Tuesday 10 December 2013

Shakadang & More


Today I'm posting a few pages from my sketchbooks.

Well, are they really sketchbooks? I don't know what to call them. I've created a few books like these over the years. They start off as a mix of sketchbook and travel journal. Soon enough, my drawings are covered over with mementos and my mementos are covered in paint. There's a fair amount of regular old journal in there, too. I don't keep a regular diary. I only have the urge to start one when I feel the need to write a particularly emotional entry. After I've gotten that out of my system I don't really feel the need to record my day to day life, and six months or so I return to the diary to find it woefully empty.

So, books like these have become my diary. It's half art, half writing, and hopefully, fully unified. 

I refuse to use the word scrapbook. Ugh. 




I made these pages after returning from the Shakadang trail in Taroko Gorge in northern Taiwan. It was a treat. 

Back to the sketchbook. Please note that Jesus makes a cameo on the left page.

I became interested in the idea of ghosts that are really just shapeless blobs, and here I'm exploring that idea. Blobs: how scary are they? 

This afterwards became a recurring theme in my work and I'm still not sure if it's a positive development. 




This pages features some ladies done with my (then) brand new water colour pencils. The feathers are paper and they were purchased from one of Taiwan's fantastic stationary stores. They're collaged over top, and let me tell you - they bled like crazy. 

I got the Francis Bacon postcard from a really excellent art show. Whenever I see this I think of the quotation below the picture, from Frankie himself: "I paint in order to be loved."And then I think of my friend Jason's response: "I don't think that really worked out for him."

If you're confused about why that's hilarious, please check out this pants-shittingly amazing and horrific Francis Bacon original here.  





These are some pages where I really went to town with the writing. I was trying to figure out the answer to a quandry I had and still have. What should you pay the most attention to when doing art: whether it looks aesthetically pleasing, or whether it's true to a certain ideal, no matter how conventionally ugly that ideal might be? In other words, is it worth following an aesthetic that might at first elicit a negative response? Does such a thing make sense within the confines of art that isn't conceptual at core; art that's aesthetic in its…morals, I guess you would say. You already know that I'm a big Francis Bacon fan, so that might be your answer right there; Bacon's work is exceedingly pretty, even while it's horrifying to the extreme.

Tyra Banks might call it "ugly-pretty." I've called it "truth or beauty?" which is a slightly more pretentious road to take.

I hope to get more examples from my books up on here. A complete book from front to finish - maybe one where you could even turn the pages - would be my goal.