22 November 10

Richard Taylor has poised me a question about my paintings and the lens-eye of a camera, how is the image transferred? I guess this is a question about if the small digital images of my work accurately represent the paintings.

I certainly don’t prefer them in these small images, I have been enjoying the paintings as objects as opposed to 2D images so seeing them digitalized and shrunk takes away from their aura. But the translation between object and digital image has been playing on my mind recently, predominantly how can I accurately represent the colours of my paintings when they look different at different times of the day? Different colours pop under different light temperatures, sections glisten under one light but retreat under another. Is there a truth or will they remain objects with an appearance constantly in flux?

Perhaps this is an ineffectual thing to reflect over. I don’t think about what colours I apply when I’m painting, not technically, not by any math or science, I just grab brushes and apply whatever to the canvas, I’m barely concerned with feeling what’s ‘right’, I’m just enjoying stroking the paint laden brush over the surface again and again. Painting has fallen in line with the other mediums I work with, my interest lies in the ritual of creation and the resulting painting is just a residue.

Rebecca Cusworth
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09 November 10

Sometimes it a pleasure to photograph, transfer, crop, resize images of my work for a portfolio and sometimes it’s a chore. These last few weeks it’s felt like a chore.

Though don’t let my dormancy make you think I’ve given up the challenge of making work out here; I just experienced a lull in the desire to interact with the internet (I’m a technophobe at heart).

In the last few weeks I organised a critique with some other artists out here, both R.S.A scholars and students from Lorenzo de’ Medici art institute.

The idea of a solo artist trekking alone gets a little daunting from time to time so I sought a return to the comfort and support of an art school style crit.

As well as showing my performance, video and photographic works I’ve done in Firenze I also brought along my sketchbook of watercolour pen and crayon drawings.

Instrumental has been the enlightenment that many of the works that the other artists found engaging were the pieces I rather disliked, the ones I had deemed over worked. However their affirmative comments have allowed me to see those works in a different light, suggesting the battle I had had with the materials was intriguing and affective.

With this in mind I have brought this notion of material skirmish to my oil paintings, multiple layers built up with the desire to create areas that bite forward and retreat back. I wanted to create further conflict by employing pen and ink along side the oil paint colours. Exploring the agitated struggle I allow myself to overwork, ‘ruin’, my painting, creating difficulties, problem areas to solve – it’s become a game to me.

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18 October 10

As I stated on Tuesday I had bought oil paint and now I have made an oil painting.

This has been a desire bubbling around in my belly for a while now. It’s the reason I chose to borrow a watercolour set from my younger sister to be a part of the small pouch of art materials I brought with me to Italy. (The other items being a biro, a pencil, gold leaf, black block printing ink and an ink roller – the latter two items not touched yet).

First I used the watercolours to draw with, inky lines, and then larger blocks of colour, leaning more and more in a painterly direction, mixing it with the thick crayon marks, joyful in my new found use of colour. And now I own oil paints.

A few things instantly struck me. Firstly, I neglected to buy a palette. Secondly, my choices of colour; Pale Cinnabar Green, Light Vermillion, Reddish Naples Yellow, Chrome Yellow and Ultramarine, were perhaps not the.. most practical.

However when I first took my brush to the paper the smooth viscous feel of the paint and the marks that the brush left in the colour delighted me. I became aware of the unfamiliar ability to wipe away a mark or colour; things are less… permanent with oil paint.

My instinct tells me to work quickly, in the same manner of my drawings, where I produce them in a burst of motion and notion. But with painting I am coming to realise that if after a layer of paint has dried, I permit myself to return to the painting to work on it further I will be able to push the medium further. Let’s see how I do with that.

My other problems are practical. I now have to deal with Turpentine. I think it might require a trip to one of the art schools here in Firenze to make use of their turpentine bins. I’m also becoming very aware of the light temperature and intensity where I am painting. Without a natural light I can’t see colours properly, too much light and the wet paint reflects the light also making the painting hard to see. I’ve found tilting the paint at an angle solves the latter problem. This explains to me why painters have an easel; I have made my own makeshift one out of a hairbrush and a pack of playing cards.

As I started my first painting I had this nagging feeling like I was doing something wrong by starting to paint, as if what I’m doing is offensive to painters, that I just don’t have the background reading and understanding of painting history to be allowed to paint*. I thought back to last year and Damien Hirst’s embarrassing ‘No Love Lost, Blue Paintings’ and fretted a was about to make a similar error. (Luckily for me I am an artist at the very beginning of a journey with a far far smaller audience – these are just for you a-n blog readers).

After writing my initial feelings of apprehension after my first painting, I have relaxed into feeling like what I’m doing is ’o.k’, it is ok to want to paint, I have granted myself permission to continue to explore, and enjoy, this new method of image making.

*I am right about one thing though; my knowledge of painting and painters is minimal. I have no images of painting filed in my ‘Inspirations Folder’ so I will gratefully accept any suggestions of painter’s work or theory you think I should be aware of.

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