s deaths and the sale of their house.

I took the suitcase and this week opened them again for first time worried they would be dried out as had rusted over the years.

As can be seen from the photos the paint is still in perfect condition….I start painting in oil again next week…I been using acrylic for last few years….

Linseed oil smells great 🙂

Like me Spectrum is still going…

http://www.spectrumoil.com/

🙂

 

 

Second Wind: Showing new paintings at Lady Bay Arts

studio1may2

A new series of paintings under overall title ‘Second Wind’ will be on show at 117 Holme Road,  Lady Bay on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th May 12-6pm.

Lady Bay Arts Website : http://www.ladybayarts.org.uk/

I am at Venue 16 on map.

See map here : LADY BAY MAP PDF

The location is the lovely house of my old friends the Hitchmen. I look forward to welcoming people to the front room which will be 80s themed with music from that era as that what I listening to when painting the pictures :-).

 

Indeed the series of new abstracts take the Creation Record sleeves art of the mid 1980s as their starting point. Series are then titled 1977, 1985, etc…

Record Sleeve for Creation Records 1985 more here:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/1624419/Creation-Record-Covers

 

Why call it Second Wind?

Documented experiences of the second wind go back at least 100 years, when it was taken to be a commonly held fact of exercise. The phenomenon has come to be used as a metaphor for continuing on with renewed energy past the point thought to be one’s prime, whether in other sports, careers, or life in general.

1980 – day one – three new canvases and some over-painting.

suffering for my art
suffering for my art

So thanks to Steven Ingman (another inmate at 3rd Space Studios currently on remission) I started another set of three square canvases. Happy with how turned out.

Also went back to some curious 2′ square canvases from a couple of years back with graffiti type symbols on…didn’t work for me so started over-painting..still in process.

All in all keeping up momentum …maybe some drawing tomorrow until the finger heals……painting with a screwdriver doesn’t work just get red stuff on the floor :-(….

1980 – the contextual background

Thanks to my fellow studio ‘inmate’ Zenon I being provided with plenty of background reading. Today’s tome ‘What is Abstraction’ by Andrew Benjamin (1996). Interesting but very philosophically dense read which really only gets going when he responds to W. J. Mitchell’s attack on Greenburg. Good overview of Greenburg’s near total dominance of the field and some interesting painters at end..David Reed and Jonathan Lasker included which, as it 1996, confirms that I missed at least ten years of abstract painting and theory maybe more.

Richard Diebenkorn Berkeley #5, <a href=

I also picked up on an excellent short article on the Diebenkorn show at R.A. by Ian McKeever which chimed very well with Benjamin’s observations.

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ian-mckeever-on-richard-diebenkorn

and finally the Benjamin via Green burg led back to Rosenberg and Jasper Johns.

benjamin rosenberg

1980: Music and Art – the soundtrack

It is only now that I made the connection between music and painting…which some 30 years too late as the cover to ‘She Comes From the Rain’ effortlessly did this in 1985. As I trying to be in studio actually painting as much as possible..as opposed to thinking about it..I been building soundtracks for my painting. Today I looked back at 1980 and took the above corresponding sounds for this week..last week it was 1977.

Fascinating to look back at 1980 as it was second year of my degree at Hornsey and I was drumming (allegedly) for art school band ‘Damp Jungle’ then. Music seemed pretty exciting that year with Teardrop Explodes, Birthday Party and Orange Juice all issuing seminal 45s :-).

 

First month back in the studio: New Paintings and Drawings

studioapril15

 

Third Space Studio April 15th 2015

 

Well I finally made it back to painting in what must be the most convoluted way possible. To start painting again don’t go via my route. Seven years teaching web design in academia, a fine art M.A. in art research (through drawing) then a abandoned attempt to do a Creative Writing M.A. Oh and then two months sorting out what the hell I was doing in painting in the first place (the Archive)

All of this so that I finally can go into the studio in mid-March 2015 and stare at a blank wall and wonder what the hell it all about….

It seems like a very long way round to arrive back where I started. I studied fine art painting at Hornsey College of Art in 1978-1981. My first love was painting not poetry or songwriting. I was ‘good at art’ at school. I was offered a place at the Royal College in 1981 on painting M.A. which was my dream. I wanted to be the new David Hockney….I almost did it but Margaret Thatcher took away the grant funding and my working-class parents could not afford the £9K, even then, fees.

I have always despised the Tories ever since. I ploughed on and re-applied to the Royal in 1985 (see this post in archive). this application was the high water mark of my early abstraction. I never got back to this level until today. It has taken 30 years to be able to paint full time if only for a couple of months. I am not a part-time painter.

The paintings in the posts above are my finding my way again after all this time. I naively aimed to be the best painter in England between 1981 and 1985……right now I’m just happy to get a second chance. I was however always a serious abstract painter…and that I remain. I dedicate these paintings to my Father who would have been 83 last Monday. I call these paintings ‘second wind’ for an explanation see poem here:

Footie

https://shaunbelcher.com/archive/art/landmine.htm#second

 

Contemporary British Abstraction

newart
So after 40…yes 40 years (I started at the tender age of 16 in 1975) as an infrequently practicing artist I find myself finally with a studio and time to paint so as of next Monday there no more excuses….

Artworks 1975 – 2000 ARCHIVE here

https://shaunbelcher.com/painting 

What will it look like? Well going by the last completed canvas above from May 2014 probably a bit cartoony,  a bit abstract, a bit colourful….somewhere along the fault line between Contemporary British Abstraction (see show on now in London poster below ) and a crazed version of Disney trapped in a hunting lodge…so think David Lynch and rabbits…paint…it’s all about the paint..stupid….

So her it is or there it was and now it is or almost now …or something….whir..dribble…splat..thunk….

contemporary-british-abstraction-2015-poster

Read Andrew Parkinson’s piece on the show here Why Abstraction Now PDF

 

Nottingham Open submission successful

These the only three pieces of work this year and they were all submitted.

The selectors took the two drawings..have to work harder on paintings 🙂

The full list of exhibitors here: http://nottinghamcastleopen.com/

 

shaunbelcher_blamo shaunbelcher_pastoralshaunbelcher_mod

 

Bit of a shock to system this. I knew my artistic output had ‘slowed’ but as I can only find one canvas and two drawings from the whole last year it not slow it slithering to a stop.

Mostly the result of the gradual wind down of the Multimedia course and its attendant crap ( not from students I would like to make clear) and the failure of NTU SAD to recognise anything else I did..and an attempt to bury me in graphic design…

I did not have much time to paint I was too busy trying to save my job until I gave up trying and did something I enjoy instead i.e. creative writing which fabulous…and such a relief at least for a year….I due to return in June 2015..we shall see…