I'm the new King, I'll take the queen

I'm the new King, I'll take the Queen (series work), acrylic on canvas.

 As a print artist my practice is defined by the processes inherent within it and raises a number of tricky questions that, I believe, need to be addressed and overcome. The most prominent of which is that of artistic proximity. During the US print revival of the late 50's that found artists flocking to the medium a number of prominent American artists, most notably Jackson Pollock and De Kooning , were vocal in their concerns. 

They felt that the process heavy nature of the practice acted as a barrier to artistic expression. This is hardly surprising given both De Kooning and Pollock's own practices, but also raised doubts about the artistic validity of print itself. Many famous artists have utilised the medium as a means to generate income it is after all a cheap alternative to buying an original Picasso, but can a print ever be anything more then copy of thing rather then the thing itself?     

For my series I wanted to turn those questions around. If paint is truly gestural and artistic proximity a given then what would happen if I utilised print processes in my own paintings, effectively removing my hand from the painting, and what affect might this have on the reading of my work? It might be argued that the affect would be very little. To most people a painting is a painting and is judged along purely aesthetic lines, you either like a painting or you don't and process is more or less irrelevant. 

But the manner that we go about creating work of artistic value is as important as any contextual considerations we might make and helps us to frame our thinking. Pollock's practice defined his career not the subject matter of his paintings, but how he created them. Rauschenberg and Litchtenstein also and no reading of their work can preclude it.    

 It may seem like basic stuff, I'm sure that for some it is, but for me it was an eye opening revelation. The processes inherent in print are not a barrier to artistic expression they are simply the context of the works creation. Prints processes, I would argue, frame the work in a world we all recognise, play a part in and subscribe to on a daily basis.Print can, at its best, subvert and manipulate the expectations placed upon it. 

Andy Warhol's series work can be viewed as a media reflexive gesture that draws our attention to the eradication and replacement of what is truly authentic.  Rauschenberg's work is an over load of visual information, where no one image takes prominence over another. These artists embraced print and its processes because it offered them a new set of visual tools and means of expression. 

 Of course all these artists still recognised the gestural nature of paint. Paint has oddly emotive qualities that print does not, but these qualities do not necessarily mean that a painting holds any greater artistic merit then print.  

 Paint now forms an important part of my practice. Paint allows me to work with a sense of immediacy, to effect change in the instance it occurs to me and to create work that is as surprising to me as I might hope it to be for anyone else, but  I use it as just another tool for experimentation. 

For instance this series was based on a print, the stenciled image of the tree was taken directly from that series and a second print was made based on these paintings.

 I like the cyclical nature of working that way and for me if offers the greatest creative freedom, but I still consider myself a print artist primarily because of the processes inherent in my practice.

* I'd just like to point out that I am in no way inferring that these paintings should be compared or considered alongside any of the artists referenced, but rather this article outlines my thinking when they were produced.