So my time has come to end my time here on the residency, but I feel that this experience is one that may always remain with me, the nature of Reside and its intimacy is special in that way. I highlighted my journey over the last six months in my previous post and so I am left with one final piece of work to add before finally passing the residency over to the next artist. 

I ended up with taking one of my ink drawings and creating from it an alternative to the construction for coastline. This piece seems to leave me open to suggestions, but with a firmer grip on getting to places, maybe towards one final place? Unknown places? It seems also to leave something behind; recent times, ancient times. Yet it sits firmly in the constant now and firmly for a future of the private and intimate and the universal. There are many questions that remain with me; where do I and will I reside? What places will I go to as my work unfolds?  

I sit and look at the drawing, cut and placed to represent a large steel piece looking out at the Atlantic, facing the passing of each slow moment of eternity, ageing and firm and I think of my own process of creating a correlative to my life, how I face time too. The whole process is full of ambiguity. It will always be that still, melancholic certainty.  

So the time has come for the next artist to embark upon their own journey with Reside. It was a time of much needed thought for me to select, but my choice was to pass this residency over to Michaela Nettell, who will be moving towards a time of great change in her life, one that will mean her coming to terms with her domestic environment and her working practice in new ways. I hope the time with Reside will be as intimate and fruitful as I have found it and she too can cherish it. 

Thankyou Reside for what you allow to be. 

I loved the idea of a voyage around your room and felt for a long time I had been doing just that. My life and work had become about my home; how I existed within it, how all of the unseen and fleeting things we only glimpse in our mind, or from the corner of our eye made themselves acutely aware, how the constraints of this impacted upon me and the art. It was an infinity squeezed into a small and very intimate space. It is why the Reside Residency caught my eye.

Working in this way, as followers of my work will know, is a very melancholic journey expressed through my work and words and made through fear and doubt about time and mortality, about control of time and change. I have learned a lot over the past six months that this residency as taken place, I have been through a lot in my personal life and discovered ways of working I would never have thought of if it were not for this opportunity. I have had that voyage around my room, my home, but what has happened is that the voyage has now expanded outwards to places I would never have thought of; voyages in my mind. I have fought with many ideas in search of the abstraction I have had a vision for over many years and because of the nature of Reside, I have reached that vision through the pieces I made here. 

I started out thinking about painting, painting is where I've ended up, but in a new way. Apart from this, however, I have made some exciting work with small scale model constructions all based upon the idea of the small looming large, constructions that have left me with ideas about making these in the future as real, large scale landscape pieces, but I have been encouraged how these tiny models have worked ambiguously once photographed. They are simple yet have also had the potential to inform my work on paper too.

Drawing has always been a key element, but I departed from it for a while and again, because of the work here, I have returned to it with interest. I made drawings to give idea for the constructions and paintings, but most importantly, I have made drawings that are works that can stand alone, works with depth and experience. 

The paintings have developed a great deal, subtly at times but always forward. They carry, for me, the weight of my thoughts as well as being something that can live on its own, giving back to me even if confronting my self. I believe an artists work should confront the artist. 

From here on, after Reside, the work will continue to move forward as it is and I am excited by it. Above all I'll know now that I can be freed from the constraints of working within the home environment by knowing to reside somewhere means residing in ones own mind and that can take me anywhere. I want to move on to painting large scale work, but space is not allowing that at present. I will, however, take the whole process and idea of Reside with me in my work from here on, because it is a good framework. It will soon be time for a new artist to take their place here and I wish them well. For now, as I think about my last post to come later this month, I wil  continue on and let the residency make one more influence upon my work.           

I was moving along at a steady pace, working on the constructions, then the drawings took on a meaning for me, yet on the horizon were changes I could not see yet may have been lingering in the back of my mind as something I felt was there, waiting and as it waited, silently growing in strength, it became ever closer till it eventually made its way into my life. The result was a prolific week or two of drawing in ink, but this time there was something new added; an anxiousness, a fear and excitement that put me more and more into a place I had not been before. These drawings contained that place and as I have sat thinking about my time on the residency, I have thought more and more about how it truly is a journey in my own home, but not the home as the physical building I live in, but the home that is my mind, the place I truly reside in.

With the constructions I made that journey in my mind as a type of physical visit to a place where the work was sited; a field, or as in the second of the complete pieces, the Cornish coastline. I look at that latter work and am not certain now what it contains, what the sculpture means, but the lurking at the heart of it is real enough. Is this lurking an air of finality that goes on and on without a defined end? Memories of something past that remain lingering forever in a new place, a place of eternal longing? 
 
   

The drawings that made their way out of a place I don't understand were nothing like any I have done before, they came from that deep place where life is playing out in the events of my life and the deepening understanding of my self. I started this residency thinking about painting and now have arrived back at it, making that journey through the drawings that I have translated into my latest painting. I'm not certain about this painting either, but it is where I've come too at this present moment in time. I don't know either what subtle changes will take place from here on, but I do know that certainty that I'm somewhere, or at the least in between here and there, wherever there is. There is obviously a chapter in this residency that is to conclude the journey.     

So, since the last post, I have moved again to another aspect of this development; drawings. It is still part of the same work I have been making on the constructions, only since the previous post I have made yet another which proved even more successful. The paintings and constructions are moving along at the pace I see them staying at now, the work there is stable and able to continue along a defined path. The drawings, however, have been proving a challenge and in finding a way forward with them, I have tried several methods. As with anything I do, it has to be considered, time spent thinking more so than working practical pieces and through the whole process, I look for that way of working that is natural both to myself, the aims and the image. The three mediums; drawing, painting, constructions, need to be able to stand on their own and work in conjunction with each other for the same course and reason. 

The result as been the drawings made with brush and ink, executed quickly and without much thought. 

The mindset I have been in of late as seen me thinking about ancient things, eternity, mortality and the fear of forced changes in my life. I would hope that my work is, despite being about such aspects of life, touching upon the emotions that lie at the core of everyone, those universal yet privately individual concerns that bind us with things not readily understood. I want the work to be more than a representation, or a symbol, or a record of my deepest selves, but a living part of me that was, is and will remain upon that eternal vastness.  

They are a monument of male and female, bound together lives, having purpose, within the spaces where their life was, is and will be played out.

So far, the culmination of the residency as moved away from the painting to see the constructions develop and it has been interesting. I do need to keep the paintings in mind, but this site will most likely continue to see the constructions move forward. I have got to the point where I have begun to use the landscape, but not in reality, but from the mind. The image below is where I'm at, seeing the place and my work come together, the whole thing being a small piece of artwork in itself. 

Moving forward from here now, I can only see this model of work continuing, exploring various constructions in a setting, almost like working with large scale sculpture, but at the same time not.  

Thinking more about the constructions and scale, how and where they may exist. Not having the opportunity, at least at the present, to build in an actual environment, I have been giving thought to some more ideas of the miniature and the appearance of the small looming large. I suppose it goes back again to the idea always in my mind of fitting the cathedral, with all its meaning and affect, into the small space, thus increasing the power in the work. Bottling things up, pent up energy. Of course, it is also about existing within and experiencing my world. I have continued on occasion to have the thoughts of objects creating a presence in a place. 

So, having taking the important time I need to just sit and think, to feel things, wait for something to be felt within me, I saw an open landscape in my thoughts and I wanted to put something in it. Keeping to the idea of the small, I made that place by using modelling and household materials. It was a piece of open countryside sitting on my desk and I gave it life with my mind.  

It sat on my desk, becoming more of a place as time went on. I added the depth, for a sense of reality. 

It waits there now for whatever construction will come to mind, which is the point I am at now. I am certain the interior of the house will still play a part, but it will be an uncertain thing to know how it will respond to the earth site. 

I hope the introduction of a definite place will still bring the feeling and experience of time, stillness, ambiguity. I am certain too, that as I sit and look and be in that piece of country, especially with the construction in place, I will remain in the state of doubt and moving ambiguously through longing and melancholy. 

Since my last post here at Reside, the issue of scale as continued to play on my mind. Mostly I have been considering odd viewpoints around the house, looking up being the dominant angle. I understood at some point during this process that I like the idea of being small in scale to the surroundings, its what makes me feel I am enveloped within an environment, what makes me have to work hard in my mind to try to exercise the control over the time in that environment and yet have also to acknowledge that it will be difficult to do this, or ultimately that the control will be temporary. I have begun to visualise again the outside and how different it is, or if it is only the same as the inside of the house because I am the one who is there. The outside still requires vastness, the large scale of things. 

I have been giving some thought about if it would ever be possible that I could interact directly with the outside. But still, at the moment, the house is still a land in which to explore and it as begun  to be introduced to elements of distance. For the first time, I introduced the figure, simple, but enough to allow the construction to be given scale.      

The image dissolves some of the ambiguity of the space, but that is not the idea, I want to observe how a larger environment would be. Maybe I am thinking back to my paintings, how scale impacts on them, or how it effects the looking. I suppose it is more of this question of how do I feel faced with a place and how it is to move about within it. 

Since my last post I have continued with the new paintings and constructions. The latter have been on my mind since last week, hovering at the back of it whilst working on my latest painting. I have been concerned about their simple, fragile, almost rough way that they are put together and worrying about it. However, I have realised that this results in them having a temporary existence, one that comes together almost without thought, the constituant parts been created and brought together relatively quickly and then once photographed, the actual three dimensional piece is redundant. I like this. Some of the parts are re-used and this ties in with my repetition of elements.

What I do need to do is think about how they can be used passed their current state; a piece photographed. The idea of their small size representing something much larger is good, but I am certain I can do more. As I am working so much within the home, except where I may go within the mind, I am also thinking about how I can move physically into another space, with the same ideas of course.        

I am very happy with how the space becomes ambiguous, uncertain, not quite sure how they are put together as someone observed. I am considering their relation to certain modernist elements and ideas.

In terms of what they represent, I see a certain fragmentation within them as well as the ambiguity; a squeezing of space, an entrapment of time.  

I thought, at first, that my time at Reside would be a process of slow starts with ideas meandering around, simmering for possibilities that lay hidden, for the time being anyhow. What I did not expect was an immediate vision for my work. 

The last few years have seen me working within the constraints of the house and as a consequence of this I have been tied within this 'loop' of emotionally squeezed space. Whilst this has had a positive impact on my work, it has been very difficult to keep reminding myself that a world exists outside of this space. My work, up till now, has demonstrated this interiority but has also, underneath, hinted at potentials elsewhere. The 'marker' that I placed in the image on my previous post became the catalyst for those potentials. 
It is wonderful how sometimes the everyday gives us time to think and dream in a way that informs the mind so as to make changes in the work. What I had lost sight of over recent times is the fact of the openness of the mind to take me out of this space whilst remaining in it, to use my dreams, memories, knowledge as well as the home to open up the space in my work.       

I have begun to understand that even sunlight; in the clouds, or casting reflections upon the windowsill, need not only be a reference to inside, but also to a world behind and beyond them, if I was able to pass through them and to the other side. That I can do within the mind. 

I have always been making my way towards abstraction and finally I have arrived at that place. I have consciously taken the time to wait for that process to fit with the image floating in my mind of what the work may be like. I have been concentrating upon the space of the doors and further on have made a construction that may confirm other ideas as well as hold potentials itself as a process. You can see my new paintings on my website here: Anthony Boswell. I have simply been playing with the space played out on the flat surface, which is why photographing the construction gives a totally different experience to that seeing it in three dimensions.
   

What lies in front for Reside now is open, I am finding it will take me into a long awaited journey with the paintings and a fresh outlook for extensions of that medium. 

I kept thinking about the word reside, thinking about how I take for granted my living in the house. So on a quiet afternoon, I imagined myself going to a part of the house deliberately, with a more mindful concentration of the act of going there, to spend time in a specific position. I chose the top of the stairs.

I sat for a while looking around at the two doors in front of me, the bathroom and rear bedroom. Even though I have always been aware of their detail, the more I sat in the quiet, trying to focus on that corner of the house, the more I began to feel a change in my sense of time; it became timeless, as if any reference to the now disappeared. But eventually, something would bring me back again. In the process of floating in time, different potential histories came into my mind. I became increasingly aware, more than before, of the surface qualities and the effect of light on them, how the varying levels of light influenced my feelings of emotions, presence.

I was interested then in this altering of time with heightened concentration towards the subject. I wanted to try and see if I could find another way of keeping myself in the loop of time. In the living room, in front of the fireplace mirror, I placed a simple object. Again, in this basic experiment, I found the object, on looking for a sustained period of time, took on a presence, it connected to something outside of the room and kept bringing me back to the present. 

I realise the importance then of the artwork being on object that requires time spent with it, looking at it, feeling it as part of the space as an object exerting its own influence. Maybe then it is possible to go beyond the room, find my way into the far margins of these spaces. The work needs this back and forth movement.