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...
