This week I bear exciting news… I’ve been offered a residency! It’s in my old foundation course, and I get to do a bit of teaching as well as my own work, which is a dream come true for me. So you can imagine this post being said in a high-pitched giggly voice because I’m so happy. It’s such a relief to know what I’ll be doing next year, and that it revolves around continuing with my practice.
Ok, back to said work. As I mentioned in my last post, I went to see Trevor Bell’s exhibition ‘Links’ at the Millennium Gallery in St. Ives at the weekend. It was one of those special gallery visits where you’re completely absorbed in the paintings, your heart beats faster and you come out in a daze, knowing you’ve fallen in love with the work! Thus it’s been a big source of inspiration for my new paintings.
However, the week didn’t get off to a great start- stepping outside my comfort zone meant that I couldn’t approach the paintings like I normally would, and so I became scared to make even the slightest alteration to them. The shaped board paintings were the most difficult because I’m so used to thinking about composition in terms of a rectangle; when faced with multiple irregular-shaped surfaces, everything I painted looked overwhelmed.
Thankfully, I’d arranged with my sister and housemate (Lucy and Laura) that we would set out all the work we were considering putting in the degree show, and we would talk about any potential problems or changes we would make. It came to light that most of my work was mid- or small-scale, and that there was only one large-scale painting. This painting is one I really want to include, so we discussed integrating it better by creating a companion for it- similar size and format to balance things out a bit. Then Lucy suggested combining this with the shaped boards, so that the image was played out in positive and negative space across the wall (see picture of how it looks now). This was a lightbulb moment for me- I now have so many more ideas about now to develop this theme, and I’m back to thinking positively about the remaining weeks before the show.
So the moral of this week’s post is- when in doubt, get a little help from your friends.
