THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 10th FEBRUARY 2021: DAY 318

New work in progress. Working title: "Found landscape."
Oil paint on plywood block, 150 x 150 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 10th February 2021.
Part 27: 'Interpretation, abstraction, illusion.
An Unsettling Appeal: Insearch of the Sublime.

I turn at this point to a consideration of my own current work, how it is evolving and what in what way is it functioning? If I am to be considered to be the own guinea pig of my own social experiment, as an artist, I have to remain constantly aware of how I am both affected by my circumstances and also how I express these effects through my art work during the isolation lockdown? If I review all of the work which I have created during this period I find that there is a wide catalogue of subjects and styles; I have experimented with self-portraiture and still-life work as well as with landscape, mainly although not exclusively, through the medium oil painting.
 
Part of me wonders sometimes if the idea of the self-portrait or even the still-life might not be a more relevant way to consider where my psyche is during this time? Surely, a self-portrait involves such a self-reflective baring of the soul, that it should be an ideal subject for exploration during these circumstances? By the same rule, an examination of the items which I chose to surround myself with, and particularly those which I regularly interact with during my isolation, should throw a revealing light upon but my character and how it is dealing with the current situation?  So why has landscape, albeit in its most abstract form, have become the area I find myself expressing myself in most comprehensively?
Perhaps because in their abstractions these paintings are landscapes of my mind?

To be continued...