Andrew Cranston
Reader, 2018
oil and varnish on hardback book cover
28.3 x 16.6 cm
11 1/8 x 6 1/2 in
11 1/8 x 6 1/2 in
A figure poached from somebody’s Instagram post. Am I allowed? All this glut of imagery, of lives being lived. The mystery of other peoples’ lives. It was a stripy dress...
A figure poached from somebody’s Instagram post. Am I allowed? All this glut of imagery, of lives being lived. The mystery of other peoples’ lives. It was a stripy dress that caught my eye. I ditched everything else. I added different hair (channelling The Human League) boots, put a newspaper in front, changed the room. Nobody will ever know.
A painting like most that grew in the making, adding until it reached a ripeness, paring back until it felt right. Painting is about amounts, how much of this or that, and where, intervals, gaps, trying to create harmonies, tensions in this box. To hold the eye, move the eye.
Who is this woman I’ve made from bits here and there? She seems confident: a bit Lee Miller or Sonia Delaunay, or perhaps those incredible Weimer republic women as painted by Otto Dix, or photographed by August Sander in the 1920s. They could show up at the Transmission and fit right in.
A painting like most that grew in the making, adding until it reached a ripeness, paring back until it felt right. Painting is about amounts, how much of this or that, and where, intervals, gaps, trying to create harmonies, tensions in this box. To hold the eye, move the eye.
Who is this woman I’ve made from bits here and there? She seems confident: a bit Lee Miller or Sonia Delaunay, or perhaps those incredible Weimer republic women as painted by Otto Dix, or photographed by August Sander in the 1920s. They could show up at the Transmission and fit right in.
