Artist in Residence at The John Henry Newman School

I'm reasonably happy with how my work has progressed since the last post. I removed the extra frame piece from the canvas that I'm working on, and I'm quite satisfied with the raw unfinished quality that this work has. It's very empty and imperfect, and I like that. I'm just going to leave this canvas and live with it for a few weeks or months and see how I feel about it. At one point, I did put a translucent panel in front of it, and that did something for me, so that's another avenue to explore. The double canvas thing is also progressing, albeit at a slower pace. It needs another larger panel to be added behind it, maybe an off-square shape, and maybe a small panel in front, it will probably move on a lot over the next couple of weeks.

I built and began working on a 3 layer painting/drawings during this week. It’s an idea I’ve been wanting to act on for a little while so I headed into making this piece of work full of optimism. This idea would present a different way of working and thinking about things such as mark making and space as I would be working in layers and in a slightly more three dimensional way. So far it hasn’t really worked, I’ll need to think about using different materials, I still want to explore this way of working as it fits in so nicely with my ideas.

I also began working on a larger painting with a translucent surface this week. As I’ve mentioned earlier in this blog, I am interested in the stretcher/support and I believe that it can be as important as the paint on the surface. The cross bars and stretcher frames form a layer of a painting in itself, and can be seen as the skeleton of a painting. Anyway, for this piece I added extra pieces of frames (including that extra frame piece that was originally on the large canvas piece) and this both constructed and fragmented the pictorial space before the first charcoal mark or splash of ink was applied. The extra corner piece serves to extend the pictorial space and presence of the painting, and breaks the boundary of the rectangle. I limited myself to just using black on this painting, and I was happy with how it was progressing. I then turned the painting around, exposing its frame and structure and it came together really well, especially with the extra frame in the top corner. It’s more successful this way. Is this now the way forward? I then added a small translucent panel to the larger structure, adding yet another layer, and that was a good move, this is definitely the way to go. It’s interesting because I never thought that this piece would develop quite like this.

I haven't made a post since the end of September, I think I was struggling with my work last week so I didn't want to make a post but now I feel pretty happy about my work as I head into the weekend after the 6th week of the residency. I seem to have written a lot so I will make a double post to stay within the word count. I spent week 6 getting new work off the ground which involved stretcher building and discovering whether or not my ideas were going to work.

After my last post, I did a one day project with 6 pupils from different year groups. I wanted it to be a drawing day, and for it to be something quite straightforward. I decided that we would be drawing pears, and hands holding pears, and I was very happy with the results. Initially the group did some quick ink sketches using sticks which they enjoyed, and idea was to spend the first few hours making lots of quick work, and then the afternoon would be devoted to making a large final piece. I was impressed with how talented the kids were, and they really took to drawing with sticks and painting without brushes. I was guiding them a lot throughout the day and was constantly on the move, but it was really enjoyable. One pupil thought she was struggling and found it hard to like her work, but eventually I think she came round, and I think she probably got the most out of the day and has been back to look at her work. All the work produced was on display during the schools open evening, and there were lots of good comments about the work from current staff and pupils. Some of the kids from the one day project even brought their parents in to show them what they'd done.

After the collaborative canvases from arts week, I've been thinking about control and how you can create a piece of work both randomly and in a controlled way. For an hour long session with some members of staff I designed a game using these ideas. Each person had a large piece of paper that was divided into 30 squares. You then had to pick 2 cards, the first had an instruction such as 'drip blue paint', 'make a rubbing of a wall' or 'draw your hand using charcoal' and the second card told you which square or squares to use for that particular instruction. It's another way to generate a starting point for a piece of work, and in that respect, it works. There were some interesting pieces of work. It's an idea that I've had for a while so it was nice to try it out on a group of people. These pieces of work will be used to initiate a more substantial piece of work next time.