Hereford College of Arts

As I’m part-time I have weekly breaks. between painting and I have been finding this frustrating – a regular stopping and starting.

Today, after a week of thinking about my progress I finally got back to some painting.The work is starting to come together – I have had in mind making connections and considering the spaces between objects.

I have plently of discussiion amongst peers too which has been really useful.

Cant wait to get back to college next week for more painting!

Photographs to explore and question one’s own identity – and how this kind of ‘looking within’ allows the viewer to also refelct on themsleves. I was really interested to read about Heather Casey’s work on the Middlesex University blog. Casey works with the self portait. There is an element of chance within her work – her photographs becoming dirtied in the printing process.

I’ve also been using an element of chance in my self portraiture to explore identity and my changing self -perception. I’m influenced by Francesca Woodmans photographs -rich in content and with multi-layered meaning her self portraits are incredibly accomplished.

Talking to my tutor today about Francis Bacon’s painting techniques. She feels sure that whilst critics talk about him re-working his gestures (going over marks in the still wet paint) – working on an unprimed canvas abosrbs paint straight away – making it imposssible to move the paint around once applied. We therefore deduced that Bacon made his marks with great consideration and care.Clever man.

I’m really excited by the way the unprimed linen canvas shows through in his paintings – the linen is a beautiful, neutral kind of tone and it seems to give his work further gravity.

I am working with with layers allowing underpainting and the canvas to show through. it feels as if I am giving the panting some sort of cronology.

My tutor has asked me to think about possible connections between the objects I am painting (because people automatically look for connections when reading paintings) and to think of the space between objects as important as the objects themseves

I am challenging myself to paint on a large scale-where there is nowhere to hide, where all my decisions come under scrutiny – there are various routes I can take with my gestures and my choice of motif.

There is at once freedom and restriction – I feel overwhelmed by what I am taking on. But our tutor reminds us to fail – that in exploring and pushing our ideas we are bound to fail in our attempts at times. But this is all part of a process. And so with this in mind I am working (uncomfortably but openly) through the discomfort of struggling . This painting will take time. I dont think the end product will be ‘a painting’ rather – ‘painting’

I am finding out what kind of painter I am – what does my kind of painting look like?

Its in its early stages but I am beginning to recoginse gestures that are strong and familiar ( to my drawn marks for example) and those that are weak and reflect a serious technical inability and just dont feel natural.