A nice day in the Macc Art Lounge today. I literally awoke before dawn, crisped though the hard frost to the shuddering bus to Macclesfield, arriving at the art lounge shortly after 10, with enough time to open the shop, warm the gallery and prepare for the day. We had a trickle of visitors 20 or 30 before noon, then Ché arrived, soon followed by Bruce Lyons and illustrator Michelle Shore who I'd not met before.
A minor crisis hit in the afternoon when the upper floor was flooded by 2 or 3 litres of water, but a stop-cock and a wet hoover later, and all was restored, albeit damply. I was reminded that personalities are best tested in difficult times, and the already social lounge became more-so when our little team was faced with this small emergency.
I left at 3 and heard that I'd sold a painting, my second sale of this exhibition.
I painted Domination of the Fishes in 2007, and the composition was partly an extension of my 'symphonic painting' idea as used in The Migraine Tree. A single 'theme', a shape, in this case a fish shape, is used and reused in different ways around the picture, to create something like unity in variety.
To take this idea to a next level, I tried (and try) to work out where the viewer first looks at the picture, to see the first fish. This is the start of the story, the next fish is the next line, and so on. Here, the fish starts in the sky; swimming? Then we see the desert landscape below, dry and cracked, and other fish and parts of fish. The sea is dry then. Watery tentacles and other sea-like objects crawl over the strange 'mountains' on the right, and a looming figure has a fish-shaped hole. This is something like the memory of a fish, or its loss. The figure seems to be casting a spell; the title indicates its something like a King Canute figure, dominating, or trying to control, the seas... at what cost? There are other fish parts too. Overall the feeling is somewhat sad, of loss, the loss of something.
Of course, there is more to the painting than this, and even many of my ideas here are speculations. I don't plan the thoughts or feelings of an artwork first - that would be impossible. The point of an artwork is that it can only share its meaning with the viewer (or listener) in itself. It can't be explained. We know instantly and instinctively what a good artwork 'is about' but we can't say it in any way. That information can only be gleaned by looking at the artwork. We can speculate, or gain clues, or make headway in interpretation, meaning, context - but only seeing/hearing/reading/feeling an artwork really conveys it, and it does it instantly and effortlessly.
Unfortunately and annoyingly, from about 2:30 I've been in awful stomach pain, like trapped wind. This is horrible and unusual, and notable because I hardly ever have trapped wind, and also that I had this pain on Sunday after my strange illness. With fate's grace it will pass.
