I would like to consider, in the first instance, how data, which is reflected through pixelated screens as physically depthless, inter-relates with paintings physical and expressive qualities. I will argue that painting is viewed as a coupling or overlapping with the flat surfaces of the screen. The painter develops his/her material practice as a reflection of the augmented space of the screen either through digital production (imaged) or as digital, reflective idea (imagined) - (Craig Staff). I will then concentrate on the paintings of Glenn Brown (plus images), who for me successfully negotiates the phenomenological divide between the embodied act of making and the disembodied, digitally received image.
Secondly, I will explore the extended idea that in the wake of Brown, for other contemporary painters (plus images), the style or finish of a painting, regardless of whether it is figurative or abstract, gestural or flat, imaged or imagined, becomes a personalised expressive response to the saturation of the screens social reach. The style or finish of a painting (or expanded medium of painting) will reflect Isabelle Graw’s indexical notion that the ‘authors quasi-presence as an effect’ (1), acts as a highly personalised semiotic activity that is witnessed in paintings surfaces.
The third part of my thesis will introduce students work (plus images) that demonstrates embodied making overlapping and/or maintaining a difference from digital technology. I will suggest that material making for students crosses-over with Paul Crowther’s phenomenological examination of paintings physical and optical particularities of autography, that ‘drawing and painting are the products of gesture. As such they can embody individual style’. (2) I will conclude by arguing for paintings enduring appeal as a yet-to-be-resolved object (Merlau Ponty/Andrew Benjamin) that is vital for the development of the discipline in the face of more generalised UK Fine Art courses.
(1) Isabelle Graw, Thinking through Painting: Reflexivity and Agency beyond the Canvas, Sternberg Press, 2012, p.51
(2) Paul Crowther, What Painting and Drawing Really Mean, Routledge, 2017, p.7
