Geoffrey Odgers - My & Don Quixote's Enigmatic Journey

Wednesday 31 July - Sunday 18 August 2024

Click here for artwork by Geoffrey Odgers

My creative practice has always been to take a serial attitude towards subject stimulation confronting me. My belief in Stoicism helps me to have the confidence that comes from knowing that I have the ability to deal with problems; I thrive on them. Stoicism also reinforces the only thing that matters is to aim to be the best person/artist I can be at all times.

This current series of works continues this research into image development and articulation. I am assured in my own lifelong creative search by Professor Stavans assertion regarding Don Quixote quest, however absurd it may seem, that:-
One must live in a genuine way, passionately, in spite of what people think.
(Prof. I. Stavans, Sept 2015, Don Quixote).

I am fascinated by the implied and real lines in nature and the built environment. I enjoy the ability to create line, marks, shapes suggesting the play and imagination, without narrative and the restricting need for realism.

The unabashed use of pure decoration for this series was a decision for me to begin with oil stick application, initially as a drawing tool, then overlaying dots and dashes denoting the irregular patterns of aggregates in the rough repair patches. I wanted to add that graphic element because footpaths themselves are linear, rectangular, geometric, joined lines, joint lines, expansion joints and then, of course, we get the cracks, patches and repairs; hasty and ill-repaired parts that add to the clash between organic and geometric which is always a fascinating thing.

Returning to decoration, my love of Vuillard’s overall patterned surface and Seurat with his poetic drawings synthesising shapes to very basic patterns. The Braque billiard tables and the late Atelier paintings featuring patterned birds where the patterns which feature make known images unknown: the implication being that whilst we know what it is, we don’t know what it is. Pattern and decoration allow me to use this dichotomy between the flat and textured. These artists re-verify my maxim of variety without chaos.

Creatively, footpaths are a metaphor for travel: forwards/backwards, linear/sideways, arrival/departure and endless movement into the unknown.