Shadow Portraits
With the new year brings a new approach to art making for me. Only recently I was advised to focus in completely on one or two projects rather than spreading myself too thin amongst a million ideas. I’ve taken this advice whole heartedly and have noticed an interesting turn in my work. It’s slowed down considerably. Before, I was going at it a hundred miles an hour, enthused and excited by the prospect of beginning a new ‘thing’. As a consequence I never resolved any work.
This change of pace has been a real boost but feels unfamiliar: I’ve forced myself to confront what it is that kept me going in the first place. To resolve something is to say that it is finished, complete. That’s what I’ve been avoiding. For me the most exciting part of my work is the beginning when it’s still new and there are lots of possibilities.
Continuing work on the shadow portraits… Initially I thought it might be a interesting to knit a black shadow but my reservations were proved; the knit was too clunky and inprecise – it couldn’t match delicate contours. This photo shows a fabric cut out and I think works. This project is morphing into two parts; wall shadow tracings and cut out fabric tracings.
Quite often I don’t know why about these things, it seems to be intuitive, but I want to give the fabric cut out to the sitter. I’ve asked myself why the fabric should be black like a shadow, maybe white silk would be a more interesting alternative. Then what does the sitter do with it? What is it for?
