Page 7 - Clive Head

To the Silence of Tiresias
oil on canvas
631/4” x 571/4”
Time and space function differently in Head’s work, making it difficult to negotiate, like all the pages of a novel being read simultaneously. Strange things happen, figures can cross gender, as did the ancient prophet Tiresias.
Drawing for To the Silence of Tiresias
pencil and acrylic on tracing paper 5” x 41/2”
But Tiresias is silent. Head regards his mandate to be an artist as being founded in his abilities to draw from which he can create mysterious new worlds. He is wary of the polemical role artists adopt within a broader socio- political landscape.
Which is not to say that his work is devoid of possible meanings; clearly it is loaded but Head is primarily concerned with inventing new structures through which meanings can be generated. Woven from a Brief Encounter has an intricate web of human energy anchored by a more conventional perspective of a train standing at a railway station. Perhaps the title refers in part to David Lean’s romantic film. A chance meeting creates a wave of consequences and a new history is born. Head weaves a space redolent of human possibilities. This drawing aptly demonstrates what he frequently refers to as a body-space, where every part is connected to and dependent on every other part.
Head recalls a comment made by the New York gallerist Ivan Karp. He told him that he knew of two kinds of contemporary realist painter, those who could draw, and those who couldn’t. For those who couldn’t, their work progressed at a slower pace. Head’s astonishing abilities as a draughtsman underpin his rapid development, culminating in the invention of his current practice.
The drawings in this exhibition are on tracing paper, some are just a few inches across. Tracing paper allows for a drawing to be erased many times without the surface breaking up. It suits Head’s process of constant revision as a drawing develops from a few motifs in the centre of the sheet. At the outset, Head has no preconceived thoughts about the composition. He draws to discover, not to illustrate. His occasional forays into print, represented in this exhibition by After Balham Falls demonstrate his mastery of etching.
A drawing can function as the starting point for a painting but it is never just a study. It is always developed into a complete work of art in its own terms.
Beginning with his wife Gaynor waking in a hotel bedroom, rising to look out of the window and then descending a staircase, To the Silence of Tiresias might celebrate a cubo-futurist trope, but Head is less interested in the depiction of movement than the creation of new figures and narratives that can be found through this layering.
7
Woven from a Brief Encounter
pencil on tracing paper
14 3/4” x 16 3/4”