My piece 'Cyanotype' 2024 moves to it's new home at Acland Burghley School

To celebrate my painting, Cyanotype, being installed at its new home in the reception of Acland Burghley School in North London, I have written a short text about the origins of the work and what it means to me. 

Photos of the painting in situ can be found on my Studio Practice blog:
https://www.tumblr.com/louisloveless/796764168946696192/photos-of-my-painting-cyanotype-installed-in-the

Cyanotype, 2024
Oil on canvas

I had the idea to make this piece many years before I put brush to canvas. The initial intention was to create a painting that resembled a cyanotype, a form of photographic print originally used for blueprints. I have long been interested in the relationship between painting and photography, and the conceptual nature of making work that features characteristics of both. When I imagined what such a painting would look like, the image in my mind's eye was of a modernist building with a long, concrete ramp. I don’t know exactly why that was, but after a few years of the idea resting in the back of my mind, I came to the realisation that my secondary school fit that description. The subject of an artist’s old school inhabits a much more personal tone than the original conceptual idea alone. By pure coincidence, an old friend of mine from the Royal Drawing School foundation year ended up working at my old school and offered to show me around, and I took the opportunity to photograph the place. It was these that I worked from when making the painting. For many, secondary school is a turbulent time, with ups and downs, joy and difficulty, and I was no exception. But on visiting the school for the first time in over ten years, I was flooded with happy memories and positive associations, and realised I had perhaps been remembering my school years in a far more negative light than was deserved. Suddenly, the importance of the monochrome blue colour palette became apparent: if rose-tinted spectacles indicate looking backward with an inaccurate level of positivity, blue-tinted specs would be my guess for the opposite. This development added another layer of meaning to the work that evolved during the process of preparation and painting. The personal nature of the work continued when I considered my identity as an artist in relation to my parents, who are also both artists. My parents have always encouraged me to be creative and pursue my art, and that allowed me to take it seriously, but children will always find a way to rebel. Both my parents are printmakers, and my small act of rebellion was to not focus on printmaking but instead focus on painting, something neither of them does. In making a painting that’s meant to look like a print, I realised that this work could be considered a pastiche of my parents' practices, a good-hearted jab. In donating this work to my old school, I feel a mini-lifecycle has been completed, with the piece now residing in its rightful home.