The blank canvas: what to make of it? The world is a blank canvas, and everything in it our materials. Why revert to painting if one has truly assimilated this?
In my own case, it’s simply what I love: making colourful intuitive responses.
Colour is the first problem. Anyone who has tried natural dyeing, or making their own paints, will have had great success making shades of brown, and a few yellows which rapidly fade. Crushed precious stones make good pigments, but are beyond my budget, though Rennaisance commissioners would have barely flinched.
Thus I have gained great respect for the paintmaker’s craft, and fully appreciate the importance of chemists in making our world colourful.
There are lots of ways to apply colour to a surface: oil paints, acrylic paints, cellulose paints, spray cans, dyeing and batique, chalks and pastels, collage, printing, etc., etc. I like directness, and my preference is pastels.
For this piece I want something more durable, so I’ve opted for acrylic paint.
Intuitive Response is the other problem: This kind of work can be seen as a solo improvisation in colour, though equally group music improvisation can be seen as making an intuitive group painting with sound. The processes are the same, just a different medium: Pastel, acrylic or sound?
This approach is a mish-mash of surrealism and the automatistes with abstract expressionism thrown in for good measure.
I understand it as Systems Psychology, a development of Kleinian psychoanalysis. Melanie Klein, when treating mentally ill children, often found the child was not disturbed, but lived in a disturbed family “System”. The child’s behaviour could only be addressed through the psychology of the whole family.
Within a system, each individual has underlying motives. But these are split, according to what each individual finds acceptable or unacceptable. Individuals are motivated to actualise the “acceptable”, but also, usually unconsciously, coerce other members of the system into doing their “unacceptable” bit. Why? So they can berate the other person rather than themselves.
One family member may be motivated to make, but finds imaginative creation unacceptable (because their mother or father didn’t like it). They will focus on craft, but encourage another family member to be imaginative … then criticise every imaginative thing they create.
Sometimes a whole family system will agree on what is acceptable or not, and will collude (again unconsciously) that one family member will do all the unacceptable stuff. And that family member will then arrive at the NHS “Mad”. As soon as they’re sorted out with serotonin-dopamine antagonists, another family member will go “Mad”, and so it goes on.
What’s this got to do with painting? Well, the canvas has stuff it wants to do, I have stuff I want to do, the paint has stuff it wants to do, my studio has stuff it wants to do, etc. Although I start with a vision, by entering into dialogue with my materials, responding to the canvas, my palette, my brushes, the music on the CD and the atmosphere of my studio, what comes out is very different from my guiding vision. It’s the result of the system, and the way the parts relate to each other.
These ideas quickly move into the realm of the spiritual: can the canvas, brushes, paint, studio, relate to each other with no psyche? Does the finished piece have psyche? How does that affect the way people see it? What is psyche anyway?
Audience is the last problem. Back in the 1950s when all this was trendy and cutting edge, such paintings were collectable, and the originals still are. But it’s almost impossible to find galleries that will promote new work like this (Abbi Torrance suggested one, but they promote young artists, I was given short shrift), even if one has an impeccable history of Fine Art qualifications. And even if saleable, is it the audience I want?
This painting is only one part of a process towards a greater end. The technique, and spiritual overtones which betray its modernist pedigree, are an ideal starting point for objects dealing with the sacred, and for use in sacred events … for which I do have a loyal, supportive and highly valued audience.
