Wednesday, 2 December 2009

Ian Whittlesea – Walden Pond





Ian WhittleseaWalden Pond, Studio Print – Henry David Thoreau
Print published by October Foundation, 2002
Silkscreen on Somerset satin 300 grs, 51 x 110 cm
Edition of 25 copies

Price € 300

Since then I’ve made a large group of single paintings collectively called Studio Paintings, which show the address at which an artist or writer worked. They both evoke the space referred to and suggest that perhaps the room they are in could also be somewhere to work.

A piece I always have in mind is Robert Barry’s text piece that says: "A place to which we can come, and for a while, be free to think about what we are going to do." (Marcuse)

The single paintings lead on to a group of larger ones such as the Circumnavigation painting you mentioned which list locations or destinations. These were consciously more related to ideas of exile – the exile or journey of the participant (James Joyce, Darwin, Cézanne) and the exile of the artist in the studio, the paradox that to think about the world one sometimes has to withdraw from it. Mostly this came about because the paintings were taking longer and longer to make, so I was spending more and more time alone in the studio. The Joyce painting took 3 years, and the Cezanne and Darwin ones much the same amount of time.
from an interview with Ian Whittlesea on artcornwall.org, journal for art

Walden Pond, Massachusetts was the adress of the writer Henry David Thoreau from 1845 – 1847
see also my post of 8 February 2009: Ian Whittlesea – Tahiti

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