Mark Twain's Writing Hut, Costcutter etc

I spent the first stipend on one hundred 60x40cm ‘off the shelf’ canvases. I took these to the space at the same time as Anna completed her platforms. These platforms and the parameters of having a task gave me a place to be and an activity. I believe that if I had worked at one of the trestle tables I wouldn’t have had the same experience. The planes of the platforms at various heights motivates physical and mental movement. Their rhomboid and triangular shape take you away from the walls. They reminded me of Mark Twain’s octagonal writing hut

“…octagonal with a peaked roof, each face filled with a spacious window…perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city...”—Mark Twain, Letter to William Dean Howells, 1874

A Costcutter is on the corner of Theydon Road. Costcutter is a franchised local and urban convenience store. The ambience of the new community in which it has been located, is not yet established. In its' newness it seems not settled. The ‘project’ of rejuvenating and giving this area of Clapton a use, will descend down the other side of the sine curve into a ‘real’ situation. That is without the fabrication of investment, it will be the people who live in this area and their economic situation that grounds it’s atmosphere. The mise en scene in this sense is not yet entrenched. The environment as ‘the totality of surrounding conditions and circumstances affecting growth or development.’

There is an all-round congenial atmosphere in this shop. They have introduced an in-store bakery, broad sheet newspapers, newsmagazines and periodicals including New Scientist and The Economist, alongside photographs of healthy consumers as an apparently integrate part of an aspirational whole, perhaps improving the mode of living of this community.

On Theydon Road the businesses keep to the excepted set hours of industrious activity. There is a lot of movement of loads out of and in to warehouses. Many interactions happen on the street itself. This visible and audible backdrop are marked by its absence after five thirty. In the quiet, out of working hours, the view from the upper space becomes more noticeable. It is unusual to be able to see across such a distance as Walthamstow Marshes in London.

I think this present position, the difference felt by working as an artist in this community and it’s binary nearby rural location (I have seen tractors plough sections of the Marsh set aside for some kind of agriculture) have enabled a sort of objectivity. The 'difference' was the push to start making work. The paintings are allowing me to take on new subject matter and the expanding content informs new subjects. As a sculptor I also feel free from the painting is dead argument. The mobile phone videos posted on the blog are part of this project.