Painting to Some Purpose

Just wanted to post some images of some of the work I’ve done this week, so I can reflect upon them over the weekend. I returned to using the voile and tracing paper, and probably more importantly to some drawing this week, it’s been nice and therapeutic.

Just been continuing playing with paint this week. I did lots of tearing paint off of the plastic surfaces to leave ragged edges, and also folding up sheets of plastic and paint and collaging it. Making layers with paint and then removing parts of these layers made up a large part of last week. I’ve been working with a ‘control layer’, followed by a ‘expression layer’ followed by further ‘controlled layers’ and so on. Sometimes it seems to work, other times it looks terrible.

I don’t feel the need to scale back up again yet. At first, it felt a little false making work on a smaller scale, but as long as I see these as just experiments, that is ok. When I scale back up again, maybe I’ll feel liberated.

The images here are some of the more interesting test pieces. Using varnishes and glazes and then tape to remove and tear the semi dry paint has been fun.

In my last post, I planned to work on some small canvases all around the theme of boundaries. I spent most of last week making and thinking about these small pieces. They aren’t pieces of work as such, more of a result of what was going on in my head at the time. One of the small canvases had it’s mark, or part of it’s pictorial space extended onto the studio wall. I’ve seen it done before, but I just found that it was something that I wanted and maybe needed to do. This got me thinking about breaking the boundaries of the canvas. I also used colour as a boundary and used big areas of black and white, but they weren’t really happening the way I had imagined.

I had some fun projecting both my see-through paintings and the caerdboard models (based on sections of my paintings) onto the studio wall. The work on the transparent film worked nicely for a first try, lots of subtle marks were projected into the space and it certainly gave my work a completely different feel. The cardboard wasn’t as succesful due to the more definate shadows. I guess the next aim would be to try to cut out a surface, in a way that shows the sponteneity of my marks, and try lighting that.

The week ended with me making a double layered plastic film box stretcher thing with a ‘sheet’ of screwed and folded up acrylic paint inbetween. I asked myself what the boundary was, the acrylic sheet? The plastic film? It has got me thinking more about space. The acrylic paint sheet was made by painting onto a surface the size of the stretcher, it was then folded and jammed into a space it’s own size, but took up only a part of that space. The paint is trapped between the surfaces that it was meant to be painted onto. So I guess the plastic sheets are trapping the paint and are therefore the boundary here.

Looking through my sketchbook this morning at some notes I made on the train on the weekend, I came across something that I had written that has got me thinking, Am I killing my own work by trying to move it forward?

I was thinking about my work whilst trying to sleep last night, and before that whilst trying to get over a headache. Why do I think about my work at the most inappropriate moments? I was probably worrying. I was worrying mainly about the two directions in which my work appears to be heading. The large oil paintings based on cardboard models (based on things that I’ve picked out from earlier work) that have been left to fall apart. I ended up working like this before I left the studio before the weekend, and it frustrated me as I couldn’t, in my head make it fit with my current ideas and where I want my work to be heading. Maybe these things will stay separate for a little while, maybe the 2 directions actually relate well to each other but I’m unable to see it yet.

I was thinking of boundaries anyway, and boundaries within painting, and within my work. I came up with things like ‘paint as a boundary’, ‘the stretcher as a boundary’, something I am already touching on with the see-through surfaces. I started thinking about the torn shapes and geometric shapes as a kind of visual boundary and of colour as a distraction, again something I’ve been touching on. I then started thinking about putting a physcial boundary on or in the way of my work. This links to using paint as a boundary, so maybe I’ll paint over a piece of work and that’ll be done – making a painting, maybe the best thing I’ve ever painted and then painting over it. The orginal would still exist, but it would be obscured by the new layer of paint, it would be a blank surface. I would kill my work in a way. I wrapped up a painting in some see-through wrapping today, but that didn’t really do anything for me.

I was also thinking about using shadows as a boundary after seeing some light hit a painting. I’ve been attaching wooden bars and bits of board to canvases over the last year or so, so I’ll take that further. I also though about making a cast of a painting, but I don’t know how to do that, so that’s something to look into this afternoon, i can imagine getting a very cold feeling from seeing casts of my paintings, hmmm.

Anyway, I have far too many ideas jotted down in my sketchbook, so I need to act on them quickly before the sketchbook ends and I forget about them. Thinking is good, but doing is better.

I’ve just been trying to reflect on my recent works in progress this last week. I tried a few more things out, notably collaging bits of drawings onto the plastic film and then using glue and pigment to draw onto the plastic. I was worrying that my work looked too lifeless and cold, with nothing to it whatsoever. I scribbled over them with an oil stick and felt better.

Went to the Frieze art fair, but probably should’ve gone to Zoo instead, I could only really afford to go to one, and my art fair buddy was up for Freize. It was ok, got some ideas from looking at the work and had a some good conversations about it. There was some stuff that was really relavent to my work at the moment.

I was glad to see that the a-n forums have kicked off, I’ve made a few posts already and i’m looking to see how it develops. There is a lack of imagery on there at the moment, but I did spot that a few people had avatars last night. It’s good to see a few people from the blogs making posts on there. I wonder how the forums and the blogs will co-exist, is there room for both? I hope so. We will see what happens.