This post follows today's broadcast of Sky Landscape Artist of 2022, first heat, 8 June at Blackpool north pier.
The thing was, I'd told Tai that I needed to paint the grim urban landscape of Blackpool - not another cheesy view of the pier. The following day, Boris Johnson visited Blackpool. I think he might have spoken about 'levelling up' - a phrase we've heard less about as the unfairness of wealth distribution has become ever more glaringly obvious. But he did nothing, of course, to diminish the town's deprivation - and a few weeks later he was no longer PM.
I wanted to paint the rusting railings, the swarming gulls, the dilapidated hotel housing asylum seekers. I was told that what I had to say was 'too political'. Sky landscape artist of the year is, as one of the crew told me, an entertainment programme: it's not about 'shocking art', and it's certainly not the done thing to raise disturbing matters when the broadband customers have settled comfortably on their sofas in six months' time.
One of the other judges doubted whether all those seagulls in my painting had actually appeared in those places in the sky at the same time. I hadn't expected such literalism. All 2D representations involve choices. Perhaps she meant they made the place look untidy. I don't know. Maybe she wanted a confected, 'aesthetic' reality.
You can read more about my experience here: ironwork-woodwork-and-paint.html, blackpool-illuminations.html,
look-both-ways.html, farewell-blackpool.html
These things are worth thinking about: they stimulate me to look and think harder, and paint more.
I wanted to paint the rusting railings, the swarming gulls, the dilapidated hotel housing asylum seekers. I was told that what I had to say was 'too political'. Sky landscape artist of the year is, as one of the crew told me, an entertainment programme: it's not about 'shocking art', and it's certainly not the done thing to raise disturbing matters when the broadband customers have settled comfortably on their sofas in six months' time.
One of the other judges doubted whether all those seagulls in my painting had actually appeared in those places in the sky at the same time. I hadn't expected such literalism. All 2D representations involve choices. Perhaps she meant they made the place look untidy. I don't know. Maybe she wanted a confected, 'aesthetic' reality.
You can read more about my experience here: ironwork-woodwork-and-paint.html, blackpool-illuminations.html,
look-both-ways.html, farewell-blackpool.html
These things are worth thinking about: they stimulate me to look and think harder, and paint more.