Gordon 'Vincent' Gorilla's paintings are viewed at first viewed with affection and amusement by his friends who had always known Gordon to be a bit odd. When he began to hang large callico canvases on the outside wall of the communal shed however one or two eyebrows began to raise. Could it be that Gordon was edging towards a kind of neoprimitivism in his work? Surely Gordon was not about to propose a return to that terrible period of heroic abstraction that was in reality a simple extension of commodity worship? The tribe began to eye one another anxiously.
At first all is well, encouraged by his friend David Ainley, Gordon aka'Vincent' begins to explore his more atavistic instincts with the aid of household gloss acryllics charcoal and oil pastilles. He calls his paintings by mysterrious names such as 'Rage of the Gorilla kings' and 'Outpourings from the inner Gorilla' Gordons paintings become well regarded in the forest and his mum is quite proud of him.
Drawn by all the laughter and shouting, Pablo takes a break from studying art history and comes over to see his friend Gordon. Pablo complains bitterly that his tutors blog is so boring. Gordon gives him the necklace and then suggests http://artintelligence.net/ as a place to go and find out many groovy things. Gordon notices sadly that with his necklace goes his golden sheen; folornly he finds himself wondering why Pablo doesnt light up the way he did-then he remembers that Pablo is already a catholic and so doesnt get worked up about such things.
" The meaning of a work of art was mapped along a number of cognitive axes, its affinities and differences with other images being just one of those-and not neccesarily the strongest. Art was a public, philosophical school; manipulative imagery serving superstitious belief and private gratification could be had from a thousand other sources." ..Thomas Crow unwritten histories of CConceptual Art (In Art after conceptual Art Alberro&Buchanan) "Hmmmm, " pondered Gordon the gorilla: "Personally I wonder about all this. I am not,as it happens, an undergraduate in this philosophical academy, I am a simple middle aged gorilla seeking to make sense of things as best he can-the ideologies of Art are just that and I did not write them nor pay dues to their masters."
When we come to painting there are other things to say. I am very interested in the questions of meaning and the ability of art to carry meaning. At this early stage in my painting I find myself grappling with the same concern of somehow 'striking a chord' yet without the insistence or moral seriousness the earlier New York school. How to be oneself and yet relate to a view in painting-to a school or a manifesto-to have an intention and follow it.
