So after deciding to live firmly in the moment, I’m experimenting with a short video I took in Paris when my lovely grand-daughter suddenly flew into action in the middle of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. She’s a very talented ballet student and although dressed in denim shorts, thick black tights and Doc Martin-type boots she couldn’t resist the shiny empty floor. I was watching from a balcony above and managed to catch 16 seconds of her dance. So far I can’t edit the footage or transfer it to iplayer so will have to get someone to help. Here’s a shot I took of the screen…her long hair flying everywhere. For her classes she has to scrape it back into a tight bun !
Reading about Hodgkin’s search for his visual language made me consider my own visual language. Having made the leap into a more abstract style of painting I now wonder if it matters that I still draw in a quite figurative way. I’d like to do some figurative drawings of Kate dancing and just of her face perhaps in a careful portrait. Alongside that, or even on top of these, I could display the video hopefully slowed down. I could also make some Impressionistic/Abstract Expressionist paintings of the dance scene in Paris working from my memory. Hodgkin said his work was about the memory of the feelings and emotions experienced at an event. With the combination of these three methods I might be able to evoke the essence of Kate.
Hodgkin says that form and colour are equivalents for physiological representation. I like that. What’s more, I think I understand it! Similarly, as Hockney has said, it is impossible to accurately capture reality as our eyes are constantly moving and changing focus and direction so reality is shifting, second by second, making it impossible to pin down an image. What the artist must do is to capture the essence of reality as he/she sees it. It’s then up to the viewer to add their own reactions to an image which then gives reality yet another dimension.
Sounds sort of logical but can I do it?
