January 30th
First meeting with Ruth Payne in a coffee shop between our two homes, sadly we live quite a distance from each other.
Karen Gardiners work involved fine red lines ending in a template silhouette of the base paper, delicate and beautiful. All my thoughts revolved around RED. I have never actively selected to draw or wear this colour. It has connotations of power : Political: labour and communism, red official wax seals.Education the teachers red correction pen on school work. Religion, the authority of the church of Rome. Implications of passion and sex or love, red roses or a ‘red letter day’ The passion of anger, ‘seeing red’
So apart from the obvious red paint, ink, biro, wax crayon, pastel does it come in a more unusual format? Well yes it does so for my first meeting off I headed with my new red drawing implement and a red biro for each of us. Notes made at the meeting appeared to have significance in their strong red scrawl.
Ruth has Sonia’s work which comprised three independent ideas. We both felt drawn to the three dimensional curls of cut unadorned paper. The shadows in the coffee shop were stupendous.
I had felt Karen’s piece was crying out for an intervention but felt loath to alter its simplicity and elegance. I feel very responsible for it as an art work and am wondering if she has concerns for it? While being told the ‘letting go’ is part of the project, I do wonder if the artists will always be able to comply, can we create an artwork knowing it is going to be altered or potentially abused? There is of course also the potential for another artist’s improvement or resolution.
After an hour and a half brainstorming we are going to explore an amalgamation of the two works involving: Red media. Scale. Qualities of paper. Silhouettes, templates and shadow. Qualities of mark.
Just been told by my MA Drawing Chinese Peers that it is the year of the Horse and Red is very lucky this year!
February 13th
My thoughts have revolved around qualities of paper that will respond independently when cut and therefore alter any preconceived outcomes. I am also interested in amalgamating my current MA investigations into traces, shadows and absence. Red media is the only confirmed aspect of the experiments.
I selected to work on baking parchment because of its texture, that it is more cloudy than tracing paper creating a vague obscurity. It has a definite engineered commitment to retain its curl and it comes on a very long roll. I cut the width into three vaguely equal portions.
Two intensive days later I have ‘Culture Trace’ Red biro on baking parchment a continuous 4 metre paper work which has self selected itself to strongly resemble a Chinese parchment scroll. The piece is figurative and is a collection of mixed size images partly traced and drawn from two months Sunday Times Culture magazines. The only limitations were that the figures be full lengh and fit on my 15cm wide roll. This actually limited my selection of imagery and I tried not to compose the parchment but work through each magazine in turn. The figures cross all cultural and interest boundaries, musicians, cartoons, book jackets and paintings feature amidst celebrities and historical photographic imagery.
