I was thinking about my work whilst trying to sleep last night, and before that whilst trying to get over a headache. Why do I think about my work at the most inappropriate moments? I was probably worrying. I was worrying mainly about the two directions in which my work appears to be heading. The large oil paintings based on cardboard models (based on things that I’ve picked out from earlier work) that have been left to fall apart. I ended up working like this before I left the studio before the weekend, and it frustrated me as I couldn’t, in my head make it fit with my current ideas and where I want my work to be heading. Maybe these things will stay separate for a little while, maybe the 2 directions actually relate well to each other but I’m unable to see it yet.
I was thinking of boundaries anyway, and boundaries within painting, and within my work. I came up with things like ‘paint as a boundary’, ‘the stretcher as a boundary’, something I am already touching on with the see-through surfaces. I started thinking about the torn shapes and geometric shapes as a kind of visual boundary and of colour as a distraction, again something I’ve been touching on. I then started thinking about putting a physcial boundary on or in the way of my work. This links to using paint as a boundary, so maybe I’ll paint over a piece of work and that’ll be done – making a painting, maybe the best thing I’ve ever painted and then painting over it. The orginal would still exist, but it would be obscured by the new layer of paint, it would be a blank surface. I would kill my work in a way. I wrapped up a painting in some see-through wrapping today, but that didn’t really do anything for me.
I was also thinking about using shadows as a boundary after seeing some light hit a painting. I’ve been attaching wooden bars and bits of board to canvases over the last year or so, so I’ll take that further. I also though about making a cast of a painting, but I don’t know how to do that, so that’s something to look into this afternoon, i can imagine getting a very cold feeling from seeing casts of my paintings, hmmm.
Anyway, I have far too many ideas jotted down in my sketchbook, so I need to act on them quickly before the sketchbook ends and I forget about them. Thinking is good, but doing is better.
