My latest completed work has the rather unglamorous title ‘3477 Items listed for sale’. The image derived from an interest in the way the internet is influencing and changing the way we live. The scale and accessibility of resources we now have to can enrich us immensely by giving access to more news, analysis and knowledge than ever before. It provides choices as consumers too, provided we have the wherewithal, to select the best match to our desires at the keenest price, from anywhere in the world without leaving your house. So forinstance, if we look on one website, Amazon, for a women’s coat or jacket, we’d find over 10,000 options available to us. My work shows one third of those listed.

But there are also negatives to all this. The spread of disinformation or ‘fake news’ causes confusion and worse, and the knowledge internet service providers now have on their users can be dangerous if it is used for the wrong purpose and people. And even the increase in consumer choice has its downside – the move to ever cheaper production and delivery is accentuated in order to compete, giving rise to lower wages, zero hours contracts and the gig economy. It is truly a second industrial revolution, with the same impact as the first, which is to increase availability of goods but at the expense of greater division of wealth in society, between those that control and those that service.

Consumerism too has now affected the art market. Previously art had been more about status with works commissioned by the wealthy and powerful. Art is now seen more and more as commodity and investment, and marketed as such. This is referenced in the fact that edition size for the print is 3477, highlighting that my work is just another product like the coats shown in the image.

Masters Print Exhibition at Bankside Gallery

This picture only became “American Selfie” half way through it’s development over a period of around 5 months. It started out as one of my ‘fake art’ pieces (see earlier posts), extracting and magnifying sections of one of my earlier paintings , ‘After the Bombing, Yemen’. These extracts then suggested a resemblance to certain structures, which I incorporated within the new work. These were primarily either faces or figures, and one in particular reminded me a little of a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and Donald Trump.

For better or for worse, I decided to take the latter course, so the picture started to take shape as an allegory or commentary on Trump’s America. Early on the idea of making Trump appear as one of the faces on a reimagined Mount Rushmore seemed apt. Originally in my first sketch and draft painting on paper, Obama was there too, but by the time I moved to the canvas for the final painting, Obamam had been replaced by Rupert Murdoch, highlighting the importance of the Fox Network in promoting Trump.

However the ‘selfie’ part of the iamge had still not surfaced. In the original draft, the large grotesque figure at the front had been more zombie like with a hand outsretched towards the veiwer. This grotesque figure gradually morphed into a couple, one of who was aiming a gun towards the viewer. Finally the gun was transferred to a new sniper character (and upgraded to an AK47), and replaced with the iPhone with which the couple snap a selfie along with the rest of the cast.

Other figures changed throughout the process – Beyonce was once in there, and the kneeling Kaepernick had previously been both the fallen statue from Guernica and the peasant about to be shot from Goya’s The 3rd of May. Besides Trump, three figures that remained constant through out the process were Facebook character as the devil shown on the left, the fascist saluting, and the police suspect/victim on the right.

The overall impression is meant to be one of a chaotic and dark scene reflecting the current state of the USA. A final very thin dark wash was applied across the whole surface to help darken the image and make it more closely resemble the finish and look of an old master.