I got to an interesting point during the summer where my painting was moving on. My tutor had encouraged me to be more confident and I’d begun making stronger and more simplified marks with paint. A pause from painting during open studios for Herefordshire Art Week (h.ART) and currently with the group show in London has given me time to reflect on this work and a hunger to get back to it also!
Open Studio is very helpful – if you are brave enough – you invite visitors to look at and comment on your work in progress. I suppose this is quite a risky strategy as you are creatively vulnerable: at risk from negative feedback or from opinions that may actually confuse your sense of clarity. So with this in mind I always have a good think about revealing work in progress – am I happy for people to look at it and am I ready to deal with feedback from people I don’t know and trust (in terms of their opinions)?
I felt confident about the paintings I showed – I knew they exhibited the birth of an idea rather than anything established but they are the result of a few months of development and their ideas are going somewhere.
So I’ve been testing them and the feedback has been encouraging – they seem to convey what I was intending.
I have since had two days in the studio with them – and a tutorial with our course leader – and I’m immersing myself in the work again. Thankfully I still feel inspired and I am picking up where I left off.
I’m interested in the figure I am using (studies from a small ceramic figurine of a seated child) as a vehicle for exploring the reality – in hindsight of course – of my childhood experiences – a looking back; a consideration of events with my now adult sensibilities. And in order to express my responses to this I’m weaving painting, drawing and collage together in a spontaneous and direct way.
The figurine that is the focus of my thoughts continues to intrigue me. I have known it since I was a small child and I feel it holds truths and memories that I am attempting to reveal to myself. At the same time my use of materials feels like a game of strategy, a series of steps – as if I’m maneuvering through a visual landscape with new and exciting possibilities.
I tend to reflect and photograph my work as I make it and for me this is a really effective way of analysing and evaluating the aesthetic moves I make – my use of line and choice of colour; overlapping and redrawing; filling in with solid areas of paint.
I’m engaged with my process and the intellectual dimension of my work and look forward to my next studio day.
