My painting practice doesn’t have very much of a structure, as pieces don’t have any set course or direction; each addition to a work sets it off in a new path. I’ve recently started making paintings on clay, which has helped my feel in each work for the right composition and dimensions (which seems to make the path clearer and easier; more pruned), as I draw into the clay before it dries and then after that I finally paint it.
Today there was a studio meeting where we had a little Christmas party but also talked about a work each – really nice to be in a very relaxed crit-like atmosphere again after leaving uni, learning about people’s work- and it helped me define a few things: I’ve hovered around the word ‘domesticity’ for a long time, but what is really relevant to me is the intimacy part of it, the intimacy of the everyday as its internalised. ‘Domesticity’ didn’t quite ring true in the works that I tried to associate it with; they were too sludgy. Sludginess is something I really want to welcome in but its hard to accommodate. The red clay before I paint it really wants something a bit sludgy I think.
I was in a strange daze for the whole of my visit to Frieze back in October, but one thing I was actually very struck with was the Hauser and Wirth curation by Mark Wallinger, ‘A Study in Red and Green’. It worked with the sludginess. It seemed to be curated not just within itself, but, I think, curated in the light of it being in Frieze. It reminded me of a stuffy museum’s dull red and murky green walls, along with its general overhang of paintings and its awkwardness in layout as a busy public environment. It was actually based on Freud’s study, and its formalness worked well with many of the works having a free sense of drawing at their core, a light, absolute sense of nimbleness.
