About

ICHNOFAUN works in mixed media using combinations of paint, photography and digital art.

Ichno: Tracks, traces, footprints

I am currently working on a project funded by Creative Scotland to explore the creative potential of Scottish wetland landscapes - see the project site.

I am also a curator, creative director, producer and musician - I have worked across numerous projects/festivals across a wide range of art forms - see project portfolio site.

ABOUT MY VISUAL ART

“I aim to capture the essence of imagined or real scenes, as well as an element of my own reaction to them. Breakthroughs and breakdowns. Good times, difficult times, relationships, life changes, moods, moments, aspirations - all captured, privately – in a special relationship between the subject, the artwork and myself.

I am obsessed with layers, transparency, solidity and outline. Light and water; the still and the moving; the very smooth and the very rough and the transition from one to the other. Human forms and human entanglement; emotionally, physically, psychologically. Interconnectedness. Minds as organic and spiritual devices. The human as an organism; a pulsating moving thing full of liquid. Sediments, flows and residues.

Nature - its textures and its stories. Smooth banded pebbles, rough bark, weathered driftwood, tidal rock pools, limestone and chalk moulded over millennia. Layers offer a multitude of mysterious artistic gateways to transform and interpret, to magnify, exclude and reveal.

In my work I attempt to capture something in a way that is beautiful, moving or striking. In making the translation from real into abstract and exploring the spaces in between, I work into the materials an element of myself as the artist; an element of the time, mood and place in which the work is created.

Like many small children I was fascinated with animals, birds, insects, fish, amphibians and reptiles. My interests evolved into a wider appreciation of all things natural; plants and trees - leaves, bark, moss, lichen, seed pods - and those responsible for their decay - fungi and mould. Geological forms too find their way into my work - rocks, cliffs, caves, outcrops. I believe all of these things have an intrinsic beauty and energy which can be drawn upon to create a painting. Erosion and seasonal change add further beauty to natural forms.

I have found inspiration in the darkness of the man-made and urban. An outlet for my disappointment in humanity. Its darkness. Dirt and brokenness. Things both beautiful and wretched. Ruin, degradation, husks. Skins shed. Fleeting moments. Mental and physical battles, synergies and withdrawal. The reclamation of man and the man-made by nature. Oxidation, weathering, rust. Corrosion of the mind.

I’m fascinated by the relationship between movement and stillness. The ability to freeze movement in something completely still. The textures of urban surfaces and ancient walls. An embedded history in an artwork. Everything is moving. Pace. The pace of the mind. The continual whirring. What about peace?

Life in layers.

Life in enclosures.

Gateways. Crossroads.

As a child, I would spend long car journeys chasing raindrops down the inside of the window; my finger separated from the wet by a thin pane of glass. The car would speed along country lanes flanked by fields, trees and hills and the droplets would swim across the glass like miniature tadpoles, their trails like tiny fading shooting stars. Each sparkling droplet reflected a tiny distorted microcosm of the world outside and as each one ran away so too did my memory of it. The fate of any tiny travelling droplet would be dictated by elements of pure chance; a unique combination of water, wind, speed, pressure, interference. Worlds channelled into a thousand glistening streams.

Experimentation makes an artist. Creativity in method.

An artist has the benefit of versatility. A successful work of art is the product of process and personality, and the balance between the two is very difficult to strike. Many (most?) of my works are destroyed before completion.

Too many layers? Transparent or opaque? Buried or exposed? Glimpsed. Cut into. Sliced open. Torn. Wounded. Exaggerated and distorted. Solidity and blur. Interpretation. Though every application of the medium is a choice, I do not always have conscious control over that choice. I will often re-work a piece several times before I find success or admit failure. I still dabble with “finished” pieces. What is “finished”? There is a performative element to painting.

I use many different media to transcend the flatness traditionally associated with painting. There is a contrast between delicacy and violence in how media are applied. And removed. I am not restricted in my choice - whatever method presents itself to me as an appropriate way to convey light, dark, transparency and texture. Dripped, dropped, poured. Industrial and everyday materials. Acrylics, inks, enamels, glass paints, plaster, wax, multiple photos both manual and digital, projection, cement, grit. I use whatever tools come to hand; brushes, sponges, card, knifes, burlap and rags. Rubbing, wiping, drying, scraping and rolling. Syringes. Build, strip, melt and re-build. Accumulated and compacted by chance. Pressure. As layers are removed, earlier moments from the painting’s creation are allowed to resurface. Rebirth. Forms may come alive or may be sealed within the layers. Some are never revealed again. The viewer may be trusted to receive a glimpse of something. They may brutalise it. They may turn it into something they fear. Unconventional portraits, figures and scenes. Changing something can be a gradual process like a glacier acting on rock over millennia, or it can be harsh and unforgiving process - a chainsaw exposing the rings of a tree or cutting off a limb. Cutting off things you love. Being cut off. The self-sabotage of the mind. The umbilical cord that never leaves us.

Simple forms and thick strong lines. Fragile forms in a sea of violent and expressive brushstrokes. The intrusion of hard shapes into softer areas. A reflection on grief? Something lost?

My works generally show the figurative filtered through memory and through interaction with the memory during painting. Thus the work usually evolves and grows in an organic way, sometimes over many weeks or months. The first drops, dots and dashes provide a context for further spots and strokes which eventually increase in number like multiplying microbes. The whole board eventually becomes filled with tiny shapes which are painted over, rubbed, scraped and dissolved away and re-painted in a process of layering. The length of time to create a painting is often indicated by the number of layers in the final piece - though this doesn’t account for those which have been rubbed away almost completely and those which can no longer be seen.

Art is an escape tunnel that never ends. A plant forever growing towards the changing light.”