I've begun painting a series of pictures in the market, on the market, of the market.
I live in the Cotentin peninsular and there are more than 40 street markets spread throughout the area and week. They are where you can find the finest and best value local produce. During 'La Bataille D'Isigny' I also found the street market an invaluable means to present in person to the town population.
In English the word 'market' shifts from the street market, to the stock market to the idea of virtual transactional exchange effortlessly. On a painted sign above my market stall I painted a text In French that I'd translated from English poking at my purpose in the market. But I've found the definition of the word 'marché' in French is less transferable from the street to other. After my second market I adjusted the sign striking the text through with a golden line. But I have kept it because I believe it does still provoke thought into the playful conceptual space I want my 'on/in/of' market painting activity to stretch into.
Ca Marche? people say to me wondering if I'm selling anything but I immediately swing the question back to them asking them to judge the quality of the painting and the wider aesthetic exchange of my presence on and in the market...perhaps my art?
The first plein aire pictures I made were for Walkerloo. They were back drops for my portable paper soldier army on tour.
10 years later I painted views of my garden for my mothers birthday. They all now hang on her wall and she loves them.
Throughout the summer of 2021 making the picture 'Les Trois Ages du Dragon Baligan' I painted daily but when the project finished I missed the brush wiggling activity.
Since leaving University I've made most of my money painting houses. When I moved to France I did a weekly oil (but with acrylics!) painting course at the local art school. My first paper soldiers were coloured using marker pens which was at first straight forward but I found the fixed colour range restrictive and expensive! So I began to paint the soldiers with a set of gouache I'd bought for the painting course. Mixing new colours with paint and developing brush techniques to make convincing pictures feels magical.
Taking my goats onto the hillside one beautifully mild morning in December 2021 I decided to get my paints and join them beneath the bright blue sky. I posted the painting on the Instagram account I'd begun using after a visitor's suggestion during my Dielette studio.
Over the next few months I began making a couple of outdoor paintings a week spending 5 or 6 hours in the lanes and fields around my home in still concentration was wonderful.
In the Spring of 2022 scoping properties for my Isigny mission I decided to paint my chosen location. Over the 5 months of "Au Monstre D'Isigny" as a means of engagement with the town and it's people I made over 50 plein aire paintings.
Returning from Isigny I continued to go out and paint a couple of times a week.
Painting outside is wonderful. You have to be quick if you want to catch a particular scene. Especially if the suns out. I've lived next to the sea for more than 20 years but until then I'd never tried to paint it.
I met Jean-Francois Perron whilst painting on the street next to a bakers in Isigny-sur-mer. I'd been asked if I could paint that particular location so the picture could be a surprise birthday present. It was the second of two 'birthday surprise' commissions in my 'capturing' Isigny series of paintings. JF was buying bread but had heard about me from a painter living in Isigny.
We arranged to meet that afternoon in my 'Au monstre D'isigny' space. After we had talked he decided he would like to return and film an interview the next week.
Jean-Francois posted the hour long interview, which was in French, unedited, to his YouTube channel in 3 parts soon after.
On the third afternoon filming in Isigny, shooting the movies finale I was dressed for mythic battle as myTHself Trinity. Man-Camera-Martain and I had become familiar with neighbouring locals who'd mused at our antics on previous occasions. 90 mins in to the shoot we were stopped abruptly by order of Gendarmerie called out by a hairdresser who'd been alarmed by a scene he didn't understand from further up the highstreet. The police insisted we pack up and leave town.
Following this incident I felt I needed another different and better interaction with Isigny-Sur-Mer which had become a bigger part in my story.
How should I 'meet' the town better?
I began (post covid January 2022) with a formal appointment to meet the mayor and introduce myTHself. I showed and explained my pictures and why one of my projects had become specific to his town. In February and March I viewed potential properties for a base of operations in the town. I initially thought to return to the location of the film in the East of the town by the bridge. But then I saw a suitable property on a wide place at the Western end of the high-street opposite a church, the church of St.George, St.George who fought the dragon.
I hadn't known the main stone towered church of the town was St. George's but St.George's symbol was already a significant part of 'myTHself Trinity' identity. The structure for his map wings emblazoned across my back was a red cross. The poetry of coincidence is sign to story for myTHself.
I'm half way through my high-street shop occupation-studio-installation-headquarters-forward operating-base-residency in Isigny-Sur-Mer, 'Au Monstre D'Isigny'.
This is the text explanation of the project inside the window:
You and I find myTHself in Isigny as part of a strange odyssey. I used to think I make pictures, but it might be they make me. As a child I loved to escape into drawing pictures of battles and soldiers. They remain dominant in my pictures. In 2008 I painted an army of paper soldiers... I pretended to be each one of them in my garden a spade for gun, a dustbin for a horse. I imagined them a business and eventually, employing a factory in Chatillon-sur-Seine made an army that could play battle on floors around the world... oh, but of course this space was taken… since Star Wars the link between plastic toys and movies and tv has been solid. The power of cinema and TV to propel toys around the world is awesome. But if toy soldiers are good at anything it's pretend play battle...
When I began my play war with the plastic toys there were several large movie producers making action toys: Marvel superheroes, Pixar and Lucas Art but one company went on to buy out all three of those major studios.
One day driving in Cherbourg I heard on France Bleu the story of Hugues Suhard, or Hugues d'Isigny, a soldier in the Norman conquest of England, and discovered the link between Isigny and the multi mega media corporation his descendent had founded.
Over three weekends in 2018 I made a short guerrilla film around the quay in Isigny recalling this story... but I felt uncomfortable featuring Isigny as an extra without presenting my work to the town. Then covid. In January 2022 I had a meeting with the mayor introducing my project and on June 14th signed an agreement to rent this shop... Last summer I arranged to work in public for the first time on a large painting about and near where I live (see Ouest France article below).
Making pictures in an attic studio is very different to making pictures on a high street; I've never done it before... it’s an experiment... I may make mistakes - please forgive me. I hope making pictures in public will make them better, with your help. I'm not paid to be here. I have no art funding. I make my money working on building sites and from the house I built and rent out near Flamanville. I don't do this for fun. I do it for meaning.
I hope and believe in art, but I still can't be sure it exists. I'm originally from the northeast of England, the son of a coal miner. I never encountered 'art' until I left home for university at 18. If art exists, it is not politics, business or religion but a poetic reflection. If I am making art, I hope that it is enlightening, powerful, humorous, and meaningful, perhaps even beautiful. I hope I can make this art better here, in this high street. High Street Art.
Beneath the texts are QR links to three short films...
I've also chopped together this short (2min) film as a video glimpse and promo short from footage taken over the first two months in Isigny.
Prompted by a mild sunny morning in December 2021 I'd been regularly making landscape paintings 'en plein air'. I decided this could be my base painting activity in Isigny-Sur-Mer. Painting the town - capturing the town in paint would get me working out on the street an express tactic to help me engage the towns folk with my pictures. Painting on the streets has me vulnerable and approachable. It also lands anyone passing a valid critical position over my actual picture making activity.
I began painting on the Isigny streets early in the morning. I paint on my knees, it enables me to work with a straight back. The church accidently became the first object my paintings revolved around. Whilst making the second painting an old lady joked that I seemed to be saying my prayers in the street... before the church... hmmm. Her comment was on point. Cars were also unavoidably omnipresent in the paintings. The town reflected in their shiny, curvaceous, desirous forms. Later the milk factory and the bridge also became two other reference points in choosing painting locations.
After finishing the paintings I put them in the gallery window for sale. I usually take between 2 and 3 hours to make a painting. I wanted to price them so almost anyone could stretch to afford one. I settled on 80€ as the price. I've only sold one so far although another three as 'reserved'.
The other main picture painting activity I've now completed. It was the large painted panel for the shop front. It reads (not too easily) 'Au Monstre D'Isigny. I came up with the title with the help of friends... cos I was beginning to feel more than a little monstrous myTHself in my operations against the beast...
On June 1st 2023 I arrived in Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone to be 'arty' crew on a sailing boat that was to voyage back to Normandy. I ...
