I’ve been thinking lately about woods and meadows and the edges of lakes, places of importance in my own personal mythology that feed into my artwork. So far in my Acid Renaissance series these places have only manifested at a distance, distilled into human figures as genii locorum, spirits of places, emerging from, but isolated by, the darkness.
Thanks to some very gratefully received help, plans are now afoot to place these spirits back in their landscapes, with photographs taken in situ. This will raise plenty of artistic and technical challenges, losing the absolute control of a studio environment and having to work with natural light — not to mention, from the model’s perspective, that it can obviously get a bit chilly outside in the English countryside — but I think these problems can be overcome and anyway I like a challenge because challenges tend to push my artwork onwards. There is still more planning to be done and permissions to be sought before I can reveal more details, but I am hoping that we can proceed with this new phase in late October or early November.
I’ve started to think about the Acid Renaissance pieces so far as Act I, and these new planned outdoor pieces will become the start of Act II. There are still a few Act I pieces left to do (more drawings and photographs are planned for tomorrow), and the change from one to the other will not necessarily be clean and clearcut.