It is a month since I last wrote and I feel I have wasted a lot of time instead of being productive. I have made some stock for my future exhibitions, but I am quite stuck in ideas and feel isolated from other artists. I have the feeling that if I was in a group studio I would progress more just by having exchanges with others. It doesn't help that the children have been on holiday for a month. I am thinking to painting and ceramics at the same time and I hope that the creative process will converge. In my painting I want to create a feeling of landscape with multiple layers of watercolor and I am stuck after the first layer, it is a paralyzing fear to spoil what is there, it does not permit me to go further. I struggle to understand the essence of composition, I am not clear in my mind where I want to go: should I try to create a certain scene, or let it form as I go along? Should I make 50 beginnings? how do I judge them, when do I know whether they are finished, what do they say? I enjoy making the first layer and then I know which bits I like, I could crop them or photograph the sections (second and third image), but I think this is not taking me further in my search even if enjoyable and the resulting paintings are good just as birthday cards!
I am struggling to understand the idea of beauty and "rightness" of a piece of ceramics. Sometimes I make things that I am happy with and when I look at them after a while I start to see how wrong they are. Other times I see the parts that are good but it is very hard to have objects that are right all over. A friend wanted to buy some mugs and after she ordered very precise detail slightly out of my current work line, she was not happy with what I made, and looking at the objects with her I could see she was right. The whole idea of commission puts the maker in a completely new stress. I am not anymore the arbiter of the rightness but somebody else and I cannot use my usual parameters to judge the outcome.
Still I feel that if a piece was "perfect" it would show even if it is not what I would make normally and I should not have passed those pieces for acceptable. How many compromises do we make? How long does it take to make beautiful things all over? will I get there?
It is very curious that James Trilling associates Mozart and Matisse as “complex givers of simple pleasures”, I did not know Matisse when I was growing up, but I think Emanuele Luzzati can be associated to Mozart in the same way.
What I am hoping is that my pots show the real essence of me with all my history, and that eventually I will understand what my hands are doing and where I am going. Reading Richard Jacobs’ “Searching for beauty” I select phrases that resonate in me and I want to capture them. In the first letter he talks about asking questions and not to look for answers. I agree that I should enjoy the questions about my work and where it is taking me, without trying yet to find the answers.
I must look up at Yanagi’s book The unknown craftsman: Richard quotes from it “the love of the irregular is a sign of the basic quest for freedom”. I know that I need to add irregularity to my throwing, but I also know that there is a limit to how much off it can go. I am the arbiter with my internal set of values that are determined by my personal history and influences.
Sherman Hall in his editorial to the February edition of Ceramic Monthly says that "…to make an object it requires the intellectual act of design and the physical act of making. The most successful examples of design in handmade ceramics are where the two are executed in harmony with each other. One does not necessarily dictate the other".
In the same magazine at page 32 artist Cristine Wright states that "Design is an answer to a question other made, while Sculpture is the artist's answer to her own question".
My work is not sculpture, but a teapot or a mug or a dish have elements of design in it, as they have to satisfy functionality, and also have to respect my personal quest for aesthetic and "emotional rightness".
I include in my objects elements of ornament intended as James Trilling does as the "art we add to art, shapes and pattern worked into an object…for the pleasure of outline, colour or fantasy".
I try do understand where my need for ornament comes from, and why I always felt unhappy with the statement that all my teachers made that" Less is more". Finally Trilling talks of the historical context of that statement and of the time when "More was more"( pg 12 of "Ornament a modern perspective").
I am battling with tecnical and design problems and my sense of beauty.
I divide my working hours between making my standard production for future shows and trying new ideas. I am studying the book by James Trilling: "Ornament, a Modern Perspective", and I want to clarify what is the origin of my need for ornament and decoration in my life and work.
Since last year I have become aware of the double influence that my parents' different personalities have had on the moulding of my personality. On one side the need for neat and tidy lines and rigid planning and on the other a rich surface of colour, curves, uneven patterns and freedom.
Whenever I grab a pen and a piece of paper I start doodling and all the patterns in my subconscious come up, the paving stones in my home town, the railings along the sea promenade, the patterns of Emanuele Luzzati's paintings, and so on. How can I incorporate them in my work?
