THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 28TH APRIL 2021: DAY 395

19, 20, 21: The Self-Isolation Residency
Finding a reason to paint: Antony Clarkson
Dunoon Burgh Hall, 28th April - 16th May 2021.

19,20,21: The Self-Isolation Residency, Finding a reason to paint.
An Exhibition of work by Antony Clarkson

‘Personal Topographies, Dunoon Burgh Hall, 28th April to 16th May 2021’

‘2019 brought Covid 19 and 2020 brought isolation. The enforced remoteness that we have all faced is probably be the greatest test of our generation. In this exhibition Antony Clarkson has treated these challenges and tests as opportunities. During his isolation he began a radical re-evaluation of his work and practice which has led to a brand-new body of work for exhibition in 2021.’

In 2019 I was in the USA with my fiancée making new work based on the American landscape. However, come 2020 this all had to be curtailed when I was forced to return to Scotland by the Covid 19 pandemic, a situation which I erroneously believed would be over within a few months. During the flight back to Scotland I resolved that this enforced hiatus must be considered and appreciated as an opportunity rather than endured as a problem. Thus, I resolved that I should occupy this time of Self-Isolation with introspection regarding my creative practice; allowing me to explore my artistic motivations in the widest possible sense. Particularly regarding the ever-problematic subject of painting.

Via this moment of reflection it has been revealed to me how travel has become such an influence upon my practice and how being deprived of the opportunity to be with the people in my life, and to meet new people and have new experiences, is perhaps the biggest influence upon my current practice. This reflection also led to the revelation that during the decades travelling as an artist that I have accrued an internal geography of images and notions regarding people, places and experiences. Of things that I have seen and perhaps even other artists whose work I have encountered.

These musings have led onto the body of work being exhibited at Dunoon Burgh Hall which I refer to as ‘Personal Topographies’. Part of an ongoing series of paintings, they are appositely ‘suggestive’ of the idiom of landscape whist not being distinctly indicative of it. All paintings are illusions. Whatever we do as painters our work is ALWAYS abstract in that it is only a suggestion of ‘something’, a mediated illusion, rather than being the entity itself. These paintings are a way of demonstrating this stated illusion of ideas, places and histories as viewed through the lens of my critical thinking and my paint brush. They are an expressions of my psyche’s internal landscape. Although very personal paintings, I believe they have a wide appeal via their suggested familiarity to an audience which has shared a similar experience of remoteness during lockdown.

Part of this process has involved the documentation of this inner journey via the means of a daily blog, written primarily for myself, through which I consider all of my influences and motivations, both current and past, and the way that they inform my practice.
The Self-Isolation Residency blog is available @: https://www.antonyclarkson.com/blog