Connecting the Circuits

With Equation M Electro Cell, I wanted to return to the hardware – the physicality of things, rather than how computers operate.

When I look at the finished painting, this feels like a heat-hazed circuit board, a motherboard still holding warmth from the last surge of power. Immediately I recalled my dad’s interest in electronics. I’ve written before about the “type: The Unfathomable… Artist – Electronic Version”. Equation M Electro Cell sits in that lineage of technical references.

My dad worked with soldering irons, resistors and capacitors. I work with pigments, surface and the subconscious. The instruments are different, yet the impulse is recognisable: to make a connection, to get something to come alive, to coax an interconnection between the inanimate and human.

Process

To give the central form its particular presence, the painting needed to be built carefully. I began by painting the surrounding ground in that deep near-black and allowing it to dry completely. The surface became a kind of stable void for the central characterisation to materialise.

Only then, the following day, did I lay in the central block of colour, working the wet paint precisely. This is the intricate part. While the paint was still malleable, I used sandpaper edge to drag, scrape, and meticulously draw through the layers. The method hints at Gerhard Richter’s drag techniques, although here the abrasive surface of the paper takes the place of a squeegee.

The sandpaper pulls the golds, ochres, electric blues and violets sideways across the image. It micro-reduces the physical texture whilst increasing the visual depth, carving out bands and striations that feel close to etched copper tracks on a printed circuit board.

Upon producing the chance ‘double M waveform equation’ at the top right of the colour block, I decided this is the entire piece itself. Further interventions with the sandpaper were measured visually—finite, and inch-by-inch considered in specific colour block areas.

Whenever I note a valuable artistic representation in a piece, I do everything to preserve the uniqueness – purposed or chance.

The Equation

The result is a kind of ‘flat textural’ field. Looking distinct from a classical era painting and more like something printed, pressed or photographic film plate– as if a motion recording in an analogue system had been frozen, glitched and made visible.

I called the work “Equation M Electro Cell” to explain a self-contained apparatus for energy transference. A cell of stored charge, or a fragment of data, suspended in the mainframe. For me, this has the same quiet magic as looking into an old radio and seeing the valves glowing: a mix of warmth and nostalgia with music harmonising softly in the background.

Did I ever tell you about my dad’s valve amp radiograms?