Hereford College of Arts

Pieces of work going into the Young Open in September:

The finished piece – I’m calling it ‘wood for trees’ and it is putting into 3D word form my intentions with my practice. It’s a part of refining and focussing.

Does it work? Too early to say! It’s expressing the multiple fronds of distraction around my focus on listening… but listening keeps taking on ever more meanings to me..I’m distorting the words meaning to my own needs.

I think this piece needs to be followed on by one of the same ilk, but with a different obscured word. This time it needs to be harder to find the central word. Am considering using a similar frame, painted white on reverse and painting writing on muslin and layering, so there’s a depth and each layer of writing interferes with the next.

In this process I am very much following my nose, to let things I am not aware of come to the surface. While making I am not questioning why a certain material or method as this has a history of stopping me in my tracks. After I’ve created a small body of work I will then look at it and ask why about everything. If I ask why too early on in a period of working I end up becoming paralyzed with problems and possibilities and I get nothing done (or I go and get lost in a book as my way of burying my head in the sand!)

Doubt and uncertainty – rock on!

The way I seem to work best is when I am not meant to be doing what I’m up to. Not sure if this is just me or perfectly normal human behaviour. I’m not bothered either way, the useful thing about realising this (hopefully not too late) is I can understand what methods might workf for me.

If I get a few hours to ‘paint’ I don’t necessarily want / need to paint. I have to start with reading, reflecting and feeling connected with my subject. Feeling obliged to others has a great hold on me. I will often do these things others are waiting for above my own tasks. I need to mess with this a bit. Prioritise my own work more often.

Right – to the business of making. I followed my nose yesterday and started creating a piece to expain to myself what I’m doing. I’ve got a pile of my partly legible handwriting (in watered down grey acrylic) on watercolour paper, cut into strips and a 20x20cm 3D canvas – painted white on the underside. I’ve written ‘listen’ just once, fairly big – again in grey acrylic. The plan is to obscure it with the writing strips.

Another version of this I just had to do on card had ‘clarity’ in the middle as this is also what I’m trying to get at for myself. Somehow, by putting it into 3D form is helping me to distill what I mean by what I am exploring.

Just come back from quick trip to Bochum, Germany, where 2 of my recent paintings are in an exhibition for 2 months in a ‘friends and family’ exhibition.

I was happy to find that, though I tried to speak German, most of the people I spoke to knew some English and best of all, while having lunch (lunch at an opening – does this ever happen in the uk?) at the opening I met Silvia, a Fine Art and English degree student who’s at the same stage of her degree as I am. It was very exciting to hear how things work in Germany and to see such wonderful support for visual artists by the company. I’m very glad I took part in this.

Studio cleared and ready for action!

Yesterday I just had to try spraypainting writing. I don’t have any history of spraypainting, so I feel out of context, but it’s worth thinking about. One of my (naive, perhaps) views of spraypainting is of people using it as a way to say something they cannot find another way to express. In Australia (maybe elsewhere) there are certain places in towns where it is officially allowed to graffiti, such as under particular bridges (and it brightens up otherwise dull, concrete spaces) I have breifly researched this where I live and find that very occaisionally small places are allowed to be graffiti’d, but under supervision, and apparently is no longer being done!

My spraypaint writing is on canvas coated with gloss paint and actually I’d like a glossier surface for this so I am putting 2 coats of white gloss on a peice of wood, so it’s ultra flat and smooth.

I’ve also been re-using skip-found canvas, two smallish pieces have been coated with black emulsion and I’ve written on those, using a different paintbrush on each and variably diluted white acrylic paint.

One of my paintings (larger black) from a previous project I’ve coated in black emulsion. The work underneath is highly textured and then writing over that in white acrylic, over the bumps. The ‘listening’ in my work is now taking the form of paying attention to the surface I’m writing on.

I’m keen on getting some momentum going, while I have a couple of weeks as during the summer I will have limited hours to work.