I can identify with Carolyn Shepherd, I too am overloaded with reference material and in need of a personal technician.
My Professional Practice exhibition is sitting on the nearing horizon. I have been spending my time building stretchers and exploring the vagaries of rabbit skin glue and experimenting with oil paint and glazing recipes. My tutors are absolutely right, the oil moves and settles on the surface in a way that I couldn’t get the acrylic to do, and with the heavily pigmented brands of paint, the glazes glow.
Despite my longing for custom made stretchers, there is something deeply important to me about the making of support and surface. The measuring, cutting, stretching, smoothing, sizing, priming. The bringing of this particular plane into being, the setting of its dimensions in space. A kind of mapping of the uncharted territory with the priming brush. Perhaps this is part of a painting student’s development or maybe it’s just integral to my own practice? These domestic studio chores do allow for a pause in art making which gives my ideas time to work away under the surface of my conscious thinking. A recharging in readiness for the next stage, well let’s hope so.
