Well, I’m off painting my second response.
I was quite nervous opening the package containing my sister’s first response piece. What if I hated it? What if I was annoyed by it? How would I be able to articulate my thoughts?
in fact, I was interested by the work, and it provoked me in a positive way. I hadn’t really had a clear expectation, but I was pleased that I hadn’t anticipated the form of her response. I was excited to think that ANYTHING was possible in the framing of my reply. So much of my recent work has been digitally generated, but my immediate desire was to slop paint around; to have a physical wrestling match with real materials, to make something, break it, make it again, with all the history and traces evident in the piece and not buried invisibly under a layer of pixels.
And so I have taken myself into the studio, have prepared boards, and have engaged with two surfaces with a very open mind. Each time I work on the piece will reflect how I feel about this most recent visual exchange at that precise moment. I have done some preliminary drawings, but I am not working from these. The important thing is to move forward with the reply as honestly as I can, and listen to my instincts.
My sister is, I think, struggling with the lack of verbal dialogue. She wants to talk about what she is doing with anyone who cares to listen. In contrast, I’m in a sort of hibernation. I will be interested in responses of others at a later stage, but for now it is all a work in progress where I don’t feel I want input from anyone else. Only I can articulate my response, and I feel the works will need to be viewed in their wider context for anyone else to be able to meaningfully respond.
