Today I have trying out things for some new sculptures…
I became aware of a lack of colour in my recent work and felt that its incorporation was important to the continued development of my ideas…
Painting in my work is not just a medium, it is also the subject, it explores the possibilities of the paint as a thing in itself…
I suppose the application of the paint is an indicator of this, the intentionally uneven application of colour allows the observer to understand that the paint is not being used to colour the wood or hide it in some way, it becomes a hint of something… a suggestion.
The text piece was exploring the possibilities of incorporating language, this felt necessary as I read all the time and think constantly, analysing things I see and ideas I have. The text was intentionally obscured as I was interested in how an inability to comprehend the words would affect the viewers experience of the piece.
I have been exploring putting together different works, to create new pieces, seeing how different objects and colours work together and how a kind of assembling of different elements of my studio can create quite interesting visual objects.
I began experimenting with this idea in late 2012…
These photgraphs document the first time the whole room was covered with strands.
While I was creating the piece I was thinking a lot about how things effect a space, the intangible vs the tangible… How I could fill a space with the most transient material. Stuffed full of nothingness.
To be completely honest, the more I persevered with the piece… the more it looked appealing visually/and the less I enjoyed it.
Spending many hours each day in a completely white room sticking each piece of floss strand by strand to the ceiling was, to say the least, utterly painful.
Exploring the ideas of installation and thin, light materials has made me realise that although this was a really good opportunity to develop my knowledge and understanding of this area… I really want to be making a solid object (whether that is painting, sculpture, drawing etc) It has also shown me that I strive for colour and personality in my work and this style and the concerns that I have been talking about don’t necessarily relate to who I am as a person…It is more a part of my yearning to constantly learn and understand art (and life) in a deeper way and find new ways of looking at things.
‘Beyond that there is only pretence and arrogance’ was, I can see now, related to my immediate surroundings and the things that seem to be celebrated.
The seduction of colour and scale… I suppose my use of plain colours is a direct resistance against this false attraction. Asking for something of its spectator.
Am I looking for something too pure and too honest?
Does that really exist in art schools?
Does it really exist in the wider art world?
I like to hope so, idealistic or otherwise…
The box piece was a spontaneous assemblage of things I was using in the space..I think it works really well in terms of what I was thinking about at the time…. work that naturally occurs as a result of something else (a frequent phenomenon in the studio) Something that found itself somewhere between ambiguous and simple…
The work with the layered drawing,board, mirror and canvas was a result of moving things around in my studio, the drawing had been in my space for quite a while and I could never quite decide what I should do with it… I started grouping things together in the space and these worked really well together.
I liked how the colours worked together and the intentional strip of mirror allows the spectator to see themselves… but forces them to position themselves and look harder at it.
What does the spectator bring to the work?
I created the white painting with an interest in how its perceived plainess could be a catalyst for the spectator to think more, exploring their own ideas…
Attempting to provide less indicators and instead some sort of reflection of the viewer… What happens when there is minimal information.. however in doing this I realised that their is always quite a lot of information, creating a work (even if it isn’t very colourful) consists of a series of decisions …. as does the position of the work (ie the wall, the floor etc) … This realisation made me evaluate my understanding of making art which can only be a good thing!
I have begun to explore the use of text in my work, thoughts are constant and writing is something that I do daily… it seemed strange that it hadn’t made it into my work before.
I am finding it very difficult and asking myself lots of questions…
How will people read it? Why would you choose to use text in visual art? Would it be an interesting idea to include text..that you can’t read?
