7 days in and I have only just come up for air… It’s been pretty full on actually. There was no need to worry about studio space, I didn’t need to move and was able to get started painting right away. I sorted out a coping strategy for the first week – I had some unfinished works hanging around from Zurich and decided that I would get on and do these. It has meant that I haven’t been dithering around looking for focus and wasting time – as it’s so easy to do when you just get back and you’re trying to get geared up. It’s been good to just start painting and free my mind to think while doing so, free to plan the steps I need to take next.
I started as I mean to go on – getting my documentation going, it’s more a reflective diary, which holds my thought processes as I’m going along as well as capturing images of my work in progress, handouts and anything else that seems relevant to me at the time. I used to try and keep work and thinking separate but there was so much overlap and it felt very strained, now I just go for one book with it altogether.
So that was last week, I’m a bit behind as I’d planned to get the three paintings finished. A bit ambitious I know, but probably do-able if I hadn’t skipped Friday to go sailing. This week started with an all day tutorial/critique yesterday, it is always really good to get to know the tutor and group dynamics. It’s always a long day, trying to stay focussed and give the people at the end of the day the same enthusiasm as those at the beginning of the day.
My crit was mixed. As I was in the process of creating work I have effectively moved on from, I had to explain what I was doing and where my thinking was going: that I want to explore process and surface more this term, experiment with medium thickness and application; consider using Perspex more, glass, aluminium, nylon – in fact any surface that is reflective and/or transparent. The conversation seemed to focus on my application of colour and use of ground, and I didn’t fully understand what the tutor was implying – am I doing it wrong? Is it possible to be wrong? How do I figure this out and make informed decisions to rectify or work with it? I have some experimenting to do and see what comes of that, then further discussion in a 1-2-1 session in a couple of weeks…. Although known to me I’ve never worked with this tutor before, so there will be some getting used to I’m sure. The main thing is to keep pushing, keep trying to move forward, not to feel pushed back myself.
