Friday 30 March 2012

Gordon Baldwin - drawings and things....

The Shelving Series: attached to the wall, are tableaux of objects on ledges, against a backdrop of large panels of abstract drawings.




Shelving Series, 1980,  (wood, canvas and earthenware)




Glimpses, 1998, (charcoal and photographs on paper)




At the Time of the Arches, 1999,  (charcoal on paper)




Imagining a Vessel in a Rock on a Beach, 2006  (charcoal on paper)




Drawing of a Vessel with Two Flying Chevrons, 2008,  (charcoal on paper)




Land Becoming Vessel Perhaps, 2010  (charcoal collage)




Baldwin's Studio at Eton

"I make vessels out of bits of clay like poets work with words and phrases. I let the process of building guide me, while remembered sounds, a sentence, a piece of painting, a patch of colour from elsewhere, a wandering line and great clouds become seeds that may germinate. At this stage I am only concerned with finding the form of the pot, I shall develop the surface later.
When the vessel is found I keep it in my studio for days, for weeks, for months even. I explore it in my imagination. I stare at it and take sidelong glances at it as I work on other pieces. There are always many pieces in the studio. Perhaps my studio is my work.

There is a pressure in my imagination as the days and weeks pass by, until I suddenly take courage and begin. The alchemist in me has a joy in seeing what happens as I coat the pot and overcoat it and fire and coat again with clays and metal salts and fire and pour and rub and fire again until the surface is of the vessel and the vessel is mine. It will have its title by now and I know the pot".





Baldwin's Studio at Market Drayton, 2005.

"I use titles as signposts, as well as verbal objects, to be placed beside the pot".








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