I've started a new project within the residency. It's to do with ways of learning and developing and a number of teachers from the school are doing projects and we have meetings and evening sessions to discuss our ideas. Anyway, I've decided that my project is to based around the idea of a 2-way collaborative exchange (if that makes sense). When I began the residency, it was my hope that my work would influence the pupils work, and vice versa. So far it has I believe. To kick off my 'research' I took a group of year 8's, about 27 of them, and after giving a presentation of my work and my influences, I asked them to 'set me some homework', for them to give me instructions for what to do on a blank canvas that I presented to them. Now, I did make suggestions and give them a materials list as I didn't want to do anything crazy. I ended up with an interesting batch of instructions, and I can safely say that this will be an odd piece of work, but this is a test run. They seemed really keen to give me a task to complete, as they are used to being told what to do by a teacher, I'm not sure how it has effected their classwork yet, but they have made visits to my studio which is probably the most important thing. I next plan to do some quicker tasks with different groups.
It's been a while since I last posted, so mainly I wanted to show my face and say hi. I've been extremely busy since December, and the two week break at Christmas was much needed. I've mainly be sorting out stuff and working on a few plans/ideas for later in the year.
I'm quite excited by my current work with that see-through fabric though, I'm even adding bits of wood to my biggest piece, it looks quite different/more resolved than my other stuff which is positive.
I've been doing lots of work with the kids at school, this major project will run to the end of March, but it's all good experience and very inspiring seeing their work being produced under my guidance. They got really excited on Friday when I enlarged and projected some of their work for all to see. I've been pretty flat out with this and my own work, almost so that my own work is developing without me even noticing. There is so much I want to make at the moment so I think it's a good start to the year, especially as I think that I know what my work is about now!
I actually wrote this post just before Christmas, but never published it. I've just tweaked it a little to bring it up to date.
The week leading up to Christmas was quite manic, I was just looking forward to a break, and that's what I did, 2 weeks away from the studio and my work. I planned to put my work to one side after Christmas and start afresh in the new year, but that's not how it's panned out, which is kind of good.
I think I was struggling a bit at the at the end of 2008, so it was a welcome break. I know that I want to push my work on this year and make the most of the remainder of my residency. I felt quite dis-satisfied with most my work before the break, but seeing it all with fresh eyes has been positive, and I generally feel quite good about it all.
My new scenic fabric has worked fantasically, and has a nice quality to it, I'm getting into working on a double layered painting now, and will continue working this way for a while. I've also had a suprising return to an idea I was going with at the end of my degree in 2005, cutting holes. It's funny how you end up revisiting things, but it's been quite a natural progression.
I'm feeling quite happy about the direction that my work is going in at the moment. I took a bold move earlier in the month and put some shapes onto the canvas, circles, squares and torn paper shapes – in florescent red paint. The idea behind this? Well, I wanted to spice the dynamics of the painting up, to add something almost alien to the piece, and kind of unexpected. It kind of acts as a visual boundary, and also as a distraction. When trying to concentrate on a small area of the painting, you are distracted by the bright colour, and that acts nicely as a boundary and I think, at the moment, that it works with my ideas. Using shapes work in contrast to the rest of the free mark making too, I like it at the moment, but I need to be careful not to go too far. I think that I can easily go in the wrong direction here. I've been looking at 'Bad Paintings' too, I think that's where the bright colours came from.
I've also been working behind the stretcher, with canvas basically stretched the wrong way around, and then with a layer of translucent fabric stretched correctly. I've been making holes to expose the layer underneath, which adds quite a bit of depth to my work. I think I like this. I'm working on a big version right now to see if it works on a large scale.
I got some nice fabric the other day, and I look forward to using that later this week, I plan to make up some more translucent pieces different framework. I’ve also been adding wooden ‘bars’ over the top of some smaller canvases, and to my surprise, it looks like it might look ok.
It's been a whole month since my last post, longer than I had planned. I actually went through one of those phases that we all get, thinking that your work is going nowhere and that all your ideas have gone stale, feeling that I was repeating myself and struggling for motivation. That probably makes it sound worse than it was. I do believe that those phases are important though, and have told myself that alot over the last few weeks.
During the schools half term break, I stayed away from the studio, in the hope that I would return with fresh eyes. I also went to the Freize art fair, which was tiring but worthwile. I was sure that I'd overdosed on art that weekend and drained me over the next week, hence the struggling phase I guess. The last couple of weeks have been good though. I've continued to push my ideas forward and have been adding bright colours to my work as a kind of visual boundary/distraction. It kind of works and looks odd at the same time, I like it and don't like it at the same time. I've been using paper and making rubbings and cutting holes in the canvas too, exposing layers underneath. I think my work is looking exciting again which is good and a relief. I think some of the 'ripping up work' tasks that I've been doing in the class room is having a positive influence on my work too.
