making marks

It starts here, with this piece of work by Helen Booth.

I’ve come across Helen’s work before and looked at it closely and wonderingly. I love it, and yet I’m not totally sure why. When it comes to art, I’m usually drawn to vivid colour, flowers, people, domesticity, buildings, energy, wit. Yet I also find the obverse immensely appealing. Like this apparently very simple, two-colour painting which is actually beautiful, intriguing, and complex. I’m not sure, though, that I would have appreciated it when I was younger, but it’s made me think about the other examples of similarly patterned, abstract art I like more as I get older, and it’s forced me to explain to myself why I particularly like spots and dots and circles so much.

[Untitled (2018) by Cornelia Parker on a window in Helen Ede’s bedroom in Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge]

For example, these dabs or ‘veil of marks’ made with chalk from the white cliffs of Dover which resemble a semi-permanent net curtain or voile at a window. They alter the view and the quality of light in what is already a deliberately ascetic room. As they are on the outside, presumably they will, like the cliffs and all of us, erode with time. They would make for a very contemplative morning cup of tea in bed. (Unless, of course, I could not banish thoughts of the political angle of Cornelia Parker’s chalk marks. Brexit and breakfast in bed do not go well together.)

[Lino print on cotton fabric c1933 by Ben Nicholson]

Unfortunately, the ‘veil of marks’ description on the Kettle’s Yard website gives rise to the sense of unease I get when people in art circles, workshops, and classrooms talk about 'mark-making’. I am not being deliberately obtuse here, because I am often genuinely unsure what they mean. The phrase ‘gestural mark’ confuses me even more. I once went to an embroidery course where the tutor kept talking about ‘the gesture’ and I imagined I had to swoop up and down dramatically with my needle and thread in order to make my ‘work’ meaningful. I know, I know, I should have asked but he’d already lost me.

[Camber Dress made with Indigo Moon fabric]

And yet. If someone had talked about mark-making when I was at school and a lot more malleable, and explained that art need not be all about perspective, representation, and the colour wheel, but could in fact be about painting, drawing, printing, sculpting simple shapes and patterns using all sorts of materials and media, it would have been incredibly liberating and enjoyable. How freeing to think it’s fine to be like cave painters and the Bloomsbury set: uninhibited, expressive, and as controlled or a wild as you like.

Getting schoolchildren to paint an ensō would be an excellent teaching method as it embodies both freedom and control. It’s a circle created with just one brushstroke (sometimes two) using a thick, soft brush and gorgeously black calligraphy ink on thin, strong Japanese paper. No corrections can be made, so in this case the actual physical gesture, the movement, has to be right. This requires the discipline of practice (no “my three year old could do that” comments allowed) and an amount of Zen-type preparation (a deep breath is probably not enough). I’ve not tried it, but would love to, although I can imagine a huge pile of discarded blobs on washi paper covered in more tears than ink and a very un-Zen lack of calm.

[‘Circle Offset’ (2021) by Richard McVetis]

Instead of making pupils stitch pyjama shorts and pump bags which will never be used, why not encourage them - boys as well - to see what they can do with ultra-simple stitches, maybe running stitches or perhaps filling spaces and circles with tiny, tiny seed stitches like Richard McVetis. What I very much like about these minute dots is that they create a uneven edge to a circle which is just about held in by the tension of this meniscus of stitches. Even though they are created by the same hand, they are all unique and very different to machine made stitches.

All these marks are so very different to the famous but lifeless, sterile spot paintings by Damien Hirst (or more correctly his assistants such as Lauren Child who coloured them in for £5 an hour) precisely because every single one is done by the same hand. It’s the very simplicity, immediacy, imperfection, naturalness, and slight irregularity in the marks I like. In fact, it’s a sense of quiet that appeals so much. I don’t have the quietest nature, I’m not terribly meditative (the word ‘mindfulness’ induces the opposite reaction), but looking at these works is like being in a large, white bath in a big, clean bathroom, and just being and contemplating space, light, and whiteness. All very cleansing, in more ways than one.

[Two Forms (Divided Circles) (1969) by Barbara Hepworth]

So I see no contradiction in appreciating Dutch flower paintings, David Hockney, Matisse, and Monet, but also the circles and holes with their many potential meanings in Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures,

[Eduardo Chillida]

or the work of Eduardo Chillida. A few years ago, a friend sent a postcard of one of Chillida’s iron sculptures and recommended a visit to Chillida Leku near Bilbao. It is wonderful, like a Basque version of the Henry Moore Studio & Gardens (whose work appeals far less) and it’s a beautiful setting for a combination of the simple and the monumental. Chillida also created many small works using thick wool felt and closed/unclosed circles, making all sorts of connections - if you wish to look for them.

This is another aspect of this sort of abstract art and marks - they are not bossy, shouty, didactic, assertive. Instead they can be read in so many different ways; Helen Booth’s painting could be an aerial field landscape, snowballs on a frozen lake, a cold climate version of Aboriginal art.

And of course, it doesn’t just have to be monochrome.

[one of the Last Conversations’ series by Jennifer Durrant]

For years I’ve had a greetings card with a spotty, dotty painting by Jennifer Durrant which I bring out whenever I’m looking for quilt and colour inspiration. I could happily have a wall of these paintings which resemble strips of painted fabric or woven ribbons created in such a loose, free way that it’s impossible not to smile. Those lovely, hand-painted, irregular, sometimes joined-up, marks, dots, circles all seem to represent fleeting moments of artistic joy.

[‘Dark Evening’ (2011) by Howard Hodgkin]

Similarly, Howard Hodgkin’s mass of colourful dots and dabs can look totally spontaneous, but he often spent years working on a painting so that some of his work is layered, heavy, and freighted with meaning from titles and critics’ analyses. I like this one, though, with its suggestions of rain, storms, thunder, sand, sea, and ever-changing light.

[Sign 2021-24 by Lubna Chowdhary]

I’m also drawn to circles and marks made by a process which freezes them in a moment of change and dynamism. Lubna Chowdhary’s ceramics and tiles are spectacularly rich and deep. When you look really closely at the outside edges of the circles they are like mini-planets, uneven, burning, alive. There’s currently an exhibition of Lubna’s work in Sheffield, and anyone catching a bus or train in Slough can see the brilliant Lantern Tower. Worth a detour, despite John Betjeman’s damning words about the town where we lived for a couple of years.

Similarly, Tirzah Ravilious and Charlotte Bawden experimented with paper marbling and devised their own process to produce unique results (described in Long Live Great Bardfield). Usually when marbling, ink is dropped onto the surface of the liquid and it quickly spreads into circles which are then combed through and turned into the traditional patterns. Tirzah and Charlotte didn’t always break into these circular motifs but transferred them to paper just as they were in the act of outward motion, looking delicately alive and wobbly but rendered permanent.

[John Lennon, rocking spots in 1966]

It’s also possible to go all metaphorical about mark-making and how art, people’s creativity, marks and their exuberant/thoughtful self-expression leave a mark on others. I adore this photo: John Lennon’s brilliantly non-Establishment look with his polka dot shirt, long hair, dark glasses - and an incongruously wholesome glass of milk. What a mark he made.

Happy Sunday!