Writings


“What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

Wittgenstein


I believe passionately that it is vitally important for an artist to not merely show their work but to explain and clarify its meaning and intent in as much detail as possible. As I have quoted elsewhere on this site, "A picture is worth a thousand words - but which thousand words?" Far from its meaning being self evident, an image is essentially mute.

Clarification of my work processes and practice are, I feel, an integral part of who I am; as an artist and personally.

For this reason I decided sometime ago to document selected images from my oeuvre in as clear and honest a fashion as I could. That enterprise became my blog, Ian Talbot :: Retrospective. Surprisingly, whatever usefulness it may have for someone seeking to understand what I do and why, the exercise has served to clarify in my own mind just what motivates and concerns me in my artistic endeavours. If it finds no other audience then it has at least not been a wasted effort.

Recently I have also started a new project to document my latest work in progress. This project reflects my research, thinking and processes in real time, as it were, rather than the purely reflective nature of my Retrospective blog. I have called this new blog Reality By Proxy...

You can read my blogs here...

Ian Talbot :: Retrospective

Reality By Proxy

Or you can see a feed of the last five posts in each blog using the links in the menu on the left.