John Blakemore
Literature
John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011, p154.John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (illustrated full page p.154)
Image size: 37 x 31 cm
in ink bottom left, signed in ink bottom right
John Blakemore writes that “The tulip work began during a period of crisis in my practice.
In attempting to define the parameters of a continuing, a possible practice I was writing and studying critical theory. The activity of writing was both pleasurable and frustrating, the blank page a tyranny which on occasion necessitated escape.
I decided to photograph as a parallel activity, an exploration of picture making to complement and inform my writing. The room in which I most often wrote was my kitchen, a confined space, a table, chairs, pictures on the wall, and on the table (a coincidence of season) a bowl of tulips, photographed, initially, because they were there, one element of the space I had decided to explore.
Gradually the tulip emerged as the dominant motif, as object of a continuing fascination, text and pretext for an activity of picture making.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p144))
John Blakemore writes that
"The tulip is a flower of sensual and gestural elegance, of constant transformation, worthy of contemplation, of a prolonged and intensive scrutiny. The sustained working and reworking of a theme, a motif, facilitates an accumulation of reference through which the tulip can function both as object of celebration and as metaphor." (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p152))