08/06/2026
While rusting the deer sculpture, I noticed what had been left behind on the workshop floor.
Water carrying iron oxide had dripped from the sculpture, soaked into the concrete and slowly formed a stain that looked almost like a nebula suspended in space.
It wasn't something I had made intentionally, yet I found it quite beautiful.
I've long been fascinated by artworks that record an action rather than depict one.
I remember seeing Andy Goldsworthy's Sheep Paintings at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. A mineral lick was placed at the centre of a canvas and sheep gathered around it. Mud, hoofprints and droppings gradually built up a record of their activity. When the lick was removed, a clean white circle remained at the centre — a witness to something no longer there.
I was reminded too of Cornelia Parker's Room for Margins, where the stained canvas linings removed from Turner paintings are presented in their own right. The marks left by age, flooding, stretching and restoration become unexpectedly moving. They speak of fragility, value and survival, but also of all the unseen years hidden behind the paintings themselves.
What interests me in all three is that they weren't made to be artworks.
They are residues. Side effects. Records.
Evidence that something happened.
Perhaps that's why I find them so compelling. They ask us to pay attention to the temporary, the incidental and the overlooked; to the traces that remain after the main event has passed.
If you've read this far off be interested to know what you think.
