War of The Rosies

In keeping with my recent posts about my favourite found objects, I thought I’d repost about this one – a piece that I titled ‘War of the Rosies’. Being made of two found objects, I prefer to call it a Minimal Intervention Sculpture, rather than a sculpture proper. The work is composed of a vintage, leather and steel, a child's baseball mask, and a pair of old horns (probably antelope). I'm not sure why I originally put the two items together, but to my mind the act of doing so created something greater than the sum of their parts.

And the reason for the title, you ask? Well, the horns and mask combo remind me of some bizarre warrior mask (hence the ‘War’ part of the title), and both elements were gifted to me by ex-girlfriends, a Rose and a Rosie. So it’s basically a bad pun (I'm not normally a fan of puns) on the series of 15^th Century English civil wars known as the War of The Roses.

Scratchy Bunny Man (A3 Poster Print)

If you liked any of the mini oil paintings/sketches from my 2020 ‘100 Paintings in 12 Months Project’ you might be interested to know that I’ve had some of my favourite ones made into A3-sized poster prints.

'Scratchy Bunny Man', A3-sized poster print by artist Wayne Chisnall

As with most of paintings from this series, Scratchy Bunny Man was painted directly onto the painting’s surface (in this case, a small block of strand board) without any preliminary drawings or much in the way of me knowing what I was about to paint from the moment that I applied paintbrush to paint. I found this form of automatic painting very liberating and a fruitful creative exercise. It not only revealed new ideas and characters to me, but it also allowed me to be more experimental with the way I applied paint.

'Scratchy Bunny Man', A3-sized poster print by artist Wayne Chisnall

There are more poster prints to come and all of them are priced at £20 each with free postage. If you’d like one just DM me or drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk

The prints are printed on glossy, heavy-duty 300gsm paper, with digital inks that give a silk finish. One of things I especially like about these prints is that, in areas, you can see flecks of highlights and shadows where from where the paint was more thickly applied on the original painting.

Chained Heart

Following on from my earlier post about Thames finds, I thought I would share this one with you. I discovered it whilst mudlarking on the South Bank of the River Thames, and it appears to be a conglomerate of old rusty chains, bits of rock, glass, and congealed London clay.

 

'Chained Heart', found object, artist Wayne Chisnall

I coated it in wax to help preserve it and to enhance the rich dark colours. It’s one of those objects that fits comfortably in your hand, seems to reek of history, and feels like it wants to tell you its story. I also love the way that it’s vaguely heart-shaped.

Bride of Frankenstein (A3 Poster Print)

I hope you like my little tribute to the actor Elsa Lanchester with this, my new A3-sized poster print based upon one of my small oil sketches of her in the role of The Bride of Frankenstein. In the 1935 horror movie, directed by James Whale, Boris Karloff reprised his role of the monster (from the 1931 film, Frankenstein) whilst Elsa played the monster’s less than enthusiastic bride.

'Bride of Frankenstein' A3-sized poster print by artist Wayne Chsnall

There are more poster prints to come and all of them are priced at £20 each with free postage. If you’d like one just DM me or drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk

The prints are printed on glossy, heavy-duty 300gsm paper, with digital inks that give a silk finish. One of things I especially like about these prints is that, in areas, you can see flecks of highlights and shadows where from where the paint was more thickly applied on the original painting.

'Bride of Frankenstein' A3-sized poster print by artist Wayne Chsnall

Thames Flame

As I’m sure you know, I’m a big fan of the found object, and am keen to use found/recycled materials in much of my work. Most of the time, I heavily manipulate the materials in order to create the sculptures I want, but occasionally I’ll just combine two different forms together, letting their juxtaposition tell the story. Even though it sometimes feels like cheating, with these Minimal Intervention Sculptures, it’s usually the case that less is more.

 

'Thames Flame', found object sculpture, Wayne Chisnall

However, every so often I’ll find an object that is so perfect as it is that it requires on intervention at all (except maybe a good, preserving coating of wax), as was the case with this lovely piece of wood that I found whilst mudlarking along the Thames in London. I have no idea how many decades or even hundreds of years it might have lay in the river, but it looks as though the flow of silty water has slowly carved the wood, wearing away the softer parts of the grain, in order to reveal what to my eye looks like a flame caught in a strong breeze.

 

As the saying goes, ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, and I see beauty in this piece of nature-carved art. I’m not sure what to name it. I’m torn between ‘Eternal Flame’, ‘Sacred Flame’, or just plain ‘Thames Flame’. Any thoughts?

The Monster (A3 Print)

If you liked any of the mini oil paintings/sketches from my 2020 ‘100 Paintings in 12 Months Project’ you might be interested to know that I’ve had some of my favourite ones made into A3-sized poster prints.

 

'The Monster' by Wayne Chisnall, A3-sized poster print on heavy stock 300gsm paper

So far, there are 7 different prints available. I’ll post about the others soon, but for now I’d like to introduce you to probably my favourite of the bunch, ‘The Monster’. This is my take on the creature from the Mary Shelley classic, ‘Frankenstein’. In this painting, I hoped to capture some of the mournful or melancholic quality that I feel the Monster imbues. Whether it be through the black and white horror movies of the 1930s (which I so loved as a child, but which now seem so slow paced and hard to watch) or through Shelley’s poignant writing in the original novel, I always sympathised (and probably identified) more with the monster. In this piece, I worked quite quickly, using rough, gestural strokes, trying to echo the way that the monster in the novel was probably created; roughly and without much forethought for aesthetics or beauty.

 

'The Monster' by Wayne Chisnall, A3-sized poster print on heavy stock 300gsm paper

The prints are printed on glossy, heavy-duty 300gsm paper, with digital inks that give a silk finish. One of the things I especially like about these prints is that, in areas, you can see flecks of highlights and shadows where from where the paint, in the original painting, was more thickly applied to the work's surface.

 

All of the prints are £20 each with free postage. If you’d like one, just DM me or drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk

Leaminster Spa Open 2024

Sharon Griffin and I are delighted to have had our sculpture, ‘Bound’, shortlisted for the 2024 Leamington Spa Open. We dropped it off at the gallery a couple of days ago and are keeping our fingers crossed that it will be selected.

 

Wayne Chisnall & Sharon Griffin with 'Bound' at Leamington Spa Gallery & Museum

Along with several other of mine and Sharon’s sculptures (from our ‘Unlockdown’ art collaboration), ‘Bound’ had previously been exhibited at the Crafts Council’s Collect art fair at Somerset House in London, from when Sharon and I had been selected to take part through the Collect Open.

 

'Bound', a ceramic and textile collaboration between artists Wayne Chisnall and Sharon Griffin

Last seen in 2022, the Leamington Spa Open has been a regular and popular feature of Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum’s programme since the 1930s.

Junk Rock! The 7 greatest upcycled artworks ever

Regardless of what my ego might want to believe I always have more than one foot in the 'don't believe the hype' camp. However, it is still rather lovely to have had my work featured in the Nokia Connects article 'Junk Rock! The 7 Greatest Upcycled Artworks Ever', alongside works by such greats as Duchamp, Picasso, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Erika Iris Simmons, Seo Young-Deok and Thomas Allen. The article was written by the talented writer/photographer Adam Monaghan and featured my Magnet sculpture, which is now in the permanent collection of the Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The article was published quite some time ago and even though I featured a link to it in a previous blog post, the original piece sadly went the way of many online articles and disappeared from the internet. Fortunately I managed to find the original text and have decided to repost it here. I don't recall the exact photos used in the original article so I've made my own selection of artwork images by the featured artists, and presented them here. 

Junk rock! The 7 greatest upcycled artworks ever

In our environmentally concerned world it is perhaps not surprising to find art works made of ‘junk’, ‘scrap’ or ‘re-used’ products. And as recycling has, quite rightly, become a normal part of life rather than a weird niche activity, artists too have embraced pre-owned objects.

But art and scrap have a long history. So here’s a couple of recycled classics and a few new additions, which we think warrant a place on the all-time list of the greatest upcycled artworks ever.

Marcel Duchamp

Back in 1913, Marcel Duchamp changed the art world forever. He began working on the idea of ‘Readymades’ – objects selected from the world rather than actually made by an artist. Having it’s antecedents in Dada and the notion of ‘anti-art’ Duchamp’s work was often tinged with humour, such as the snow shovel entitled ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’ (1915). His work, ‘Fountain’ (1917) is perhaps the most famous ‘Readymade’: a normal, everyday urinal, signed ‘R.Mutt’ and turned upside down.

 

Pablo Picasso

Turning junk into art and out-Duchamping-Duchamp in one fail swoop. Picasso’s ‘Bull’s Head’ (1942) is a masterfully simple juxtaposition. Its brilliance lies partially in the fact that it is instantaneously and simultaneously recognisable as both bike saddle and handlebars and as a bull’s head.

Picasso’s residency in Paris throughout World War II was of great moral and symbolic significance. And this work should not only be seen as art world one-upmanship but as brave (and also humorous) defiance of the Occupation.

 

Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Rising to stardom on the tide of the thriving British art scene in the mid-1990s, Tim Noble and Sue Webster turn rubbish into something elegant and ingenious. In a typical shadow work, a single light source illuminates the seemingly random pile of rubbish and casts a perfect silhouette of the artists on the wall behind. The rubbish itself is often linked to the artists, such as in ‘Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)’ (1998), which is sculpted out of six months of the artists’ domestic waste. Funny, poignant and surprising… what more could you ask for?

 

Wayne Chisnall

Wayne Chisnall is one of those annoying artists who seems at home in whichever medium he chooses to work in, from stunning draughtsmanship to witty sculptures. A great deal of Chisnall’s work uses found materials, be it wood, books, dissembled scientific equipment or discarded toys. An ever expanding list of impressive exhibitions and a growing presence on the London art scene means Chisnall is certainly one to keep an eye on over the next few years.

 

Erika Iris Simmons 

Erika Iris Simmons specialises in recycling old books, cassettes, playing cards and magazines. Her popular series, ‘Ghost in the Machine’, features portraits of musicians made from old cassette tapes. Simmons says of her work, “I don’t really add any paint or pigments… I usually just take things apart and re-arrange the pieces, cutting away portions when necessary… One day as I was leaving to go to work I saw a pile of cassette tapes laying on top of a canvas I had set near my door. I thought, “What ghosts could be hiding in those machines?” I pulled out the ribbon and tried to work with it, making some writing. I watched the ribbon curl up and it reminded me of Jimi Hendrix’s crazy hair, so that was the first portrait I made.”

 

Seo Young-Deok

Korean artist Seo Young-Deok is a sculptor who graduated from the Environmental Sculpture programme at the University of Seoul.  His works are made from – literally – miles of bicycle chains, carefully welded together to crate bodily forms and heads. His large sculpted head, which stands over two metres tall took over a year to build and is made of both recycled and new bike chains. Seo Young-Deok says that he finds inspiration in many places, from construction sites to the bustling Korean markets to traditional Buddhist sculptures.

Thomas Allen

To be honest, Thomas Allen is quite simply one of my favourite artists. Upon first seeing his work, I was completely taken aback and immediately in love with them. Funny, clever, cheeky and perfectly constructed; they stood out in an art world full of tired and unoriginal ideas and dull conceptualism run wild. By carefully cutting out the figures from pulp novels of the 1940s and 50s, then expertly lighting and re-photographing them, Allen has given these books and their implied narratives a new lease of life. A simple idea that simply works perfectly.

Kraken Attack

One of the many things that my lovely partner Marie Bertin and I have in common is our love of octopuses, especially those giant ones of nautical mythology that were said to attack sailing ships in attempts to drag them down to the ocean deep. Marie also makes small, often origami-inspired, jewellery and sculptural pieces from paper so I thought I’d make her this three dimensional decoupage painting on paper (well, on thick mount card to be precise).

 

'Kraken Attack', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

The finished piece you see here is actually the inner box section before the glass and outer frame were added. I photographed it without the frame so as not to get reflections from the glass.

 

'Kraken Attack', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

As you can see from the photos I made this small piece by painting it in four separate elements and cutting them out by hand, before assembling them as a 3D decoupage. Cutting the elements out with a scalpel proved both fiddley and time consuming so I’m glad I went for a modern take on the sea monster legend, and didn’t go with an old time sailing vessel with lots of sails and fiddley rigging to cut out.

 

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

I was partly inspired by a memory of those old theatre sets where they have multiple layers of cut-out depictions of water than are moved back and forth on stage to the give the impression of lapping waves, moving on the ocean’s surface. Although, to be more precise, it’ll be my memories of movie and TV depictions of those stage sets.

 

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

'Kraken Attack (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic decoupage painting by Wayne Chisnall

Retro Post - A Cringeworthy Christmas

 This is a reposting of an article that I wrote some years ago, and pertains to an embarrassingly awkward situation that I got myself into one Christmas. It's also about one of those regrettable memories that I just can't shake, so I thought it best to open old wounds, and share it with you one more time. Enjoy... 

 

A few years ago when I was working for a well known London gallery, a colleague asked me if I knew of anyone that would be interested in earning a bit of extra cash over the festive season doing caricatures at a Christmas party in The City (London) for some big corporation. The job was very well paid, involved a couple of hours of work drawing caricatures of the company's employees - and more free food and drink than any poor starving artist could wish for.

Well... what could I say but 'look no further - here's your man!'

I got the job and being overly confident in the fact that I'd always been pretty good at caricatures at school (they'd got me in and out of trouble with both pupils and teachers alike on more than one occasion) I did no more preparation than buying myself a new set of Tomboy brush pens and turning up at the venue.

At first, everything seemed to be going well. I was introduced to a hip-looking young man and woman who handed me my wages for the night (good start). They both looked super stylish. She had a cool bob (similar to Uma Thurman's in Pulp Fiction) and he was slightly camp and incredibly well turned out. So when they asked to be the first couple to be drawn I had no problems. I quickly rendered them in a minimal, sharp cartoon style that suited their look and everyone was happy.

Then everything seemed to go down hill from that point onwards. Unfortunately the next subject wasn't so aesthetically well rounded and feeling that their true essence wouldn't be captured using the previous style, I changed tack. Instead of creating a fun stylised cartoon version of my new subject I honed in on, and exaggerated, my hapless victim worst features. It wasn't an intentional act of malice. I had merely focused on the most prominent features and run with them – not thinking how the eventual image may turn out. Needless to say, it didn't turn out well – at least not for the subject. They weren't too pleased. I'd even go as far as saying that they may have been a little upset.

I quickly realised my mistake. I had failed to fix on one style, practice it beforehand and stick with it regardless.

By this point I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable – which didn't help when it came to the next subject. Desperate to salvage the situation I tried yet another style but the only problem with this was that unless I stuck with my tried and tested methods there was the chance that the drawing would pay little resemblance to the person in front of me so I soon reverted back to knocking out grotesque renderings from the now large line of people forming next to me.

It was a very strange experience. I seemed to be upsetting an ever-growing number of people yet more of them were queuing up to be humiliated. And the more I tried to alter my style of drawing the worse these sketched monsters turned out (this may have been something to do with the vast number of drinks people were plying me with – which I was eager to consume in an attempt to dull the anxiety).

Not only was there a long queue of people waiting to be sketched but a large group had formed of slightly drunk folks who were obviously enjoying their fellow employees' visual assassinations (at this point I honestly no longer felt in control of what my hands were producing) - so much so that splinter groups were now breaking off from the main mob in search of juicier victims. A couple of them dragged over a lady who must have been the largest person in the whole company. I think that the alarm in my eyes must have mirrored that in hers. My mind was screaming 'please – not her!' but my fingers showed no mercy. One poor chap, after I handed him my rendition of him, simply looked at me with such devastation in his eyes and said 'I'm gonna go home now and hang myself'. I truly believe he didn't really mean it and it was just the drink talking but it obviously didn't ease my conscience.

After two of the longest hours of my life I apologised to the long line of people still waiting to be drawn (I should really have apologised to the ones I'd already sketched) and made my escape. I tell you – once outside of that building, London's air had never before smelt so fresh and the sense of relief never so palpable. I probably won't be doing that again - probably!

Mandalorian Tim

Likenesses aren’t exactly my forte but I will say that I’m quite pleased with this one. It’s of one of my oldest friend’s, Tim Henrick (so unless you know him, you’ll have to take my word for it that the likeness is pretty good). Tim recently turned 55, so for his birthday I thought I’d attempt to make him something special – after all, apart from socks or throwaway joke presents what do you buy for middle aged blokes? As it happens, Tim is a big sci-fi fan, and knowing that he liked the Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, I made this very small acrylic painting (painted with the smallest/finest brush I possess) of him as the Mandalorian character, leaning beside the beloved Baby Yoda/Din Grogu character.

 

'Tim as The Mandalorian', 2023, small acrylic painting by Wayne Chisnall

I thought I’d include some work-in-progress shots to show how I actually painted this small piece. I approached it akin to one of my illustration styles (mostly painting in one small section at a time until the entire surface has been filled) than say, one of my fine art oil painting styles, where I might apply paint at almost random points across the canvas's surface until the image emerges and I decide that the work has reached completion (or a reasonable/aesthetically pleasing point of abandonment).

 

'Tim as The Mandalorian (work-in-progress)', 2023, acrylic painting by Wayne Chisnall

You might have noticed a bit of graffiti, ‘Livvy woz ere’, painted on the wall behind Mandalorian Tim’s right shoulder. This is because Tim’s daughter is called Vivvy and I thought it fun to include her in the piece somehow.

 

You might have also noticed that I signed the painting ‘Chig’. This is something I rarely do anymore, but as most of my old friends still know me by my nickname, and this is how I used to sign my work back in the 80s and 90s when I was a magazine illustrator, I thought it appropriate to sign it this way in this instance.

And When I’m a Man… (Rediscovered Slides)

Following on from my earlier blog post about rediscovered slides of some of my art college work (and, through shear laziness, lifting its opening paragraph word for word), here are a few images of And When I’m a Man I’ll Think as a Man, a life-sized sculpture of myself as a pre-assembly model kit.

 

Back in the 90s, before digital photography was really a thing, if you were an art student wanting to document your work, you were told slide film photography was the way to go. Or at least that’s what we at the University of Northampton were told; the idea being that when you then went on to be interviewed for a place on an MA course at another university, the images of your work would be viewed as projections via a slide projector. This all seems archaic now, and to be honest, it probably was even back then. By the time I left university in 99 the only University I knew of that still required applicants to submit slides was the Royal Academy. Most other institutions preferred photographs (printed-out rather than emailed, as email was still a relatively new concept to most people back then) or to see an artist’s physical portfolio.

 

And the reason I’m rabbiting on about slides? Well, that’s because a friend of mine kindly offered to digitally scan a folder full of slides that Id’ taken (around 25 years ago) of my student artwork. After he’d scanned them I was quite excited to see the results, especially as most of the artwork from that period either no-longer exists or is no-longer in my possession. However, apart from a few reasonable examples, there wasn’t that much call for excitement. Many of the slides were over or under exposed. Although, I had expected this as, as students, we were taught to bracket our photos (take the same shot at several different exposures) to increase the chance of getting a decent photo. Another section of slides all had identical dark marks on them; presumably there had been dirt on the lens of the camera that I was using to document my work. Oh well – I’ll put all that down to experience (and inexperience).

  

It's not always easy to remember what one was thinking when originally making a piece of artwork, especially when it was so long ago. However, in the case of And When I’m a Man I’ll Think as a Man, I do remember its origin story. At the time (on the 2^nd year of my BA Hons course in Fine Art at the University of Northampton) I was using old toys as reference materials and exploring the notion of childhood perceptions of adulthood, and how children role play adult situations using toys of adult figures. This might all sound a bit highfaluting but the inspiration for this sculpture actually came about through a drunken pub conversation with fellow students. We were talking about things we remembered from childhood and I mentioned that when I was a kid I loved making plastic model kits; not of planes, trains and automobiles like most other kids were making at the time, but of things like spaceships, classic horror movie characters (or anything macabre), and superheroes. This was all way back before comic book and sci-fi is as mainstream as it is today, so these toys weren’t as easy to come by as they are today.

 

Anyway, that night, under the influence of probably far too much alcohol, I half joked that I was going to make a life-size version of myself as a model kit. And the next morning, once I’d sobered up, that’s what I set about doing. I made moulds for all the body parts of the sculpture by casting parts of my own body, and from these moulds I created the fibreglass castings. Once these castings were cleaned up and trimmed the shape (a long a laborious process that I won’t bore you with) I attached them to a frame that I built out of PVC tubing. Then, after lots of filling, sanding and spray painting I had the finished sculpture that you see here in these early slides, which were taken in the photography studio at the University of Northampton (then known as Nene College, although, it did change its name to that of the university just before I graduated).

Mariella Frostrup: Times Radio Interview

Last Wednesday (12th July 2023), I was delighted to have been invited by Times Radio to talk about the issue of London's exodus of artists, on the show Mariella Frostrup: Life and Times. As well as possessing one of the most distinctive voices in the world, Mariella is also one of our best-loved arts broadcasters and writers (so not at all intimidating then). Also talking to Mariella on the show was Ted Hodgkinson - Head of Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre in London. 

Unfortunately, because of a previous radio segment over-running, our chat ended up being relatively brief but it was still a pleasure to get to talk to the legendary broadcaster.

I'm not sure how long the show will be available on catch-up, but if you're reading this shortly after I posted it, you can catch the first half of our discussion here (it starts from 11.26 minutes in) and listen to the second half here.

Oli Bennett Secret Cards 2023

Here are the four pieces that I created for this year's secret postcard sale in aid of the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust, which took place at Westminster School on the 22^nd June.

 

Set up on a similar model to the RCA Secret postcard exhibition and sale (which hasn't been on for a few years now), the Oli Bennett Secret Cards event exhibits a range of original A5-sized artworks, all created and donated by artists. The postcards are then sold off to the public at £60 each, to raise money for charity. All the cards are presented anonymously, with the artists' signatures written on the backs of the postcards.

 

The charity was set up to commemorate the name of Oli Bennett, a young man killed in the World Trade Centre attack of 9/11, and to provide funding and grants for young people with business ideas, many of whom are from underprivileged backgrounds.

 

To see the rest of the cards in this year's check out olipostcards.com

Chimp Pills

Back in the 90s, before digital photography was properly a thing, if you were an art student wanting to document your work, you were told slide film photography was the way to go. Or at least that’s what we at the University ofNorthampton were told; the idea being that when you finished your BA (Hons) Degree and then went on to be interviewed for a place on an MA course at another university, the images of your work would be viewed as projections via a slide projector. This all seems archaic now, and to be honest, it probably was even back then. By the time I left university in 99 the only university I knew of that still required applicants to submit slides was the Royal Academy. Most other institutions preferred photographs (printed-out rather than emailed, as email was still a relatively new concept to most people back then) or to see an artist’s physical portfolio.

 

And the reason I’m rabbiting on about slides? Well, that’s because a friend of mine kindly offered to digitally scan a folder full of slides that Id’ taken (around 25 years ago) of my student artwork. After he’d scanned them I was quite excited to see the results, especially as most of the artwork from that period either no-longer exists or is no-longer in my possession. However, apart from a few reasonable examples, there wasn’t that much call for excitement. Many of the slides were over or under exposed. Although, I had expected this as, as students, we were taught to bracket our photos (take the same shot at several different exposures) to increase the chance of getting a decent photo. Another section of slides all had identical dark marks on them; presumably there had been dirt on the lens of the camera that I was using to document my work. Oh well – I’ll put all that down to experience (and inexperience).

 

Luckily the slide I took of my Chimp Pills print came out reasonably well, and only needed a little cleaning up on the computer. Chimp Pills is one of the missing prints from my university days. At some point during the many times I changed address in London, after leaving university, various portfolios of prints just got left behind. However, I recently discovered the original plates (that I made in order to create the print) in a small portfolio that I had somehow managed to hang onto during my numerous studio, flat, and warehouse moves over the last quarter century. So maybe I’ll get to reprint Chimp Pills, if I ever get access to a printing press again. I do miss printing, so maybe I should find a nearby print workshop and get back into it.

 

It's not always easy to remember what one was thinking when originally making a piece of artwork, especially when it was so long ago. Chimp Pills (at least that’s what I’m now calling it – I don’t think it had a title at the time) was made early on during my time at the University of Northampton. This was shortly before my switch to sculpture, when I still saw myself as a printmaker. I first became interested in printmaking on a previous fine art degree course at Bournville in Birmingham, where I became enamoured with a low-tech form of printmaking called collagraphy. Chimp Pills is an example of this, but with an added element. Once I’d created the collagraphy plates I then overlaid them with a collage of images, using a photosensitive transfer material that was originally used in the manufacture of computer circuit boards. 

What I do remember about that period is that I was interested in aspects of memory, and of forming connections between unconnected things purely by having images of them sit alongside one another, and with the repetition of images. This was something that triggered a few interesting discussions between myself and various tutors at the time.

 

I’m no-longer sure why I hit upon the chimp element of this print but looking at the rest of Chimp Pills I’m pretty sure that I reused some manipulated images of pills, that had previously be created for use in a friend’s short stop motion animation film, that we both spent a weekend working on. Oddly enough, at the time of writing this, I’m sitting on a train travelling up to Yorkshire to see that very friend Lisa Kelly.

Blackbird's Prayer

Blackbird's Prayer is the latest in a line of what I like to call my minimal intervention sculptures. These are sculptures I've made from found materials, where I've done little actual manipulation of the materials themselves. Instead, I either mount and display a material in pretty much the same state as I found it (letting its intrinsic qualities speak for themselves) or I put together two or more found objects/materials to create an altogether new object, as is the case with my earlier piece, War of The Rosies.

Blackbird's Prayer came about through the tidying up a log store in my back garden. As I was removing the logs I turned the one containing the blackbird nest on its end and was instantly taken with its visual impact - looking like some primitive, gaping-mawed Earth deity. Having decided that it was perfect exactly as it was all I then did was to drill a hole into it, from the underside upwards, and mount it on a rusty old display stand that I had lying around in my art store.

'War of The Rosies' by artist Wayne Chisnall

I suppose that technically this can be seen as a collaboration piece between myself and the blackbird that built the nest, although, not a conscious collaboration on her part. Oddly enough, about two days after I removed the dried-out wood with its attached nest (from last year's nesting season), the blackbird returned and proceeded to build a new nest in the same part of the log store. The nesting site is only a few feet from my kitchen door and, as she's unfazed by my comings and goings, I've taken to leaving food out for her - partly as thanks for her creative contribution. As you can see from the photo of my collaborator, sitting in her nest, I've fortified the surrounding area with a bit of barbed wire to hopefully deter the local cats from investigating too closely. For some reason, blackbirds prefer to nest relatively close to the ground. Maybe it's so that their fledglings don't have as far to fall when they first leave the nest.

3 'Hollow Dog' oil sketches, 2020, by artist Wayne Chisnall

It's serendipitous that this new find should so fit with my existing body of work, what with the orifice theme that runs through some of it, or with the similarity to the Hollow Dogs, the wide-mouthed creatures that appeared from seemingly nowhere during my self-imposed 12-month-long oil painting challenge. Or maybe it's because of the these similarities that I was drawn to this beautiful find in the first place. 

Blackbird, nesting in the log store, 2023