I've had a few minor breakthroughs in my work since my last post, and of course a few exhibition rejections, but that's all part of the fun and I'm far more selective these days than I used to be.
I've enjoyed painting on the rough hessian as opposed to the smooth canvas and the more delicate voile, and I like the way that the different materials compliment and contrast each other. I've also been thinking about my ideas, and what my work means (again) and decided to try something different, almost in reaction to the rest of my work, it is very bright and straight edged, but it kind of says similar things to the rest of my work, it's only a test piece that I'll probably grow to hate.
I keep just starting new pieces of work rather than sticking with one piece and seeing it through and really finishing it, I think I've become scared of finishing work, maybe of overworking it. I think I've got something like 9 pieces on the go at the moment, which seems a bit ridiculous, they're constantly evolving though and they all seem to feed off of each other, so I guess it's a healthy way of working.
Just reading this post back, I sound really negative, but I'm totally not, I'm happy as I'm seeing my work slowly changing and hopefully evolving.
It's been nice here this week. I've started to deconstruct and layer up some photos of my work, the idea being that I will be trying it on a larger scale with a proper piece of work soon, this will probably also end up being a cube structure too by the looks of my experiments. Talking of cubes, thanks for your comment last time Helen, that was useful. I'm getting ready to build a larger cube thing that will have a more useful relationship with the rest of my work, it's a fun way of working when you've been painting in 2D for years, although this is by no means 3D I guess. I've also got hold of a small projector that I'm going to be experiementing with, this will add another dimension to my work and is something that I've wanted to try for years. I'm looking forward to seeing how projected and maybe moving images will sit within my work.
Another passing comment by a friend of mine has stuck in my head this week, she said that my work is becoming more concerned with the materials that I use, whereas I'd always used markmaking techniques to create layers, I'm now using different fabrics and wooden boards. Maybe I am actually 'growing up' as an artist, maybe it's seeing the kind of work that the kids in the school are doing, and my reaction to it.
Other than that I've been having a crack at some proposal writing and I've also managed to get to a few big exhibitions, Gerhard Richters portraits were ace, and I got a lot from them, but the Picasso show was an odd experience, it was as busy as one of those trendy bars on a Saturday night, not ideal for viewing art, but what can you do.
I've finally gotten round to adding more of the images as I promised in my last post. I've been working on an idea of a box, a cuboid painting where each side informs the other, and it is becoming an idea for a painting installation where the cube/box informs the work displayed surrounding the box. I think I came up with this idea a while back my friend had a dream where she went into a painting, my ideas surrounding this are developing nicely in my sketch books and in the studio. I've started making a small maquette of the box idea. I've also just got a load of hessian too, I'm gonna do some big paintings on it. I'm also continuing to add layers to a 2D surface by placing things infront of and behind the pictorial space, I need to be more brave and risky though.
I didn't realise that it has been a month since my last post. I've been pretty busy with everything, doing a fair bit of teaching and making lots of work in the studio too. I thought that my work was all going in different directions, but it seems to be all meeting up again now. I've been attaching stuff to the canvas and just starting lots of small things. The sunny weather has helped spur me on too, I have always seemed to work well in good weather for some reason. I feel quite motivated at the moment despite one or two recent setbacks, so it's good that I'm feeling positive and keeping the production rate up. I'll post some images later/tomorrow.
Well, what an odd week. The snow was pretty bad in this neck of the woods and the school was obviously closed for some of the week, so I didn't get a chance to do much work. I did get the chance to head to Bristol the weekend before the snow to catch up with some friends from uni. They are very familiar with my work and how it has changed since the beginning of my degree, so it's great to get feedback from them. They were saying how my work has always seemed a little dark (although that's never really the intention) and that now my latest work has quite a bleak, cold feel to it, but in a good way. Maybe that's mainly due to the materials that I'm using, they do look quite ghostly and empty in a lot of areas. I'm in the process of finishing a few of these off at the moment so we will see how they look at the end of the week.
Working in a school during crazy weather is quite a strange experience. On the Thursday, only a few kids made it in, and a number of staff were snowed in so the school day was turned upside down. I decided to hang out in the art department and to see where the day would take me. It was quite fun actually, after break, one of the art teachers and I decided to do an impromtu drawing day with some year 10 girls. It was quite fun and introduced some pupils that I don't normally have contact with to my working methods. The work was a bit hit and miss, but for a 'made up as we went along' session, is was ok. After doing lots of one hour sessions with big groups, it was a breath of fresh air to work for a longer time and with a smaller group. Maybe we should have made snow sculptures though!
