The issue with the diptych ‘under the surface’ for me is the recognisable forms. It was meant to be more of a conceptual piece without any figurative cues but I kind of got carried away and could see the lines following a familiar form. I am not overly disappointed with it because it would still make sense in a body of work. Yet it doesn’t surprise me, though I think I will just leave it be, because form is something I do anyway. The funny thing is my friend just found a whole pile of boards on the street that someone had thrown out so I can get stuck into some new work pretty quickly. The other problem is now I want more figuration in these pieces. I would literally love to do a scratched portrait or actual human figure rather than a mark or abstract form. At the same time I liked the ‘fake archive: triptych’ because it wasn’t built on familiar forms. At least not forms common to art. More stains or marks on walls. That to me is interesting, yet I have to have some kind of range so even though I am a little disappointed (just a little bit) I can accept that things will be at times familiar to other work I have made.

Most artists wouldn’t really care about their work having familiar cues but I wanted to emulate what I would see on the street. The works are like ‘fake archives’ of things observed though they become somewhat a snapshot of somewhere or other that is familiar but completely unique. Now that I have at least written about this issue I feel like I will explore the possibility of vandalism (scratching) becoming something of artistic merit. For me there are many what ifs. What if the act of vandalism was to express concepts of form and formlessness and discuss artistic problems? Rather than just one act of application, the application was considered a piece of art in its own right? Considerations of composition, art history and cultural relevance were able to be thought through in context of illegal application?