Shaun Caton

Improvised paintings for Shaun Caton’s Prehistoric School of Barbaric Painting – Task No.001

Part of Shaun’s task was to do with shutting off ones conscious decision making process when making paintings and to work in a more intuitive way. Having completed the first and second parts of the task which involved large compositions on cardboard with acrylic and emulsion, we wanted to do a couple of additional smaller paintings in oil. Informally we called these ‘Jazz paintings’ but what they are really is improvised compositions i.e. we allow them to have a life of their own: we apply paint and see what motifs present themselves.. We started with two canvases of the same size so that we could both work at the same time, set an alarm and painted for 20 minutes, then swapped over and worked on the other

one for 20 minutes and so on. Also we wanted to go with the flow and allow the images to unfold in front of us without judging ourselves or the other person too harshly. Sometimes its hard to fully understand what’s being attempted by someone else and the temptation is to change it in some way or completely obliterate it. It’s an exercise in trust and a commitment to the collaborative process.

SHAUN CATON TASK UPDATE – A FILM IN WHICH KEELERTORNERO PAINT A LARGE PAINTING

As a continuation of Shaun’s task THE PREHISTORIC SCHOOL OF BARBARIC PAINTING we chose to make a film of us creating a 4×4 metre improvised painting. The intention was to connect with the unconscious mind and allow the painting to develop in an intuitive way, attempting to disregard intellectual decision making. We filmed the process over one day and invited other people to respond spontaneously to the painting by way of costume and movement.

Thanks to Anna Smith, Nick Wild and Annette Parnell for getting involved.

Some of the costumes made during the painting performance

SHAUN CATON TASK UPDATE #01 – LARGE PAINTINGS ON CARDBOARD

After the CHINESE OPEN rooster paintings, we decided to make one very large painting to tackle the Shaun Caton task (400x400cm) and film it so you can see how it develops over the course of a day. The film is to become a performance and as requested in the task, we will make costumes to paint in and invite others to do the same.

The paintings on this page are smaller pieces we did in preparation for the bigger one. They are not meant to be viewed as final pieces but rather points on a journey, they are more about the process. Shaun came to see these this week and suggested that when painting the big one, we try to release our grip on the idea of composition, to open ourselves up to the unexpected, to let things happen. Subscribe to this site to get updates on how this ends up.

We welcome any comments you may have. See below.

FIRST TASK NO.001: SHAUN CATON – THE PREHISTORIC SCHOOL OF BARBARIC PAINTING

Our first task has been set by performance artist and painter SHAUN CATON. He has given us this title: The Prehistoric School of Barbaric Painting and we are to make a series of archaic paintings/drawings/monotypes.

We started looking at the project in early February and the initial plan was to make a cave painting installation for a group show called LE COQ ARTISTES – CHINESE OPEN at the Q-park in London’s west end. We wanted to make the whole thing out of discarded cardboard and have it so that you could only view the images by illuminating them with your mobile phone. The idea was to paint the cave walls with images inspired by what had been set out in Shaun’s task and to partly reference the atmosphere of ancient cave painting. After a day trying out different things, it became clear that is was not working (see image 1 below) so we had to take a radical new direction. Even though we really like these paintings we didn’t feel as though we were addressing the task. We liked the scale of them and the surface but felt we needed to go back and look at what Shaun had specified. Come back and see where it went from there..