Paint and the Self

I set up a painters’ group last year; we meet every six weeks or so, taking turns to meet in someone’s studio and look at/discuss their recent work. This morning we found ourselves once again turning someone’s canvases upside down… It’s very transformative, and often brings out a whole new aspect to a painting. It’s something I do a lot in the studio by myself, too, part-way through a piece of work.

So – my main piece of advice to a painter who feels stuck: turn it upside down!

In the studio I worked on Alice’s Adventures again. Thinking about how we cope with change, of the body and of the psyche. Coping with things changing around us, with unpredictability and with bewildering circumstances. How does Alice keep a calm inner strength, and a voice, when all this is going on?

I read a bit, I draw a bit. I’m struggling a bit with the acrylics, but I love being able to combine them with pastel, ink and conte. The studio is rapidly filling up with chalk and charcoal dust, and ink splatters on the walls and floor. I don’t seem to make quite as much mess with oil paints…

To Ipswich School today, with its fantastic Art department, to work on a portrait of my friend Claudia Bose, who’s currently their artist-in-residence. Claudia has generously been sitting for me once a week for 4 weeks, ever since I mentioned to her that I’d like to have another go at painting someone from life. Initially we were doing the portrait in her studio, but then we thought that the Ipswich School students could get another interesting take on artistic practice by watching and dialoguing with us about the work in progress. Normally, none of my studio work is ever from life, or even from sketches: the process depends on a particular intense energy between myself and the materials. But it’s always interesting to see what happens in a different setting, working in a different way. Painting a friend, and one who is herself an artist, is freeing: there’s no pressure to please the sitter as there might be in a commission situation. We were joined part of the time by a few students who worked alongside us. It’s quite nice to blur the boundary between making art and teaching, sometimes. I didn’t take a photo, so can’t show you the work in progress today – maybe next week. I’ll show one of Claudia’s recent paintings instead. See more at www.claudiaboese.info.

Lately I’ve been re-reading ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, because it’s sometimes labelled ‘the first great Surrealist novel’ … and I’m curious (and curiouser) to see what might happen if I were to keep a theme at the back of my mind when working. I’m not used to thinking/working in terms of ‘projects’ – I’ve always resisted defining – or is it structuring – my work in this way. I’m going to try taking ‘Alice’ as a loose theme for a while, and see what happens.

I’ve started by working on very large sheets of paper. Ink, conte, acrylic, graphite. I know I really don’t want this work to be illustrative. But why? What does ‘illustrative’ actually mean, for me, and why don’t I want it at the moment? I would love to listen to people who are more articulate than me having a discussion about this. Perhaps I should start a new thread on the artists talking forums. It might help me clarify my thoughts, and perhaps change my mind!

After 20 years of persistently painting I finally feel more rooted, and can hear and dialogue with other people’s views whilst a piece of work is still in progress; and also I’m finding myself increasingly open to new, surprising ways within myself of looking at/thinking about painting.

I showed work in progress to some fellow painters recently. As usual, there were around fifteen unfinished canvases in the studio. Until now I’ve been very wary of showing and discussing unfinished work with anyone (even my family): I think I needed to search so hard inside myself for the thread that leads the way in the process of making a painting, and this thread was very, very delicate and too liable to be blown away or off-course by someone else’s views. But now I find myself more able to hear and respond to the thoughtful, inventive, and invigoratingly challenging reactions of my peers.