“Reverie and other works” by Stephen Boyd Davis
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These pieces of work are as much an enquiry into the medium itself a they are a use of a medium to explore external ideas. I must confess to some disappointment at much that comes from computer paint systems. In many cases surface qualities seem to become emphasized at the expense of structure, and the medium seems to impose its own dead hand on the character of the work.
In many ways, with my background in textile and surface design, I felt particularly endangered by this tendency. I also sensed that it would become all too easy for me to begin ’embroidering’ the work with distracting elements, or with equally distracting fine adjustments to such a point that the work would die in front of me. This did in fact happen in less successful pieces.
As I further allempt to discipline the work, I strove to avoid the Englishness of English art by adopting a sparser and a bolder structure based on what I can only call a ‘European’ strength. ln fact one of the external themes of the work became that of the myth of Europe, or Italy in particular, as it seemed obvious to one that l could only partake in that strength as an outsider and never as a true participant. This of course was reinforced by the nature of the medium, in that I was engaged in a minimally physical activity in a room without windows or other contact with the real world. I began to feel like those travellers who have only journeyed by conjuring up the mental states which they believe or hope particular countries inspire, rather than by visiting them in reality.
The way I have used the medium involves several layers of deceit, with fragments of photographic imagery mixed with grossly obvious passages of printing and repainting together with some far subtler alterations and transpositions, in the hope that the observer will be for some time left unsure what has at some time existed in reality and what has not. The other principal use I wanted to make of the characteristics of the medium was in the facility to place in different colour, scale and orientation the same or similar components in several related pieces of work. Musical ideas were a strong influence here – not just the Obvious analogy of musical variations, but also an attempt to evoke a similar suggestive quality to that of music through the use of shapes and objects that set off echoes at a variety of levels, whether overt or concealed. The facility that paint systems provide, to choose the exact degree of disguise which some object shall wear, seems to me one of their more interesting characteristics.
Of course the subject matter is chosen with a similar aim in view, to suggest vestigial fragments of a greater civilisation which we can admire but not recreate. This incorporates the very nostalgia which I originally set out to avoid.
