Sometimes it a pleasure to photograph, transfer, crop, resize images of my work for a portfolio and sometimes it’s a chore. These last few weeks it’s felt like a chore.
Though don’t let my dormancy make you think I’ve given up the challenge of making work out here; I just experienced a lull in the desire to interact with the internet (I’m a technophobe at heart).
In the last few weeks I organised a critique with some other artists out here, both R.S.A scholars and students from Lorenzo de’ Medici art institute.
The idea of a solo artist trekking alone gets a little daunting from time to time so I sought a return to the comfort and support of an art school style crit.
As well as showing my performance, video and photographic works I’ve done in Firenze I also brought along my sketchbook of watercolour pen and crayon drawings.
Instrumental has been the enlightenment that many of the works that the other artists found engaging were the pieces I rather disliked, the ones I had deemed over worked. However their affirmative comments have allowed me to see those works in a different light, suggesting the battle I had had with the materials was intriguing and affective.
With this in mind I have brought this notion of material skirmish to my oil paintings, multiple layers built up with the desire to create areas that bite forward and retreat back. I wanted to create further conflict by employing pen and ink along side the oil paint colours. Exploring the agitated struggle I allow myself to overwork, ‘ruin’, my painting, creating difficulties, problem areas to solve – it’s become a game to me.
