Philip Maltman has produced paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and written work over 40 years. His early work was inspired by meetings with Don Van Vliet, Alan Davie, Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys. His white canvases with words and grafitti-like marks, inspired somewhat by Robert Rauschenberg, and his degree show of a red paint-spattered and dripping environment presaged a much later knowledge and appreciation of the work of Cy Twombly. An interest in James Joyce led to correspondence with, and a lecture on, Robert Motherwell, in the 1980's .
A major exhibition at Battersea Art Centre in 1978 travelled to Glasgow and Jarrow. Its theme was Loch Ness and its attendant mysteries although it was essentially an exhibition of landscape paintings but with a twist towards abstraction utilising grids, water disturbances, and diagrammatic markings relating to the various investigators and their work. During the 1980's Philip Maltman's work took a somewhat Homeric journey (in parallel to his study of, and work on Joyce's "Ulysses") through abstraction and "New Primitivism" ,as described by Art Monthly. During the journey Jeffrey Solomons at Fischer Fine Art championed his work and Charles Saatchi also saw his work and recommended it to Bernard Jacobson with whom he showed briefly. Philip Maitman reached both literally and metaphorically his home shore in the early 1990's.
A visit to Scotland at this time brought him home to the ribbon of South Ayrshire beaches from Turnberry, through Maidens and Culzean to Croy where his childhood rambles were recalled instantly due to little or no change in the environment. The ever present view of Ailsa Craig provided the most stunning reunion.
"Ailsa Craig is without doubt the object in the landscape which most impressed me then and now both as a physical site and as a metaphysical phenomenon. I had carried the image of Ailsa Craig with me since I left Scotland as a child and despite various visits in the late sixties and early seventies it is the only object which, on returning, seems to grow with the years whereas all man-made features seem to diminish. Stones on the beaches have their individual power echoing that of the island."
This was the starting point for Philip Maltman's current and, continuing work. Recent paintings reconcile abstraction and figuration in a fundamental combination of observed reality and interior response employing both conventional and unconventional media.
Artist’s Statement
I extend my experience and enjoyment of the world by making artworks. This invariably results in chaos and sometimes in an acceptable order, which can be called painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, or photography; generically speaking, an artwork. Artworks for me are about mark making, drawn, painted, scratched, gouged, flooded, scrubbed, stuck, dried or dusted. The mark is paramount whether accidental or deliberate and is recognised as primarily an attempt to convey the accident of passion before the secondary concerns of deliberate representation or composition.
Drawing comes first, but photography is often the most immediate form of mark making being instant and comprehensive in trapping the ephemeral for subsequent exploration. I make work, which is about objects or marks on surfaces; my main area of interest is in the aftermath of human intervention in nature. This can be as direct as looking at a beach at low tide or as indirect as using astronaut's photographs of the earth from space. It can be as indirect as the residue of history or the discoveries of science. "External and internal scanning of the world", as Robert Motherwell said, "in which, finally, the subject is not the world but the artwork itself", which may in turn extend the viewers experience and enjoyment of the world.
"Philip Maltman - Notes on Painting October 2008 Notes for www.tackad.blogspot.com It always begins with looking. A beach, a landscape, a garden, a table littered with natural objects, things which I regularly photograph. I print images and draw selected sections. These are pencil and watercolour sketches which are like a “loosening up” or training session. I do not deliberately use these as preliminary sketches. I will occasionally exhibit them but more often than not they remain in sketchbooks to be scanned from time to time as “aides memoire”.
In the studio I will look at the photographic images say, a group of stones, shells, seaweed with sunlight reflecting off interspersed pools of seawater.
I will choose a colour for the ground anything from white through greys to pinks and purples to black. This ground can be dependent on the colour of sand in the original, or maybe sampled from the original digital photograph with Photoshop which can throw up interesting surprises.
Occasionally as in a recent landscape based picture, the whole ground was painted pink because a couple of patches of light in a distant field were pink. Preparing grounds, which are always one colour, is an ongoing activity. Experiments in colour are also made without reference to source material.
Back to the beach then, I will paint the stones, shells, seaweed, and light in broad strokes, not descriptive detail, using oil paint. While it is still wet I will very quickly work into each area of paint with my fingers aiming to destroy the figurative element of the image and create an abstract “equivalent”. This has to work first time so there is a bit of the Zen Calligrapher’s practice in psyching oneself up ready to pounce. But of course if it doesn’t work I will modify with washes of white spirit, sometimes bitumen is introduced with some diluted oil to colour it. Usually I allow the liquid paint to run vertically to further destroy illusions of pictorial space.
I am aiming at a flat surface with coloured marks which might evoke a feeling of the original image although not in a figurative sense.
Next, using amongst other drawing materials, pencil, oil pastel and wax crayon I will improvise a sort of skating across the surface of the work highlighting, circling, scribbling and generally drawing into and around the paint. Words, letters, and numbers are always a temptation at this stage but I find it difficult to compose and position areas of text.
I will often acquire maps/charts of the areas that I am working on so numbers and letters can be “legitimately” incorporated. I feel that I need an overpowering non-sentimental reason to introduce what I feel is essentially an entirely separate art form (writing) and the reason is rarely there.
Single letters are more abstract, signs and symbols which usually refer to objects from the original image are used along with the letters and numbers from the charts.
These devices are used to make the surface of the painting reflect an existence which has innumerable layers of invisible waves, rays, signals, gases and creatures; imperceptible causes and effects; constant changes in light, sound, air pressure, weather - Life!
Everything is buzzing with atomic vibration therefore painting can never be still. That said, I can be persuaded by the work in progress to slow down and add/subtract marks, washes words and colour.
I participate with paint and I love its movement. I feel a strong relationship with all my materials and whilst they do not always co-operate they definitely participate like a group of dancers (Contemporary Ballet).
When a painting is finished or stops it is as if the dancers are exhausted, what’s done is done and can never be repeated exactly. But we will, of course, try to do it all again tomorrow! "
