Empty Rooms - Empty Minds | Indoor Street Art by Paul Baines

Empty Rooms - Empty Minds

Jan 7th 2009
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Walls Have Space We all like our peace, our quiet, moments of solitude and of course our personal space, but I as many of us appreciate the fact that the beauty of a blank white wall can only be appreciated if it lies adjunct to another that carries something of interest, something hopefully to inspire or bemuse, an image or object of some form that may in it’s own small way enhance one’s own landscape of the mind, or portraiture of society, a mirror, however twisted that may provide relief from the relentless banality of the familiar, or rather over familiar.

A lesson taught to me again and again whilst attending arts college, driven home and hard by the incessant growling of a rather elderly and somewhat bitter lecturer there was the beauty of space, the composition of emptiness, and how it can frame each work of art, each painting, print, or sculpture above, below and to either side.

I live with my partner Christina is a very tall and thin Victorian house, past its splendour of the past, remodelled and gutted by generations to afford as much width as possible. The walls reach up at least twenty feet or more in some areas, providing vast chasms of white plaster which point to featureless ceilings, bar the occasional brass chandelier or ceiling rose. As soon as the majority of redecoration was completed we made sure to fill the walls with art, I really should take photos one day, although if their are any opportunistic burglars reading you will be disappointed, we own nothing of great commercial value.

With our limited means at the time we managed to procure a large batch of vintage advertising prints which we framed and hung around the tall stairways and halls as well as in some of the larger rooms. For all our hard work, all the paint and plaster, the sanded floorboards and soft furnishings, only images, only art and design could and still do enhance our home. We find too much white space depressing, something that I had time to wonder about when confined in various hospitals through my years, white is cheap, white is manageable and makes no statement of intent, white space simply sits and waits, and if you let it stew it will enclose around you and become as confining and constricting as any dark room of meagre proportions.

One of the marvellous benefits to paintings, prints, photography and other two-dimensional artistic mediums is their transportability, essentially once you tire of an image you can move it. Unlike awful printed wallpaper, art, for the main part, has the intention of evoking meaning, rather than a diatribe of pattern of colour, whereby "decor" is nothing more than a cheap magician’s attempt at trying to distract the punter from their inevitable tedium and boredom, primarily evoked by the stifling architecture of most residential structures.

I was recently talking with Mark Westall at FadWebsite.com (who is featuring an interview with me at the moment), he pointed me towards a great arts site at PicturesOnWalls.com and asked me if I had any signed limited prints available at the moment. I realised it was time to take the collection to the next level and thus I’m in talks with a few local screen-printers and will soon be selling my own works directly from my blog, and hopefully at POW one day (if they will have me). In the meantime I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the other art works available there…

3D DEL NAJA offers a small but sumptuously demonic selection of prints, certain mythological aspects of Naja’s work remind me of Jean-Michel Basquiat, their particular swathe of colour and line, the underlying "primitive feel" to each design, the dark and brooding atmosphere evoked by each work. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but for me, personally, Naja has corned this territory with aplomb.

AIKO - originally part of Faile - branched out on her own in 2006 and hasn’t looked back. As you may or may not know I am a fan of Faile and everything and everyone associated with this unique hybrid collective. I’ve spent many years working with collage, I even gained my arts degree doing similar though simpler work and am glad to see this sub-genre finally breaking into the mainstream.

BANKSY - I think it’s no surprise I’ve included this guy, he’s probably the nearest Britain has to a leader in the new wave of street art having created so many iconic works and having been at it so many years! All of his works are sold out (which again is obviously no surprise either) - so you’ll just have to wait and see if any more turn up at Pictures on Walls, or anywhere for that matter!

CLEON PETERSON is new to me, and has a lot to offer! Right now there is this work, The Occupation is available as a set of four limited edition signed prints and has a remarkable resemblance in style to many images by Paul Driessen of Yellow Submarine fame. This deceptively colourful piece depicts a scene of lurid and graphic violent tendencies.

FAILE as mentioned earlier is a superb coalltion of street artists from the USA with a unique and rather astounding approach to collage and photo-montage. Appropriating old comic art and manipulating it for their own purposes, providing contemporary meanings in a challenging format. Their fame and thus the price of their works has risen substantialy over the past few years. As you might have guessed by now all of their work is currently sold out.

HEWLETT aka Jamie Hewlett is best known for his work on Tank Girl and as the artist behind the Gorillaz project with Damon Albarn (lead singer of Blur). I appreciate his smooth and fluid style overlaid with raucous angles and faux-Manga style, His piece Large Window is particularly effective. I have always been intrigued with the use of stained glass as a medium, as well as it’s Trompe L’oeil possibilities.

Another of my favourites, I’ve wrote about Sickboy before and particularly appreciate his slant on life, art and the corporate conspiracy of modern life in general. Deep down I prefer his 3D works, however his prints are still well worth collecting, you can always recognise his pieces by their trademark "McColours" as with many the work "Save The Youth" is also printed in infamously bold tones of red and yellow.

There are plenty more artists and prints available at the PicturesOnWalls.com gallery, and it’s definitely worth checking back if your favourite piece is sold out as they regularly update the collection with new works and artists. Besides anything is better than living in a flock wallpaper tomb of ones’ own making. Who knows perhaps you’ll even see my work available at POW one day. We shall see!