On my way to the station this morning I found interesting marks on the side of a house.
The photos in this post show the progress of my painting today.
I started with writing in white wax (wanted to be unable to see marks I was making), then ran watered down acrylic over. Once dry I used charcoal (eyes closed) – then went into it with greenish paint – following the blilndly drawn charcoal marks often.
I need to be clear in my reasoning in using certain colours or not.
My reasoning for using green and grey stemmed from a past piece of my work and continued for ease of making work. If I restrict my palette, I know how to start each time I get a chance to paint. This is important to me as the time available to paint is rapidly being taken up by other things, some necessary, some maybe not. (Prioritize!)
I have been using past works as starting points for new work. I now need to refocus on my key points of exploration, i.e. writing, gesture (meaningful marks) ->>> Random (intuitive) marks. Working on that liminal place between the two.
Other relevent words: listen, space
I am considering the frission between certain marks. In the recent large painting (wood for the trees) – The 2 marks are writing and drips. One the gesture of writing, mostly meaningless, but with embedded meaning of language, and under my control the other initiated by me, but not controlled.
I have just ‘written’ in semi darkness with charcoal on white paper. And the next stage is to run paint across it. It doesn’t have to be all in one direction as I’ve done before. There is no reason not to turn the work around while the drips are running (down).
Spent yesterday travelling to Brick Lane, installing my cup runneth over at The Coffee Art Project (exhibition now open at The Old Truman Brewery 22-30th March 10am-8pm, apart from 28 &30th March when it’s open 10-5pm)
I was installing while the curators were installing around 300 other pieces around me.
http://www.coffeeartproject.com/
I’m in a thinking phase now. Last week I was mostly on a train to or from Manchester Piccadilly setting up, being at, and dismantling our group exhibition w0budong.
As a result of talking with Sue Gough () and Clare Smith (www.a-n.co.uk/p/1650059) I am now reading Lines; A Brief History by Tim Ingold, which is exceptionally useful.
Tomorrow I am going to Brick Lane to install My Cup Runneth Over, a piece I made in response to our new college building in which I chose to focus on where people interact the most. I honed in on the Cafe and the form of the cup. I saw the competition come up on a-n Jobs&Opps earlier this month for The Coffee Art Project () which is linked to the London Coffee Festival (). My work will be up at The Old Truman Brewery for 10 days from tomorrow, longer if selected. I have to get it safely on the train, coach and underground before installing…along with the board the stick the cups too (don’t want to damage the wall!)
I have done a talk to 1st year Illustrators this week, to encourage submissions for the student mag Palette and decided a rather large painting I’ve been working on is now finished (image attached). I haven’t thought of a title for this one yet, it’ll come eventually!
So, with all this going on, I reckon it is a great time to reflect and consider my next step.
I have been thinking about alternative ways to limit my palette (more organic…). And an obvious way to evolve my stone writing piece might be to grind up the 2 tones of clay (seperately) and use a water mixable re-soluble medium to bind the pigment invisibly. The idea that just the stone/pigment will be visible really appeals to me. I have been working extremely large – my unnamed piece is 3 x3 m – and I want to contrast this with working really small, the size of a postage stamp and really thick textured paste.
I’m letting practical considerations of this get in the way of WHY I might do it!
My working methods have recently honed to using a previous (often the previous piece) work to feed into my current work. With this large unnamed canvas I used 3 smaller pieces (I’ll call ‘evolve 1,2 &3’ now for the sake of labelling) and my thoughts on those – especially evolve 2 which I found particularly effective with it’s spatial feel. By turning this one around I found I was looking at a large group of trees. This, along with tutorials with Lexi Strauss and Tom from the Royal College of Art at Hereford, where I was asked what I relate (primarily) with the colour Green (Countryside) and Grey (City) and that enabled me to think about my work in a slightly different way.
While starting work on the large 3 x 3 piece I had the phrase ‘Wood for the trees’ in my head (I named a piece from last summer this when I was trying to decide my next step). I was also thinking about the sense of space in the painting, the frission between marks and building up and scraping back layers (the gesture of writing coming in here using wax, a knife, pencils.)
Manchester today and installing the w0budong exhibition with Jayne Lloyd, Sue Gough, Julie Brixey-Williams and Clare Smith.
The space is incredible – brilliant natural light.
Catherine Wynne-Paton is a practicing visual artist whose work is informed by an interest in text resonant with particular places and people and is creator of The Lost Library which has appeared at The National Eisteddfod of Wales, Fringe Arts Bath, Deptford X Fringe, The Wrexham Open and MainSpring Arts. Wynne-Paton studied Fine Art at Hereford College of Arts, received the Meadow Arts graduate prize, was the first Print Shed artist in residence and received PEAK micro commission for new work. She is a founding director of Framework Herefordshire, set up in 2014 to support emerging artists through exhibitions, talks and opportunities for skills development. She has curated graduate exhibitions PaperFields in London and Hay-on-Wye. She sat on the Jury for the Hidden Gems grant scheme, delivered by Herefordshire’s a Great Place that brings together the arts, heritage, rural communities and the creative use of digital technology. She has an enduring interest in curating the work of, supporting and creating networks for artists working in rural and remote areas, which led into creating an archive of conversations she has with artists in written and videos formats.
