The earliest series in the show is inspired by an inherited collection of facsimiles of some of the earliest ever made woodcuts from the John Rylands Library, Manchester (where Holcroft’s great grandfather Henry Guppy was librarian). These are both a connection with the artist’s past, and a history of image-making itself. Their iconography of St. Christopher, the Annunciation and St. Antony is re-appropriated and carefully juxtaposed with other elements, hinting at inter-relationships. In ‘Crossing the Water II’, a running skeleton appears on closer inspection to be made not from bones, but from bandage or gauze; not hard inner structure but soft outer protector of wounds. The material of the gauze connects to the right with wisps of fabric that clothe Reubens’ Christ figure; over to the left, a barely visible fragment of a Muybridge running figure brings out the skeletal form of the gauze. In ‘Annunciation I’ the grid pattern of tiles and leaded windows from the woodcut is echoed by a cylindrical metal tractor filter and mesh pencil lines, creating a grid structure that traps elements, or keeps them safe. A row of three fragments of driftwood show traces of woodturning, a faint circular indentation in each, such that a row of three wood scraps is also a row of three circles. The wood is shaped by accident, tides and human craft, and given significance by Holcroft’s careful arrangement. Circles are a repeated feature of her work as important symbols of infinity. Take a single slice through time, she says, and everything is everywhere all at once.

There are depths here to be plumbed – with Soundings, quite literally. This series of works plays with multi-sensory ways of perceiving. Sounding, using a plumb line, is a way of determining depth. Sound can be experienced as the musical cavities of a cave; an echo can locate you in space. Sounding-out can help an idea to take form. All of these meanings can be felt in the work. ‘Soundings I’ seems to locate sound as it is experienced through the torso, resonating through the skeleton of the body. The painting breathes, from inner depth to outer light. The body is a recurrent form that appears in its scientific guises, for example through Muybridge images and biological diagrams. There are also traces of a body, in one case from the artist’s own blood. In ‘Darwin I’, the delicate tracery of veins and muscle depicted in a biological illustration is juxtaposed with leaves and insects creating a sense of the shared structural complexity and vulnerability of all living organisms.

The final series of paintings are very much of a geographical place, from the artist’s previous home on a farm in Pembrokeshire. The works depict memories of distinct events, such as ‘New Year’s Day’ in which the grid structure of field systems hints at the labour of managed farming. The weight of iron trapped in the tube is too heavy to follow the arc of white into the air above it. Yet the whole is surrounded by light, a complex surface that gives a sense of the whole embedded within the sublime. In ‘The Dream’, all has become dark, but this seems the darkness of space, deep sea or the unconscious. Colour peeps through marks on the surface. A feather hints at flight, the deep-blue colour of the raven, while a galloping horse suggests a flight over land. A natural sponge, normally at home in the depths of the sea, is held on the surface with lines of white thread like a twisted musical stave. Carving the composition in two, a white arc splits the dark like the orbiting path of a star.

Whilst Holcroft’s work shows the influence of Rauschenberg, Schwitters and Cornell, her work has moved firmly onto its own trajectory. Her paintings invest objects with a distinctive sense of balanced purposefulness, making everything seem both ‘meant’ and at the same time opaque and mysterious. Something might suddenly drift into view, achieving a lucid clarity, before you become lost again in a swirl of uncharted territory. Symbols appear as talismanic guides, a sense that there is some overseeing order – then you are plunged into a powerful felt response that resists codification.

‘Soundings’ is on at Water Street Gallery from 10 May until 9 June 2013.

This installation explores processes of embodied cognition through painting.  It aims to understand creative practice as an agential, corporeal activity performed by a body moving through its environment.  Through gesture, materiality and the use of tools, visual knowledge emerges in a process of artistic labour.  Painting, in this laborious process, is thinking – “in that instant when his vision becomes gesture, when, in Cézanne’s words, he ‘thinks in painting’”.  Merleau-Ponty

Details: Alec Clegg studio, stage@leeds, School of Performance and Cultural Industries.  Thursday 9th May, 11-3.  Drop in, no need to book. Free Entry.

Video from TateShots.

In this, curator Catherine Wood describes how Pollock’s work was seen as a key point in the history of performance, because “the film of Pollock making the painting became as important arguably for the next generation of artists as the finished object.”

Describing the current generation of artists, she says “paint and the canvas are still present – it’s just in a more performative way; a more theatrical way.”

1. Painting ground – I use MDF, but I could use FSC sourced MDF board from a local supplier.

2. Textured surface – I use secondhand bedsheets as a ‘canvas’ to cover the boards.  These are made from cotton (which involves issues with chemicals and poor worker conditions in its sourcing) and polyester (by-product of petrochemical industry).  This is part-mitigated by my use of second-hand materials, but to be purist, I could use organic pure cotton, linen or ideally hemp.  Better still would be secondhand hemp.

3.  Currently I glue this on with Golden acrylic softgel medium, seal the panel with Golden Acrylic polymer medium GAC100, and prime with acrylic primer.  Acrylic products are acrylic polymers, which contain acrylic resin, which come from acrylic acid or methacrylic acid.  Acrylic acid is produced from propene which is a byproduct of ethylene and gasoline production.  Ethylene is produced in the petrochemical industry – and petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum or ‘crude oil’.  The details of all this took some uncovering (thanks, Wikipedia!).  So any acrylic artist products (mediums, primers, and paints) are derived from crude oil, which is an unsustainable and finite resource.  There are also considerations of energy use and carbon emissions during manufacturing processes.

4. I use oil paints, which are not sourced from petrochemicals (to my knowledge – although possibly some of the pigments may be).  However, there are some issues with some of the pigments used and I’d need to research each of these separately.  I could use pure pigment and a binder such as walnut oil, which would increase my knowledge of the ingredients and would reduce packaging and manufactuing-energy-use.  The main environmental issue with oil paints is the use of solvents, which I have avoided by using sunflower oil to clean brushes.  I did come across advice to use baby oil, which might be nicer – but what is baby oil made from?  Turns out it usually contains mineral oil which, you guessed it, is a by-product of the petrochemical industry.  So I’ll stick with the sunflower oil (not vegetable oil, which can come from palm oil, which is often unsustainably produced).

5. I buy my paintbrushes from a local supplier, Rosemary’s Brushes.  I was using chunking bristle, but I’m not sure whether animal welfare issues are involved.  So I’m going to try their ‘Ivory’, which is synthetic bristle.  Of course, that probably means it is derived from the petrochemical industry – so I need to ask more questions.  However, they are made locally so I am at least supporting a local business.

Resources that I have managed to find:-

• A guide to non-toxic painting
• Fine Art Tips

“We are investigating audience response to the art works (and whether the art persuades in a manner not otherwise achieved through intellectual means), and the processes involved in the art making itself.

We think insights communicated in images and metaphor might contribute to the development and implementation of environmental policy by communicating in ways that have not been achieved by science communication.”

From article by The Conversation.

Related project Artistic Representations and Perceptions of Climate Change