If the philosophic aim is to re-animate a fallen disenchanted world, to re-animate things and objects (even if only the painting itself as object), do I envisage this as simply the creation of lively coloured paintings? No, there is more to it than that; a complex involvement with the history of painting, with materials and ideas. Constable, through painting the scenes of his childhood aimed to re-animate his childhood vision of the landscape through an apparently unmediated, fresh perception of Nature and through his use of paint as an equivalent for the forces of Nature. I am interested in exploring the phenomenal world of appearances and in the tension between the “abstract” and the representational, iconographic elements. But not directly, like Constable. Modern painting, especially abstract expressive painting, has altered and modified sensation, expanding the possibilities of response to the phenomenal world ( Matisse’s merging of window and wall).And latterly it has expanded or re-invented the way images are employed, recognising their poetic autonomy and power, so that the word “image” can refer not only to the figurative element but to the “abstract” painterly facture of the work as well.

For example, in my painting “ On The Edge” a chair seems to be teetering upon an abyss. The chair exits in my studio but the painting is obviously not a straightforward representation of a chair. The colours are not bright, obvious colours. They appear rich and deep, not copied from someone else. To me this is surprising and not like I have seen in another persons work. The paint functions as a living element in it’s own right and this signals to me an imaginative involvement. The image is poetic, not literal. “Abstract” areas can be experienced as content, the “image in the form” (as Adrian Stokes remarked in one of his essays).The Painting is a metaphorical expression...my situation,perhaps the situation of painting, is like this...

Today I find aggression is so important to a kind of vitality in the work ( as in Baselitz). It admits the urgency that smashes through refinement. Van Gogh, Appel, Munch, all have this quality of rough boldness, a kind of brutality, like a punch. This really is a primary principle in the creative process, the aggressive impulse. It’s in early Cézanne too, and Manet and early Monet. That’s what struck me when looking at their paintings in Paris. In the light of what had gone before they appeared very rough. Another word is ATTACK. It is the spirit of MARS, of ANGER. The principle is that a painting must have this TOOMUCHNESS, this OVERFLOWING quality.

David Drey 2007.

WRITING

Excerpt from “PO-FACE“ by Peter Duggan 2007
 

…The painting process of David Drey can seem baffling and exasperating. A moment of dissatisfaction with a virtually completed picture can lead to series of impulsive, obliterating marks, made for no purpose than to throw the picture into a state of possibilities again. These marks may suggest part of a figure, or a piece of furniture, or a hole in the room, which lure him like a Siren to follow their suggestions. A figure lying down in a room, full of excellencies in the evocation of space seemingly by colour alone, can take a crazy turn, suddenly becoming a figure standing by a window.

The impulse for his po* moment is dissatisfaction, but why does he get dissatisfied? Drey, enormously well versed in the culture of painting, seems to have several criteria, emotional and visceral, for deciding when a painting is complete. But I feel that at base his ultimate criteria is the painting’s ability to surprise him. Many fine paintings go under during this ruthless judgement process, as the thick facture of many of his works attest. (It really is a ruthless process. A painting he deems successful will often disappoint him a few days later. My take is that he has now become used to it and therefore it no longer surprises.) To predict the outcome of one of his paintings in progress is impossible, and he has as many failures as successes. Yet surprise is a worthy goal. Tom Lubbock recently made the point, in a review of a recent Kitaj show (December 06), that people go to exhibitions for many reasons, but the bottom line, it seemed to him, was mental freedom: “The capacity for real unexpectedness, the ability of artists to surprise not only their audiences but themselves….It is the spark of life.”

*Edward de Bono, famous for making theories about creativity and perception into usable tools, once laid down a challenge to some car engineers: ‘Cars should have square wheels.’ Working from this ridiculous premise, the engineers eventually created a superior suspension system. This is a good example of De Bono’s conviction that in order to come up with truly creative ideas it is often extremely helpful to throw something ridiculous and unrelated into the problem. The intention is to provoke a different line of thinking. However this is just a starting point. It is by moving forward from this crazy provocation, by finding and making relationships that make some sense of it, that we may be led to some completely unforeseeable results. De Bono invented the word “po” for these nonsensical provocations. Po is an apparently irrational interruption in our thinking that take us out of the comfort of an existing mental pattern.

(Peter Duggan)

©David Drey 2007.