Mount Emei: 峨眉山: New Paintings, New Thoughts

Shapes of colour and lines weaving, touching, forming in, behind, in front of one another. I've been working from sketches that I did during my stay at Mount Emei (峨眉山); responding to their notations intuitively and combining sewn elements with paint and paper.

Packets of gouache are 40p here, and come in an incredible range of colours. Gouache has a rich velvetiness to it, appropriate for an increasingly textured surface alongside threads and holes poking out of the paper. 

Sometimes it seems we're quick to associate anything sewn or embroidered with the feminine, as an overtly feminine act, with its history and traditions normally linked to the activities of women. I see sewing more and more as a means to cross boundaries between two and three dimensions. It’s a method which allows me to set blocks of colour next to each other or on top of each other in relief.

I'm intrigued as to how we perceive, make equivalents, match, coordinate and organise what we see in front of us. It seems to me that what we tend to notice, pay attention to and respond to in terms of scale and size depends on our emotional relationship to it. Our eyes automatically tend to veer towards what intrigues or alarms us, perhaps what we are lacking, craving or appreciative of. Continual moments of interest shifting across our ever-changing landscape.

 

Outside Huxi Studios, Chongqing mountains in the distance

Outside my studio, folks motorbike along pedestrianised streets beeping people out the way, children seem able to just piss anywhere and everywhere, and there is just no concept of noise pollution whatsoever. Shops, cafes and restaurants will all blare out different music at top volume alongside its neighbour, resulting in an unbearable, incoherent cacophony as you pass along the streets. I swear the music gets louder and louder with each week. Even the University radio gets played boomed throughout the campus loudspeakers every lunchtime and evening for 20 minutes. I wonder if anyone is genuinely listening.  

 

Assimilating all these phenomena must entangle itself up in my work. I’m unconcerned about what is the right or wrong colour to put next to one another, I give myself colour problems to solve instead. What is the right equation of tone, line, colour in order to achieve a harmonious balance between all the elements? How much pattern is too much pattern, if there is such a thing, and how can I make these pieces comfortably inharmonious?