Getting an idea out from inside of my head where it makes sense in every way and turning it into reality is the process I have been exploring in a 2 dimensional way through painting and drawing. Now I am looking at the possibility of applying for a grant to fund making larger scale 3 dimensional work involving collaboration and others skills, elements which are beyond my present limitations. So to make the ideas real I have to find out what will happen when I start to make the transition from thought to concrete object.
I started by winding tape between trees to see whether I can make a rotational drawing in 3D then it started to rain heavily so I sheltered under trees and tried to work out ways of making this image in my head a reality. I was wanting to find trees that grew in approximate circles and then wind tape or webbing round them to re create my big rotational drawing as a disc within the trunks. Looking around the trees it is incredibly hard to get to them through the brambles and bog and to identify which are within the parameter of a potential circle – literally remembering which ones to mark between trying to get to them was too confusing on my own….I needed another pair of eyes feet and hands!
So as the rain seemed to lighten I walked on to another part of the wood and found berries glowing on the ground in the strange half light of a rainy morning so I played around a bit to try and get out of my funk about not being able to make big tape drawings in the trees yet… then I found the leaves also glowing with colour against the overcast darkness. So I collected and laid out another circle I kept walking throughout the day and made further circular work in the woods and carried on thinking…I find the only way to get an idea out of my head is to try to make stuff and then make more stuff until something clicks – its not apparently a very intellectual process on the face of it but there is a lot of cerebral sensory activity going on which is often unseen and undervalued – So I like the thought that this concept of rotation I’m working with is continuing to make the invisible visible in yet another way.
I went back later and worked in the studio without much conscious idea of what I was doing…I call it pointless painting as the work will get covered and sanded and re painted many times. – but thinking about it …doesn’t this actually reflect the process I was using in the woods playing with ideas and trying stuff….sometimes just for the sake of literally moving my body and making something I can see or feel. Then leaving the work moving on and re making it in a different place with different materials. This is thinking outside the head.
