Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Fuji XE-1, 18-55mm, Nik Silver.
Triptych - FlowerStorm
- Thread starter Rob MacKillop
- Start date
Fuji XE-1, 18-55mm, Nik Silver.
Julian de'Courcy
Well-Known Member
I like these a lot.
Have you ever used ink on Chinese rice paper? Quite different yet a similar quality. I really like these types of images you produce. In a good frame, screen printed on an uneven rough fibre paper,
these would be very marketable. One word would be stunning.
Have you ever used ink on Chinese rice paper? Quite different yet a similar quality. I really like these types of images you produce. In a good frame, screen printed on an uneven rough fibre paper,
these would be very marketable. One word would be stunning.
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Thanks, Julian. Yes, rice paper would be ideal. Must follow that up...
Pete Askew
Admin
Superb Rob. I was looking at them in the showcase earlier. Do you plan to print them (edibly or otherwise)?
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Art you can eat - great idea! I'll print them somehow, sometime...
Pete Askew
Admin
Actually, they'd lend themselves nicely to toast! 
Julian de'Courcy
Well-Known Member
LOLActually, they'd lend themselves nicely to toast!
Glenn Clabo
Well-Known Member
Ah...I love the smell of burnt toast in the morning. You do have an interesting vision Rob. I like it.
Pete Askew
Admin
It's either that or he's bloody hopeless at making toast!
Chris Dodkin
West Coast Correspondent
Toast and Marmite art - you either love it or.... 
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Really sorry, guys, but I'm not appreciating the humour. My problem, not yours.
Pete Askew
Admin
Sorry Rob. My fault. I do really like them though. As viewed above, I was disturbed a bit by the dark edges in two but not the third. But as a triptych with the lighter bordered one in the middle they work very well. Have you seen those frames with three cutouts in the passepartout? That would look good. 
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Cheers, Pete. Passepartout? What's that?
Pete Askew
Admin
Sorry, cutout. The bit in the frame. This is always used as the name in Germany but seems to be out of date in the UK. Most people know it as the companion of Michael Palin on his 'Around the World' journey!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passe-Partout_(framing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passe-Partout_(framing)
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Ah, yes, the mount. That would indeed look good. Thanks.
Sorry I didn't join in the fun. They may be odd abstracts, but I feel very passionate about them. I was making all these pretty pictures of scabious flowers, then the news came on the TV of a bomber in Syria dropping a napalm bomb on a primary school playground, killing lots of kids. It suddenly made what I was doing seem utterly trivial and worthless. I got quite angry, and made these shots. I was thinking of an old Scots ballad, "The Flowers of the Forest" in which the flowers are the youth of the Forest area of Selkirkshire, near the border with England, who were sent off to fight the English at Flodden. Young kids. And they were mown down - flowers indeed. So then I started destroying the flowers, taking shots, looking for a violent image, which I enhanced in the digital darkroom.
Then when it came to putting them online I chickened out, got a bit embarrassed. Still the images were useless. So I called it FlowerStorm, without contextualising it for anyone. So, obviously no one could ever make the connection. It's all my fault. I should have come clean about them from the start. But I've never really attempted to make a political statement before, and I just lacked any confidence in the images to mean anything to anyone. But, of course, that doesn't matter, as they mean something to me, and they represent a reaction I had to terrible news. It doesn't matter if no one else gets it. That said, I began feeling uncomfortable when they started to become a source for humorous comments - comments which ARE humorous. So, don't feel apologetic at all!
Hope that explains things...
Sorry I didn't join in the fun. They may be odd abstracts, but I feel very passionate about them. I was making all these pretty pictures of scabious flowers, then the news came on the TV of a bomber in Syria dropping a napalm bomb on a primary school playground, killing lots of kids. It suddenly made what I was doing seem utterly trivial and worthless. I got quite angry, and made these shots. I was thinking of an old Scots ballad, "The Flowers of the Forest" in which the flowers are the youth of the Forest area of Selkirkshire, near the border with England, who were sent off to fight the English at Flodden. Young kids. And they were mown down - flowers indeed. So then I started destroying the flowers, taking shots, looking for a violent image, which I enhanced in the digital darkroom.
Then when it came to putting them online I chickened out, got a bit embarrassed. Still the images were useless. So I called it FlowerStorm, without contextualising it for anyone. So, obviously no one could ever make the connection. It's all my fault. I should have come clean about them from the start. But I've never really attempted to make a political statement before, and I just lacked any confidence in the images to mean anything to anyone. But, of course, that doesn't matter, as they mean something to me, and they represent a reaction I had to terrible news. It doesn't matter if no one else gets it. That said, I began feeling uncomfortable when they started to become a source for humorous comments - comments which ARE humorous. So, don't feel apologetic at all!
Hope that explains things...
Pete Askew
Admin
That does indeed Rob and it is an admirable (and effective) attempt at expressing your rage (outrage). Thanks for the explanation and the links you have made really do make sense. And when you re-examine the images in this light they do make huge sense. I'm not sure that they express your anger but they do, for me, conjure up images of battle - the sort of panic etc seen in newsreel of actual battle / early film by Kubrick etc. But the title doesn't give that lead in - maybe 'The Flowers of the Forest' would though. Not sure. Still like the images.
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Cheers, Pete. You are right about the title. On my 500px portfolio, it is called Triptych for the Children of Syria.
Anyway, the whole experience has been a learning one for me. But I'm not sure what the lesson is.
Anyway, the whole experience has been a learning one for me. But I'm not sure what the lesson is.
Pete Askew
Admin
In many ways your intention reminds me of the sequence of paintings that Gerhard Richter produced about the Red Army Faction (Baader Meinhof Group). The intensity and impact is made greater by the superficial obscurity.
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
Now you are over compensating
Rob MacKillop
Edinburgh Correspondent
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