ART 18|21

Colin Self - Springs Fireplace Road

24th Oct - 21st Nov

 “Sometimes I like to go out.  Sometimes I stay indoors and get things done.”                                                                                             

David Bowie   

Springs Fireplace Road is the title of the suite of etchings.  Printed by Maurice Payne, we worked well together at Editions Alecto (1968-1971) and then drifted our own ways. A chance meeting in the 1990s reconnected us briefly and years later Maurice visited after holidaying in Norfolk and expressed that he’d love to, “Print anything” of mine. He printed some of my distressed Slade School student plates with a rare empathy, sensitive, semi-cleaned.  The prints were startling, exact, rich. Delivering them, he left a number of different sized new plates repeating the offer. 

I could simply ‘fall out of bed’, remain in my indoors, daydreaming, subjective state of mind and work – away from the printhouses, cities, studios and everything of the outer macro world.  In a state of reflective ‘owing nothing to anyone’, as personal and non-competitive as a diary. 

Some of these etchings are based on drawings created during the run in to my Retrospective exhibition in 2008, where I found myself having to make drawings relatively quickly since work would have to be abandoned to contribute fresh energies to the exhibition.  They took on a character of their own and some became the point of departure of etchings in this suite. 

I seem to work like I imagine a classical composer works at a symphony.  Separate parts making a whole.  Prelude, pastoral, crescendo, climax, soft, loud – different instruments orchestrating the overall vision. Different and all necessary moods, sounds, colours – but as one interconnecting overall piece.  The weight of double base, kettle drums giving way to the triangle.

Since I parted company with monetarist Tin Pan Alley’s ‘discover them, work them then drop them’ constraints of London gallery art dealers, my works and exhibitions span painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, ceramics, etchings etc, as a composer embraces the instruments of the orchestra. Were someone, cryptically, to say some of these etchings are ‘easy’….well, that’s exactly what some of them are – the triangle in the orchestra.

I think these new etchings are about serendipity. The antithesis of ‘getting to the point’, having no apparent logic or theme.  The backwater, which no matter what else goes on in worlds of speculation, hype, investment, money, power and fashion, simply remains true, constant.

I’d shyly retreated to the furthest corner of the Slade’s old antiques room in my first year to paint and make small etchings. In this suite, Springs Fireplace Road, I have naturally returned to the same ways I made those first term, shy Slade School etchings. 

I never got the hard, over energised testosterone loud music of Bruce Springsteen.  But after years of perennial burnout music he retreated to Nebraska to reflect on his life, re-energise and produced an acoustic guitar collection of more humble, sensitive songs.  If there’s something of that in this project I’ll be happy. 

Maurice Payne has a studio on Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton, Long Island, USA.  Questioning the name with Maurice he replied, “The ‘Fireplace’ was where in the past, bonfires were lit at night to guide in pirates like Captain Kidd and Bluebeard. Later, Maurice mentioned that Jackson Pollock had his studio, “50 yards down the road”.  And the tree Jackson Pollock crashed into still stands by the roadside.  So, by more serendipity Springs Fireplace Road has to be the name of this suite.  
 
Colin Self, October 2009