The paintings were collected today by Aardvark, I rock and so do lots of other helpful people!
It was a late one in my studio and I had to wear my favourite socks, but all is well. Impressed with my 3 day turn around and huge financial savings.
Admittedly asking for help isn’t one of my strong points, but I sense this is the case for a lot of artists.
Some parts of the art world treat the artist like the underdog. For that to change artists have to realise that we sometimes reinforce this by not asking.
This time I did ask, and everybody was really helpful.
Two of my paintings have been shortlisted for the Valeria Sykes Prize and will be in the New lights Exhibition in the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate!
Just need to get them from London to Harrogate … Does anyone know of any other transporting companies like Aardvark Art Services, I have contacted them, fingers crossed, think it might be a bit short notice though.
Quotations for same day courier service around £260. Giggle.
Will get some next day courier service prices tomorrow.
Am I missing something here, what does everyone else do?!
They are sensible and have a driving license.
There is always the train option (AKA hell: Me wrestling two big paintings on a packed train).
Breathe Hayley
My small sketchbook/diary I carry around with me has become very important again. I have a lot of sketchbooks and notebooks for capturing various things such as, exhibitions I have visited, drawings, automatic writing, ideas, visual diary entries, tickets and receipts, to do lists, life drawing and doodling. Lately I have been combining all these elements into one book. Where possible I am trying to get away from separating, hiding, cataloging and labeling. This feels more honest. One element does not exist without the other.
I was inspired by Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1972) which I have finished at last (amazing book – very womanly). The main character, a novelist with writers block tries to separate different parts of her life and writing into four separate notebooks. It is when she stops separating and starts combining everything into one notebook she finds the inner knowledge she is looking for.
If I’m honest I’m a little lost, in-between stages. I have two panels ready and waiting to be painted on. The ideas are formed I just needed to get started.
Instead I’ve been staring out of the window at my ever-growing collection of windmills.
All ready and waiting for the next gust of wind.
Some reasoning behind starting with a photograph and ending with a painting:
I start with photography so I can try out many compositions quickly. I can take up to 80 photographs with only slight differences in composition, just for the one image. I’m trying to capture something that isn’t necessarily visual.
I want to start with a whole and then, gradually push, smudge, erase some of this wholeness. Until there is more, than there was before, even though there is less. Reveal the hidden.
I use photography to record the facts. I find the overall process of photography frustrating. What I capture in the photograph often seems to exclude the atmospheric quality experienced. This may be due to my basic photography skills and/or the lack of desire to master photography. This may change one day. What I am trying to capture isn’t physical so perhaps it can’t be caught in a physical manner.
Photography interests me in a theological sense. The obvious references are writers such as Susan Sontag (On Photography) and Roland Barthes (Camera Lucida) etc.
That desperate desire to hold onto a bit of forever-ness.
Possession.
The inevitable death of now.
I am trying to catch and stop myself being seduced by the desire to do what the mechanical lens has already done. When I don’t the painting is overworked. The aim is for the paintings to move further and further away from the photograph.
Starting to find time for the studio work again. I have been playing in the sketchbook and I have primed two new boards. They are half the size of the previous ones. I hope to be half as precious and controlled. I will be working from photographs. I’m slowly questioning why I am painting from photographs, and why I shouldn’t. I’m not sure if these questions are mine, or if I’m just getting paranoid by a traditionalist view. “Why not just exhibit the photograph?” When I discuss with contemporaries they don’t seem concerned.
Instead of answering the reasons for working from photographs I find myself answering why painting is my current medium. Why art at all.
It’s about the physical application of paint. I may also mean the arrangement of paint. The psychology of this act, not just the craftsmanship. The smell of linseed oil. Colour. Being alone in a studio. The dedication of time. Starting with individual elements, tubes of paint, an idea, tools and a surface. Transformation of a surface. A visual, unspoken conversation. The unspoken. Signifiers, transference, the signified. Blah blah blah.
Here is a better and different answer regarding the role of painting from the painter Simon Willems (2010) taken from an article in Elephant [1]:
This is tricky. One has to start from the premise of painting as a completely outmoded activity. Yet it is important to register that outmoded does not necessarily mean defunct, and that it has a role and a purpose here. What this creates is vulnerability, all the more critical and heightened by the ‘progressive’ relevance of everything else, to which I feel it is wholly interdependent. I like its outmoded vulnerability. One does not sit down cross-legged and devise strategies for the work or its role. Essentially you’re just aware of how it configures in the grander scheme of things. (Willems 2010, p. 108)
[1] WILLEMS, S. 2010. Stormtrooper Mourning The Loss of His Mother. Elephant, Summer, (3), pp.104-109.
