Right, my Lost Libraries project is going up a gear now. I have spent almost 3 weeks of the past month with this dreadful cough-flu that is going around. Though not ideal or welcome it has provided unforced time of less activity to reconsider ways of working. I am forever needing a way to monitor my progress. Things I am focussing on now are: the lost library project – work involved emailing people, going to meetings (the friends of Abergavenny library and the Eisteddfod committee, artists making the mobile library, musician composing a piece to be played from it, and anything else necessary), I have a risk assessment hanging over me, need to contact the police re permission, and find ways of publicising this as I’d like the community to be involved in the performance and to get involved before the event by making drawings, prints and writing about how they value their library. I am currently working on a news sheet on the project because there are so many elements to it that I imagine it is hard for others to grasp exactly what the project is.
I am also steadily m
aking 254 business card sized mini canvas’ made out of thick card and calico. I have 140 out of 254 made. Although I have now bought some new canvas, it will not be enough to finish the 254 at the sizes I tend to work. Also, working on larger canvas, I tend to vary the size. Working at such a small scale might give me a better rhythm of working. I describe the practical way I work musically, with my painting, drawing and printing being the rhythm and my other projects – such as Lost Library, Portrait Tachbrook and Little Museum of Ludlow as being the vocals.
I am writing as I am thinking and am considering how I might take this further and consider my art output in more musical terms:
Melody -or pitch(vocals) pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale,[1] or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as “higher” and “lower” in the sense associated with musical melodies.[2] Pitch can be determined only in sounds that have a frequency that is clear and stable enough to distinguish from noise
Rhythm (beat and meter)
Dynamics In music, dynamics are instructions in musical notation to the performer about hearing the loudness of a note or phrase. More generally, dynamics may also include other aspects of the execution of a given piece.
harmony… Different aspects of my practice together – harmonious?
Key—(context? ) A musical key is a song’s home. The key tells you several things about a song: the sharps and flats used, the scale the song is based on, the scale note that serves as is the song’s home note, and much more.
Texture (number of layers, and type of layers in composition) In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition. Texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range, or width, between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices. Affected by how many parts are playing at once.
Timbre (quality of sound that distinguishes one voice or instrument from another)
Tempo (different for each piece of music, or work)
Order In music, order is the specific arrangement of a set of discrete entities, or parameters, such as pitch, dynamics, or timbre.
I am painting (large canvas’) following my interest in foliage and growth forms, settling on trees, or at least parts of trees, braches with leaves. Willow has featured and I am using my Grandfathers Readers Digest ‘Gardening year’ book for reference material for shapes of leaves and some of the text. For these paintings I am simply doing what I feel like doing, following my nose. I am enjoying productivity in my streams of practice. I have made a small (so far unsuccessfully printed) etching of willow on plastic. Even tried running it over with the car to print, but I only have water based inks, so need to book myself into the Print Shed to do properly. I am currently reading about ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ by Colin Tudge.
Looking at the musical analogy I am wondering what my timbre / quality of sound I am making through my work? Hmmm.
And, something I have been really trying to figure – where is my works home? I am gently looking for places to show my work where it sits well. I have also wondered what might happen if I painted on tarpaulin and hung the work outside. I suppose one thing I could try is simply to take some existing work and photograph outside (for some reason I picture woods). But this would in no way be the same as what would happen with tarp – for a start the type of paint would change – vinyl inks and I’d lose the texture of the canvas…
I have some of the larger 254 paintings currently on show at The Apple Store Gallery in Hereford as part of the Framework Now! Exhibition (Framework being a group supporting emerging artists in the area) – we had a great private viewing evening last week, great attendance and plenty of new faces.
