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Click in the image for a huge enlargement to open in a new window I N K F L O W SOLD This is a work about spontaneity and control in balance. Ink was dropped onto wet polyester film and encouraged to spread. My mark making was (at first) a mere moment of dropping ink from a pipette. Then nature took over, moving the ink slowly and constantly according to its own laws of gravity, flux or whatever. I overlooked, thinking about possible meanings as water evaporated from the film and the ink slowly dried, inking, thinking, flowing. My job was a careful balance of allowing and encouraging the ink to grow naturally, yet maintaining a degree of control. The controlling elements included two main aspects: 1. Careful preparation of the polyester film to prevent it from repelling the ink. 2. A positioning of angle-poise lamps close to spots of ink that had flowed enough and now needed preservation of their flux patterns, by a quick evaporation of excess water. The lamps directed heat to these spots of ink and helped freeze the movement before all would flow into a mush of grey. After the ink on the film had dried, I needed to consolidate my concept so the work could have more meaning than just being interesting blobs. I observed that the blobs and their emanating flow patterns appeared like blossoms, and thus found an idea in the word flower, where an alternative meaning could be 'one who flows', i.e., one who is in their groove- the state defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi as an optimal human state, deriving from being so involved with an activity that ego and everything else falls away, and everything flows gracefully and naturally. Thus the word flower is captioned to one or two blobs, while flow-er captions another couple of blobs. The technology of digital printing is incorporated into this work, (manual and digital co-operation are a conceptual theme in a lot of my recent work). I scanned some plant stems and blurred them in 'Photoshop' before printing them with archival inks over the handwritten calligraphy background paper that lies behind the translucent polyester film. These inkjet inks have been applied in opposite manner to the sumi. Here precision is everything and nothing is random or spontaneous. But showing through the translucent polyester film, these plant stems add another rhythm that helps harmonise the composition*, and also develops the suggestion of the blobs as blossoms by giving them stems. * The spot form of the blobs were at odds with the linear forms of the writing, but the blurred stems helps to harmonise them, since their shape integrates both linear forms (stems), and spot forms (leaves).
Text The large word appearing below centre reads 'inkflow', and is presented in a style that emphasises rhythmic repetition of visual forms more than clear legibility. Most of the blobs of ink have been captioned with words including FLOWER, FLOW-ER, LOVER, FLOURISH, FLUENCY, FOLLOWER. Some of these words appear very blurred due to a tiny space between the polyester film and the background paper on which the words are written. (The legibility of these words may change with variations in relative humidity and temperature of the local environment, and thus could be interpreted as a playful barometer of characteristics of the viewer!) A quotation at the base of the work is from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and reads 'Flow: the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter'. Signature: Brown 2007, in pencil on the film at lower right.
Detail showing the words inking and thinking written in white over the black ink on the translucent film. A third word completes a triad in this white style (outside of this image)- it reads 'flowing'. The words FLOW-ER and LOVER can also be seen, showing through from behind the translucent film with a blurring which I find attractive, caused by the film not lying 100% flat against the background paper. A limited edition print based on this work, (edited and optimised to be more than a reproduction) is available and details can be seen here. In real life the original of course has a quality that simply cannot be captured in any images reproduced here. The edition print is easier to reproduce. Ideally, potential buyers should view this work 'in the flesh' to appreciate it's subtlety.
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