Artist     Stewart Geddes
Title      Camden Black
Date      2001
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       122 x 137cm
Ref          922

Purchased from the artist's own Exhibition entitled 'Big Paintings in a Small House' .

Other websites featuring this artist's work
www.stewartgeddes.com
www.stewartgeddes.co.uk

Camden Black
‘Camden Black’ is from a period of abstraction concerned with apprehending an experience of place, through negotiating with a set of painting materials and processes. The black colour theme emerged from the profusion of blacks observed around Camden lock – from peoples’ clothes to the black colouring of the bridge over the Regent’s canal.

At this time I was interested in reconciling animated painterly gestures with hard-edge stencilled shapes. I felt the latter was necessary in order to acknowledge the architecture and graphic material of the urban environment.

The globby, linear gesture that dominates the surface is part derived form road markings. The ’fractured’ passage to the right side is due to a chemical reaction between the disc of white radiator paint and black artists’ oil paint laid over the top. I hadn’t anticipated this occurring but was delighted when it did. It seemed to me to create a surface that both stood for and mimicked the various tired surfaces I’d observed at Camden. The gestures zig-zaggy character is an attempt to equate with the bustling energy of Camden, whilst acknowledging my linguistic debt to Robert Motherwell, who at one stage signed his work with a distinctive ‘M’ not unlike this shape.

The Red calligraphic element is triggered by graffiti, and the buried ochre green shape is a negotiation between the colour of London brick and the needs of painting.

Reconciling opposites was a chief tactic at this time, including juxtaposing matt and gloss surfaces which are present in ‘Camden Black’. The tall matt shape over to the left is me thinking about the barges one sees on the Regent’s canal and positioning a similar shape on it’s side.

My attitude at the time (and still is) was to create something generative. That is something that alludes to several ideas and through engaging with the objectivity of the observer sets in train a number of possible narratives.

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