There is a fundamental problem with explaining your work to people in most contexts. The meaning you give in the particular moment would be a different meaning in any another. I think I mean I’m still struggling with the idea of praxis because it seems that the recognition of it is contingent.
In any case I am just about to complete another CAA course, this one a four week ‘crit’ course with David Risley that has been particularly challenging because of the need to explain. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to explain. The ‘crit’ itself moves the work into the realm of spoken or written language rather than the visual and that makes the work lesser in some manner.
Notes on Woolgathering December 25
After a 1 to 1 talk with David Risley I made some notes about the way I might make ‘woolgathering’ more closely fit with the things I suggested about what I wanted it to say. Then I spent time putting that into practice and made a new video.
But I’m reluctant to talk about the work before or during the video, I think it needs to be seen first?
The most upsetting thing about this was that I really wanted to use this crit process to sort out the direction I wanted to take the birds in and I haven’t really talked about them at all.
Studio 01 12 2025
I started the month like this. This is the studio on the day of the 1 to 1, which lasted about fifteen minutes.
Pigeons 5/12/25
I made this drawing between the 3rd and the 5th December.
Rooks 08/12/25
Then made this one on the 8th December. I managed to stretch the large sheets I made form cartridge and wallpaper paste so while the other two sheets were drying I made some other drawings.
Two Pigeons 10/12/25
This one of two pigeons and the next one of the left hand pigeon.
Single Pigeon 12/12/25
I also went along to ‘The Little Anarchist Bookshop‘ at ArtBomb where Terry Hudson is presenting an installation of his ethical woodland festival based workshops. Not entirely sure what I think about it but admire the motivation.
November has been all about birds and trees, mostly birds, mixed in with a lot of preparation for Open Studios on the last weekend of the month. After thinking about birds and trees last month I started to draw birds.
‘Scattering’ (geese) 10/11/25
This drawing of geese seemed the appropriate way to complete the first of the big drawings I laid backgrounds for in the last week. I made myself four large sheets for drawing, each made by using three A1 sheets of cartridge and using wallpaper paste to stick them together.
‘Jackdaw’ 14/11/25
I used these to make four drawings, starting with this one of a jackdaw.
‘Gull’ 12/11/25
Moving on to the seagull,
‘Pigeons’ (after Milton Avery) 12/11/25
While also working on the second, darker, sheet stretched last week to draw pigeons.
‘Rooks’ 14/11/25
‘Gulls’ 17/11/25
Then I a made the crows and the seagulls. I gave them a kind of order but in reality they tend tom get worked on concurrently and ordered according to completion rather than the beginning. The pigeons reference Milton Avery’s ‘Paris Pigeons’ from 1955.
I deliberately made these sheets to have a rough texture, it works better for some drawings than others, that gives the impression of the sky or of the breeze.
‘Dark Crows’ 19/11/25
I made two small drawings of crows above trees while I was thinking of rookeries and realising that my crow drawings are actually rooks.
‘Light Crows’ 19/11/25
It’s the splayed wing-tips!
‘a murder’ 19/11/25
This led to the big drawing ‘a murder’ with the birds rendered as gestural shapes against the yellowing sky.
‘Crows in flight’ 24/11/25
I made some black shapes from offcuts of styrofoam to mount and give the idea of rooks flying together.
I had a visit from some rooks, I assume, on the 25th November. We usually get one or two rooks or crows in the garden but this is the most I have seen at any one time. Maybe that’s what you get for thinking about birds and trees.
‘Crows in flight’ 11/25 detail
These are to be mounted above head height.
Studio 26/11/25 ‘the difference between birds and trees’ and ‘Crows in flight’
Then presented in conjunction with ‘the difference between birds and trees’.
Open Studio 29/11/25
Open Studio 29/11/25
Open Studio 29/11/25
These images are from the open weekend, 29th and 30th November. There were fewer visitors than last time, Saturday was miserable and rained all day. Sunday was better and I got a tentative sale and an offer of an exhibition next year.
More crows in flight 30/11/25
I did some drawing on both days, the small ones in response to requests for smaller works to buy. My intention was to separate them for framing but the birds seem to work well together.
“That property in land and liberty among men, in a state of nature, ought to be equal, few, one would fain hope, would be foolish enough to deny. Therefore, taking this to be granted, the country of any people, in a native state, is properly their common, in which each of them has an equal property, with free liberty to sustain himself and connections with the animals, fruits and other products thereof.“
All of the work I’ve been doing over the last few years has drawn me towards questions around the nature of property and possession of land in all of its aspects. There is a strong case to be made for the nature of our relationship with land to have been formed through the application of the Inclosure Act of 1773 and the establishment development of Landscape Gardening that created the bucolic ideal we reference in our current defences of the naturalness of vistas that are entirely man made.
Somehow this thinking has led me to make a series of works that culminate in a way that I can only explain by outlining the process and identifying the influences that are inevitably applied at different stages of making.
You should always look down on a circus (maquettes)
In 2002 or 2003 I made a set of small maquettes, like these that I reproduced in 2021 but that might have looked a bit more like these.
Sketchbook pages from 2002/2003
From these wax maquettes I made two drawings, first this one
You should always look down a circus (drawing 2003)
And then this one
you should always look down on a circus (spaced)
I made these on Fabriano Accademia 200gsm Cartridge Paper, stretched to a big drawing board leaning against the sideboard in my living room. Which says nothing other than that we can’t always have easels or afford studios.
Moving on, life intervenes, work gets intense, other drawings inveigle themselves into your consciousness and drag you off with their peculiar indulgences. But at the back of your mind you know that this moment of oddness is part of something that hasn’t surfaced yet.
In March 2020 I managed to move my kit out of the empty shop just before the Announcement.
Waste Ground
The following month I decided to clear and plant a patch of waste ground that I thought was unadopted rather than anyone’s property, at the back of the garden and that was where the next project began.
Patch dug over
This is the point where I started to think more deeply about my relationship with property and the notion of ownership of the natural world.
This first began to manifest itself through drawings
Balby Garden, April 2020
Made on site initially and developed in sketchbooks and small maquettes…
casting stones
Balby Garden Sculpture June 2020
I made a series of Garden Sculptures using casts from stones found in my pseudo allotment and using gold leaf and oil paints.
The quotations used as titles for the pieces are mostly from TS Eliot apart from “Fiction is not imagination” which is from Baudrillard’s ‘America’.
I had become concerned with the translation of sources from one media to another with the geranium project (the ACE Project) and it continues to be at the core of the work I do. Translation might not be the most precise word to use but addresses the primary motivation for the activity I engage in. The way I express myself is through the objects and drawings I make and they carry all the varieties of conversation, discourse, polemic, broadside, joking etc.,
One year later, March 2021, I dreamt about the circus drawings and then made a whole series of new drawings and new, simpler, maquettes.
You should always look down on a circus remade
New Circus Maquettes
These figures related to the garden sculptures and to the forms I was seeing in the garden, and imagining into the virtual space.
I gradually began to merge the figures into new sets of drawings. I should indicate here that I work on sets of drawings simultaneously and carry marks and textures and colours and patterns across the set as it evolves. The process involves copying, mono-printing, overlaying and waiting for surfaces to dry and can involve collage, usually of the drawings themselves as I search for the form to emerge.
Circus Drawings 2 of 4
I spent the next year working on a series based around tori (toruses) that is currently sitting in abeyance.
C-View Studio 2023
In May 2023 I moved into my studio at C-View.
Red Garden Three 2023
In October I returned to the garden to start working on the Red Garden Series of drawings and sculptures.
Three Trees, Red Gardens, in progress
These figures were based on forms of trees in the garden and the strangeness of the red films.
I spent several moths working on iterations of these sculptures using anything I had to hand.
Three Trees Half Size
Dancing Partners
Studio 30/05/2024
Having the space in the studio was what enabled me to build out into the garden, does that make sense? Perhaps it should be to build in from the garden.
All the time transferring these objects into the VR environment by scanning into Poly.cam and importing those objects into Blender, then to Unity.
Studio 03/07/24
Towards the end of the year I started to extend the world of the garden in VR and decided I needed to be able to play with scale in the developing environment. I had at this point been led to read much more about enclosure and how tied in to British Politics it was in the 17th Century alongside the development of landscape gardens and the engineering of what we now regard as the countryside.
Flowerbed October 2024
The flowerbed drawings and sculptures came along at this point.
Flowerbed Sculpture 2024
You Should Always Look down on a Circus 2025
The sculptures from 2003 have been made at full size now and the VR world is all there, although there are still some refinements to do including sound issues and perhaps the start position.
Drawing
I’ve continued to draw every day;
The July drawings can be seen here
Draw Every Day – July 25
Draw Every Day - July 25
Continuing to draw every day, finished Book 22 on 16th July and ...
