ScratchPad/Blog

The Necessary and Shameless Art of Cram Promotion

2010-03-09T23:20:51Z

This is just a quick update. I'm on my way to Barcelona for a group show with "untitled" BCN - more details and photos to come at some point soon. My sister, Buffy Cram, just had a story published in what looks like a delicious Canadian read. Check out the details at Douglas and McIntyre.

http://www.dmpibooks.com/book/darwin

Travel

2010-03-01T12:31:31Z

There is a flea market every Sunday in Mauer Park. It is, to the newly introduced, a spectacle to behold. I've been in regular attendance since my first snow-covered introduction. As it changes from ice, to slush, to mush, to green my spending increases. Cynically, it is an overpriced treasure hunt and yet I always feel better leaving with something bejeweled. Up on the sledding hill, there is a long wall that divides the stadium from the 'play-area'. In the spring sun the metallic graffiti shines, the entirety of the wall gets a bit weightless: a wicked golden brushstroke. Up close, the ornamentation of it becomes apparent, symbiotic even, a kind of tipped-up mirror to the parallel lines of brooch-covered tables below.

New Work

2010-02-21T13:14:43Z

Gathering is a new kind of image. It is the product of a long physical and theoretical investigation into the relationship between painting and photography and the distillation of this kind of haughty material into a simple gestural action. It is interaction rather than creation. This kind of image can only occur after months of studious painting, and with a trained hand and the blurred vision of strained eyes.

There is a friction here, as one medium forces its way into the other, and as the subject matter collides with my intentions for it. There is also a forced unity. Gathering, is where my polka dot obsession transformed into something else.

Gathering, Inkjet Print 21" x 31" 2009

New Work

2010-02-14T16:25:50Z

A photo is rarely enough for me. So far, the reasons for this are not exactly clear. The process of painting on photographs is one way to extend the possibilities of an image. Very simply, it increases my interest, and therefore, my obligation to create and/or interact.

Canary is a good example of this. As stand-alone subject matter, it was not enough, this image needed to be used to communicate something more delicate than death alone. I painted with the intention to revive the imagery slightly, and position it as a site of transformation. The beauty of it comes from the simultaneous presence and absence of its photographic and painterly qualities, and the fact that it can never be a canary.

The canary was used in warfare much like it was in coal mines: they were placed in tanks as an early warning to the presence of mustard gas. Because it is a painted photograph, this image is a record of my attempt at transformation, namely, the blatant insertion of beauty into the fray of death.

Canary, Oil on Inkjet Print, 40" x 27" 2009

Process

2010-02-07T14:06:26Z

This summer, in Victoria, I started a new job with a house painting company. Before lunch on the first day, I was already annoyed with myself. I'd found a dead bird in the woodpile on the less travelled side of the house and I wanted to take it home. If there's one thing I really despise, it's acting like a crazy artist, and it's worse when you're doing it on your first day at a new job, and then it's just gross when it involves dead animals.

I obsessed about it all night, and made a move at the end of my second day when no one was watching. The mummified carcass of a pileated woodpecker was sealed in my lunch bag faster than...uh... fast food; I scanned it under lab conditions that evening. As disgusted as I was with myself, I was captivated by the process. I just sat and watched the twenty minute scans, one after the other. One rarely sees nature this well preserved, and the combination of static nature and the slow analysis of technology was an open challenge to my painterly abilities.

New Work

2010-01-31T13:06:11Z

Of all the studio work in the past few months, this painting required the most attention. It needed to be nursed into being, and I observed myself with strictness and severity.

Meisterschüler is, for me, a lot of things rolled into one. It is a personal think-piece (a nod to further research), and an inside joke between me and my idol: sincerity and sarcasm combined. It also embodies the desires and fears I have regarding the current state of painting. The ceremony that accompanies death fascinates me, but the representation of such ceremony through the nostalgic lens of photography is even more interesting. Despite the subject matter, this is a living, breathing image when I'm standing in front of it, optically complex and almost confident.

Meisterschüler Oil on Canvas 36" x 60"

History of Polka Dots - part 3

2010-01-24T14:43:19Z

I am sick of polka dots.

It's been a yearlong obsession. I see them everywhere. I do things for them, because of them. It's madness!

This is the painting that started it all, a harmless little thing really - something to come down from the lions with. I more or less just made this for myself, and through the act of painting I had time to meditate on the way this pattern transfers a kind of infectious happiness on everything around it. That theory carried forward into some of the visual research begun in early 2009, and when faced with the brutal violence that my subject matter sometimes churns up, I found this 'screen of happiness' at the ready and began to use it.

The polka dots are a device and an obsession. At their best, they can be a means to transform meaning, and at their worst they become something to rely on when I'm stuck.

New Work

2010-01-19T11:00:30Z

This is the newest addition to the ongoing series, 24 Frames. The original pose was captured from a recent Sci-Fi film because of its position in the narrative. This is the moment where the protagonist becomes aware of his impending death, but also of the eradication of his perceived personal history. Deep stuff! I find the attempt at portraying such complexities admirable and laughable; painting such a moment implicates my process in the comedy.

I made a few adjustments to my working style through this painting. The space helmet was easily transformed into a polka dotted bonnet; this is the first time that the pattern has entered into this series of images. Also, the paint handling is much more gestural than normal. Both of these choices were intended to strip away some of the Hollywood sheen. It is also the first oil painting that has combined black and white and colour successfully. The bonnet (polka dots excluded) is painted in black and white and transitions to colour near his cheekbone. The tension created by this trick is something I intend to explore further.

I'm still thinking about the title...

Death and the Actor • Oil on Canvas 18" x 18" 2009

Old Studio/New Studio

2010-01-17T16:43:25Z

And now for something completely different...

There's a perfect snowfall outside my apartment window here in Berlin's Prenzlauerberg district. I'm pondering new directions for this blog, much as I'm beginning to think about new directions for my art production. This is certainly a different working space than the one I just came from. And the outside world is stimulating in every way imaginable. Walking in snowy Berlin is is definitely the cure for the art-induced blindness I experienced before I left Montreal, and it starts here with these art-less walls.

Studio notes - in closing

2010-01-14T17:39:05Z

The transition is over. Since my last post, I've finished and photographed the work, cleaned up, hosted a small open studio, and moved to Berlin. Life has been pretty sweet lately and continues to be. The final lesson in this three month chapter of art production came through the tremendous support that I've received from those around me. The open studio produced conversation, and it is through this medium that these most recent paintings have come to life.

In my last days in Montreal I managed to turn on my 'surveillance' camera a few times. What I captured was mostly random chaos, and the first parts of the opening. For the next little while things will be different, and the nature of this blog determines that it will somehow account for that.

Last Montreal from dylancram on Vimeo.