Yoricka!

“ Here’s a skull now “- first clown to Hamlet tossing up Yorick’s Skull.

In the Eureka moment, the aha sensation is believed to occur with a break in mental fixation allowing the solution to appear transparent and obvious. Archimedes is legended to have coined the phrase , springing from the bath tub after figuring a water weight ratio system, crying out Eureka through the streets.

Holding up the little placemat paintings as I considered them, I had to laugh at the Yorick moment. I had had a Eureka moment in my Shubh (shower / tub) about a week before. It was unfortunately an understanding of myself, a visceral admission of my own cliché. A Hamlet type depersonalization and seeing of an end. I had to leave the tub to break its spell.

The paintings are little virtuoso performances, with limited time they look into the depersonalization at play in my life. The feigned madness of making paintings. I am trying to surprise myself by painting freely in very naïve ways. Aligning with the cobra art movement and their progeny. The text works are an attempt to bring my collections of language snippets into my art. Influenced by the language poets I want to put the phrases that have stuck alongside my paintings to further the push for a less careful, clichéd output.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a household with lots of Shakespeare. The titles of the works are largely the result of researching Hamlet and applying that research to my painting practice. The artworks are hung in respect to the movements of the play. The artworks are on re purposed place mats.

Nicholas Pound