BA (hons) Fine Art

I’ve been thinking about how best to present some of my photography in my degree show and have decided to make a book. This will be a story told by images and few words. The images will be drawn from photographs and sketches made during and/or inspired by my walks along the coastal areas of Dunwich and Orford Ness.

Inspiration for the book came from as far back as last term when I visited Dayanita Singh’s Go Away Closer exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London. She created interconnected bodies of photographs from her archives to make different themes. She displayed these in portable wooden structures which she calls ‘museums’. What intrigued me was how the photograph groups made stories, possibly different stories, for each viewer.

More information about Dayanita Singh is available at www.dayanitasingh.com.

I was also inspired by John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing (2008, Penguin) in which several chapters are conveyed solely by images – in a sequential visual language.

Over the Easter break I have had some of my paintings framed and done more work on two of my canvas paintings (with a view to choosing some of this work for my final degree show). I’ve also had time to pause and reflect on what else should be done now that the final degree show is only weeks away.

My degree show will comprise landscape paintings (in pastels, acrylics and oils) and photography inspired by coastal walks at Dunwich and Orford Ness.

One of the things that I am doing now is improving my knowledge of paint mixing. I think that I have a good sense of colour when painting and this year in particular I have tried to use this skill to impart meaning too. However, paint mixing has been another story and a lot of expensive paint has gone down the sink. I found the remedy in the UCS library – Michael Wilcox’s book Blue and Yellow don’t make Green – and am currently investigating subtractive colour mixing both in theory and practice. The paintings here came about as exercises in mixing blue-greens without using my usual mixes or the recently discovered free samples of System 3 process cyan and process yellow heavy bodied acrylics. I’m also more aware of transparent and opaque mixes to give different effects. I usually use a lot of titanium white opaque mixes when painting and whilst I do like the effects this gives, it will be great to expand my repertoire. The paintings shown here are just such early attempts at improving my colour mixing.

I am looking forward to revisiting Orford Ness when it is open to visitors again and making more work based on my perceptions as I walk there. In the meantime I have been researching other artists inspired by this unique place.

W.G. Sebald, in his book The Rings of Saturn, writes evocatively about his visit to Orford Ness recording descriptions of the scenery that he walked amongst together with thoughts about the present and the past, and emotions experienced en route – e.g. – “With every step that I took, the emptiness within and the emptiness without grew ever greater and the silence more profound” (p.234).

Robert McFarlane narrated poetically on a haunting video about Orford Ness (called Untrue Island) which includes the sights and sounds of Orford Ness. It is available at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2012/jul/09/robert-macfarlane-untrue-island-orford-ness-video

Emily Richardson gave a talk on her videos at UCS Waterfront some time back and I was really impressed with it then. I’ve since watched the Orford Ness video (Cobra Mist) again. The time-lapse video really captures the sinister atmosphere of Orford Ness – the desolation and the strange wartime buildings and artefacts left over. The video is quite eerie and can be seen at: http://animateprojects.org/films/by_date/films_2008/cob_mist

I’ve been reflecting on the role this blog has played for me.

The blog has helped me greatly to stop and reflect on previous work so that I can learn from past strengths and weaknesses. For example I consider my strengths to be my drawing, and use of colour and texture in painting. I also realise that I have tended to charge into a painting like a bull in a china shop, press on past the point of creative concentration, bash onwards to finish – wasting what I have done – and then bin the work in disappointment and anger. I now realise that I should take more breaks when I am “winning” so that I can hopefully return with refreshed concentration levels. This could involve putting the work away and looking at it again much later or just having a short break away from it. It could also involve working on several pieces at once allowing time for paint to dry, etc thereby improving my technique whilst still allowing me to work when I want to continue. This would prevent slapdash, sloppy technique when I want to paint but, for example, the paint isn’t dry. It would also give me time to stop and think about the intention of the work. That way, I can maintain momentum without overworking or decoration. This would help me to know when to stop – always a difficult decision but much better when one has stepped away for a time. All of this was a big learning point for me.

The blog has also allowed me to relate the work of other artists to what I am doing in a practical everyday way.

The blog has also helped me to reflect on what I am doing and to articulate it to myself. This has helped enormously in trying to impart meaning in my work. I enjoy working in a “projects” way anyway so writing as I go along is very useful in recording ideas and sometimes this leads to the generation of other ones.

I am definitely going to enjoy my work more in the future by maintaining a diary about it.

I was thinking again about the sublime and how the theories of the sublime relate to my work. Last year I researched the sublime in the work of the photographer Andreas Gursky. I learnt that the sublime is an evolving concept that has changed over time.

In 1757, in his treatise, A Philosophical Enquiry into the origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, pp. 101-102, Edmund Burke described the sublime as that which evokes the states of terror, horror and fear of pain or death. At that time, Burke’s definition related in particular to the awesome power of nature. His treatise influenced artists to paint the natural sublime – James Ward’s Gordale Scar (1812-1814) being an example.

Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement (1790) defined the sublime as something strictly of the mind, a psychological state or emotion. Kant’s sublime is a transcendental feeling that arises from the displeasure associated with a failure of the imagination coupled with a feeling of pleasure from the knowledge of the superiority of reason over the senses (pp. 114-115). For example, the discomfort of trying to imagine and reason about the unbounded concept of infinity is tempered with pleasure in the knowledge that such a concept can exist in one’s mind. Kant distinguished two types of sublime. His mathematical sublime relates to spatial or temporal magnitude such as the size of the universe or the end of time. His dynamic sublime is the feeling of the overwhelming mightiness of nature coupled with the knowledge that anything in nature is small when compared with the concept of infinity, resulting in a feeling of superiority over nature (p. 120).

In contemporary times, theories of the sublime have replaced focus on the natural sublime and evolved to include that which is not presentable, not comprehensible or a void or lack.

Jean Francois Lyotard identified the capitalist economy and infinite power and wealth as sublime concepts in his essay The Sublime and the Avant-garde (Art Forum, 22, part 8 (April 1984), pp. 36-43).

Jacques Derrida, in his book The Truth in Painting (1987), related the idea of the sublime to nothing more than an effect of consciousness – nothing in nature and nothing higher and beyond (p. 131).

Slavoj Zizek, in his book The Sublime Object of Ideology (2008), identified the sublime as a lack at the heart of symbolization (p. 233). For Zizek, the sublime is nothing more than the immanent feeling of lack itself.

Having just outlined older and more contemporary definitions of the sublime, it seems to me that all have credibility. There is a duality in perception. What we perceive as “outside” of ourself is always translated to us by our own senses and mind. Therefore it is natural to question what is the the nature of “outside”. When there are limitations and contradictions in our thoughts – contemplating infinity for example – what is the nature of those limitations? Contemporary theories of the sublime have allied themselves with such a philosophical approach.

However, as we trash the planet and become ever more aware of the effects of global warming on sea levels and other environmental impacts, I feel that the insideous disappearance of the benign aspects of nature and the increase of more adverse, shocking effects on the planet may supplement our contemporary definition of the sublime with something that Edmund Burke might have recognised had he lived today. I also think that we are in danger of losing our sense of superiority over nature that was part of Kant’s definition of the sublime.

Landscape painting (including seascape painting) has an important role in representing our environment to ourselves. Echoing my concern for the environment, my paintings for my degree project have been landscapes and seascapes in which the subject or influence has been high seas, structures in or near the sea (e.g. Sizewell nuclear power station and a tower structure in the sea nearby) and the edges of coastlines (e.g. the Dunwich coast and Orford Ness) – all threatened and/or potentially threatening entities.