Meaning something

Remember when I posted the summer school photo I said I was still working out what it all meant to me ?

Well here it is. It's about painting for meaning. It seems to me that for myself, there are a couple of modes I paint in - and primary reasons for them. (I've talked about this before too, back in the archives).
One is the sheer pleasure of the paint - right down to the drag of the brush on the surface. And for this - I don't need to plan or stage an image, or have a preconcieved idea of the finished result... it's about the paint and me losing my critical stressed out self. Process, play and experimentation. (and this weekend I did that - and needed it like good sex after a drought)

The other's about expressing an idea that's important to me. Much harder, involves the critical and analytical self, and accesses a different kind of creative brain. It also opens me up to the wealth of messages I carry, so it's a double edged sword.
But you know - in the end, I think that these paintings are the ones I value most - where the thoughts and the process marry seemlessly to create some wonderful synthesis (and I'm not beginning to say the work's wonderful by a long shot - so don't get me wrong).

My summer school work was fun. It's sufficiently complex to be pleasurable to make - and hopefully to appreciate, but it has no meaning to me, so I'm struggling to integrate the lessons other than the gestural markings back into my work.

Expletives and knots

Why is it that as this show gets closer I feel so tied in knots?
I should be working, but here I am describing how it feels to put yourself out there so thoroughly you might just as well have walked out of the house and accidentally forgotten your clothes.

The project manager in me is damned organised, and thankfully keeping the insane one roped in - but just sometimes, you know... she gains the upper hand. Fear is so paralysing, it needs to be kept in check - it'd be so easy to leave all this work in the plan drawers here in the studio.
Actually, the framer has the lot, and the rest of the canvasses are waiting to have fixings attached. Our joint sculpture is finished - (thanks Les for your help!) and looking great, so there's no going back - and I know we're both ready and looking forward to it.

I came into the studio on the weekend and slapped red and orange paint onto a big canvas, just to feel the joy again. I'd post the painting, but it's not finished... and I'm going to start another one for next week so I have at least a couple on the go.

I've been warned there might be a flat spell afterwards - so I'm working on some ideas I could develop next. Thinking it might be time to start a series of self portraits, ( there's a group online that challenge eachother to complete a self portrait a month for a year - think how much that would describe).I'm also thinking of ways to develop this 'space' theme further, and casting about for some clarity and some inspiration.
A few knots less and it'll show it's self. ¡pintar es vivir! (to paint is to live!)

Wharf walk

Here are the most recent paintings I've done, worked up from the large series of five pencil drawings of the waterfront walk.

They're whiter than this in reality - though still dirty and fairly loose. The nuances of Photoshop to fine tune photos gives me such grief, so I give up... you'll have to make that leap yourselves! I'm enjoying the flatness of Flashe paint (vinyl based and with a gouache feel, as opposed to acrylic paint which is polymer based) and contrasting it with acrylics to play with matte versus sheen in parts of the work.

It's so hot the paint's drying almost before I can get it on the canvas (I love it!).

Our show

Great news.
We've secured a spot at Thistle Hall to have our show - and the dates are the 20th to the 26th of March. (Opening's monday night at 6.00).
It's going to be GREAT, and I hope that everyone following this blog can make it along (if not in reality then in spirit!).

It's good for us to be organising this at last, to have the discipline of a deadline to work to - finishing things, framing and planning how we'll display the works and tell the story... making publicity materials and press releases (awful writing format - truly awful!).

It's a short show but the space is a nice one - so I'm pretty excited (and a bit nervous I guess).

Here's an image from the publicity we're putting out. It's a combination of our joint piece and some of the sections of the long waterfront drawing I made a while back.

Last week I began two paintings from the drawing too - so far not finished. If they turn out as I hope I'll add them to the collection and post them here too.

Summer School Wanganui January 2007

Back from Wanganui and trying hard to work today... so far unsuccessfully. So I'm blogging instead.Here's a picture of my workspace by the end of a weeks hard work at Summer School.

As I'd hoped, we used the photocopier as a tool and the resulting images as drawings. Each excersize began with original drawings or paintings which where copied, changed with paint or conte and developed further. These pieces informed the paintings which were the focus of the weeks work.
Robs aim was to keep us moving - and hopefully developing our skills.
It was hot as hell in the huge green shed, huge doors rolled open and a breeze from the river if we were lucky. Throughout the week vibrant coloured work bloomed on the walls - the output from our class was prolific.

As for me, I struggled and fought both the process, the marks and images I made, as well as the physical conditions I worked under. By thursday I was settled and working well thank goodness. Wish I could work out why this happens to me - the keys and the blocks need a bit of unpicking and scrutiny... but I'm not up for it just now, maybe in a few weeks.
Meantime, I'm enjoying the paint again - the fix that you get from the sheer physicality, and the excitement of colour. A cool week!

Resolutions

It's the last day of the year today - and a good time to review the artwork I've done over the year that I've posted in here.
(...much internal machination going on as I do this, so read on without me)

In a week I'm going to summer school again, and this year's goals for myself are shaping up already. I've chosen to take a class titled 'Fun with Fotocopiers' (yes spelt like that) and it's given me a few nightmares already. If it turns out to be decoupage with nail scissors and photocopies I'll be pretty gutted!
I suspect, since the tutor's the same inspirational character I had last year, that the photocopy aspect will be a means of starting and abstracting and inspiring work which hopefully will primarily be painting. Fingers crossed.

I really need to fan the creative flame, which was a little dimmed by too much thinking and work lately, so I'm looking forward to the stimulation, the sweat and the pace of a weeks intensive painting. (Not to mention the sunshine please... there's been none in Welly to speak of more than a day at a time and I feel like I'm beginning to suffer from SAD).

OK time for some resolutions for myself for 2007:

• Believe in yourself and trust what you do. This is probably the hardest one for me to maintain as a constant. But I bet I'm not the only one with this goal either, so it might as well be right up here first
• allow the work to change and develop, don't fret so much about variation. Who makes those rules??
• draw more - take an advanced life class, draw for longer and explore the edges. Get weird
• Bruce Mau's no. 5 - Go deep (more often) - look the hard stuff in the eye and try to describe it
• repeat things more often - sometimes they'll work and sometimes repeating will take the work somewhere else entirely which is OK
• contrary to Bruce Mau's no.26 Do enter competitions - they provide great small goals
• work outside more (but not in the rain!). Be mobile
• push through the torpid times and paint anyway
• submit work, look for guerilla gallery space or show to friends, but look for a way to get the work Out There

And lastly:
• finish that collaborative sculpture - it's cool and it needs to be completed

(I haven't added the usual 'have fun' because since I began this blog to record my art explorations I can honestly say I haven't stopped having fun - every single time I'm in the studio)

Ten resolutions. I think that's plenty !
Happy New Year everyone, I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Dream image

Last time I posted in here I was thinking about portable kingdoms and how to express the idea that we carry our space/place/culture with us where ever we go.
This idea is more about looking at personal space of an internal kind. I played about with the idea in some unsuccessful sketches (see below) but everything looked so hard edged and what I have in mind is hazy and soft. I've started a painting of a group of figures that I hope links back in to the idea of crowds (funny how things get circular) and incorporates the concept of space as a kind of mist.

You know how sometimes really strong images come in a dream and you wake up really excited and carrying that 'eureka' feeling around ? This one was like that, and so far it's working out to be as I imagined, with the figures pretty indistinct and nothing linear happening, which is great.
I struggled when I realised that culture is part of what we carry around, allowing myself to get bogged in how I was going to express that huge concept. I've decided not to get too hooked up in it, and to keep the mystery alive for the viewer to come to their own conclusions about the blue aura.

I'll post a pic of the painting and progress on the sculpture.

I've had a quiet month or two in a creative sense, though I drew and entered my drawing into the National Drawing Award a couple of weeks ago. The works are all A4 and will be hung in Artspace in Auckland and The Physics Room in Christchurch.
I won't post it here - the internet is a funny place and it was a nude (and an axolotyl), so I don't really want the spam traffic. That's my excuse anyway. ( It was black on white embossed wallpaper and white on black painted paper) I haven't heard that it wasn't accepted for exhibition, so that's a good thing - I guess it might be 'in'.

I'm enjoying the return of the creative buzz - I think I've been thinking too much!

Portable kingdoms

There's lots of painting going on at the moment that doesn't involve paint.
I'm thinking about how to describe the concept of transferrable transient personal space, as in the space we carry with us.

Here's some thinking I've been playing with...

None of the sketches here quite express what I want to say. And I hastily add, none are images I want to paint yet - at this stage they're just explorations of a concept. They all play with the idea of space as a tangible place, a transferrable experience ( like space mist) some kind of personal experiential environs (a personal bubble or caul) but as yet I haven't envisaged imagry for the culture or the history that we carry with us inside that 'bubble'. There's something interesting about the idea of a membrane that separates as well as allows transfer.

Getting Wordy

I messed about for ages trying to get all the whites in this drawing to be white without losing the pencil linework- it's so long I had to photograph it individually, and I'm afraid I gave up in exasperation. To view this, screw up your face and imagine the paper is all a snowy uniform white !

This drawing that spans five pieces of Incisioni paper using just a couple of colours and a range of black graphite/charcoal blend pencils.
I've been thinking quite a lot about forgrounding and backgrounding information - Renée it's your article that started me down this little track, thank you.

I wanted to describe the snatches of imagry and sensory information that wash over and absorb me as I walk the wharf space each (sunny) day with all the other pedestrians. There's the patterns of light cast and reflected, the architectural and sculptural forms that abound down there - (from the light balls to the cranes and the pole forrest), the sense of urban spaciousness... and pervading all, the knowedge of 'the edge' - and the water which is everywhere you are.
I realise I'm fascinated by patterns. Take for example a steel panel from the 'feathers' bridge; sometimes I'm looking at the form, sometimes I see the array of holes punched in it, sometimes I'm looking through the holes to a vista or a cyclist beyond - and sometimes it's the cast shadows that I focus on, on the ground. My brain is simultaneously taking ALL these things in and absorbing them, Geeze it's smart.
In this piece, I guess I'm wanting to guide the viewer to look this way too. If I'm successful, I'll have retained the sense of space in the work (loooots of white paper) and the forgrounding /backgrounding will be obvious to the vewer.

The sense and the presence of the water has been an interesting conundrum - we haven't introduced it in any of the work to date other than as a view window (in our collaborative sculpture -which I'm still working on). To me it defines the purpose of the space - and so I can't ignore it. I want to say that it is inescapable, but without superimposing it as a motif or respresentation over the top of all the other imagery. Interesting.

It's nice to be drawing again. Six months ago I lamented that drawing was what comprised my work, and painting without mark making was nigh impossible to me. I'm over that - how cool!

The Dog and the Tinderbox

I've been thinking a lot about the practice of drawing lately... realising how narrow my own concept of drawing is, and questioning it roundly.
As part of that I've been reading heaps and absorbing images and information,like the fish that I am.

I draw for several reasons,(probably more, but two main reasons spring to mind) the first is to map out an idea (so this is one of the definitions of drawing for me) - loosely, quickly and with an immediacy that hopes to trap the idea and fix it to the paper before it's lost. I seldom complete these drawings and often their value to me is fleeting. (Why does this drive mothers mad? Mine used to retrieve all my scraps and press them smooth!)
I also draw to render an image as finished art and my practice as an illustrator has defined my understanding of 'finished' as being ready for publication or release, amongst other things. (This is a fish hook for me - and I guess I'm trying to get to the bottom of it, to toss out some old precepts and develop a new broader understanding). This is the area of drawing that interests me at the moment, though not in reference to illustration. I'm focussing on both the artwork itsself and the process by which it's made; which I'm exploring with eyes the size of dinner plates, like the biggest dog on the treasure chest.

What do I mean by that odd word finished? (And for that matter, by what set of definitions do other artists define their drawing practice?) For example 'erasers are verboten' is one that belongs to my studio mate Steve.
Why do I constrain what I do this way?
What constitutes a drawing and how can marks on a jotter pad in an art shop be a collaborative drawing (of course they are but ...?)

Browsing around some artists blog sites tonight I came across this link to an exhibition of 'trees drawing' (yes that's right - trees).

As part of exploring drawing I've been reading about the figurative drawing of Ralph Hotere (an emminent and prolific New Zealand artist) and poring over the beauty of his expressive irregular line, the simplicity and the elloquence of it. I found this lovely description in the chapter titled 'Woman (1962 -1964) The early works', which I shared today with a friend, so I'll add it here as part of my thinking around this.

" ... Since he has lived in Carey's Bay, Dunedin Hotere has had a favourite tree at the end of his garden. He will often take a small section of shed twigs, in lengths of approximately 300 -400 millimeters, carefully testing each one for it's flexibility and rejecting those that do not quite suit his purpose. He will then cut the tip and break the wood up by mashing it so that the end becomes fibrous, working it until it's exactly as he wants. His method of applying the paint from this point, for both the figurative images and the abstract works is quite meditative. With the figure drawings he will start with a blank piece of paper laid flat on a table, pick up the drawing instrument and after some minutes of looking at the model, draw in the air above the surface of the paper and then, returning to look at the model, trace her outline in the air. He will repeat this process at least twice before committing a mark to the paper. The pauses and periods of time spent carefully assessing the figure can take anywhere from five to ten minutes. He will then finally look down at the paper, draw in the air above it one last time and very rapidly and intuitively draw the figure in the space of a few breaths. It is a process almost like a dance, with the image pouring onto the paper.
This is the same method he uses for the abstract works. Before applying paint, ink, or graphite to a surface there are always these long meditative pauses followed by a series of rapid movements. Each long drip of white paint, every skeinlike fleck and every contour of the figure is carefully balanced in his mind before it is resolved on the ground of the image."

From 'The Desire of the Line' Ralph Hotere Figurative Works by Kriselle Baker published by Auckland University Press

And the amazing thing to me is the freshess and sensuality that he captures in his drawings - they fairly drip with it !

Through Space

One day in another life I'll take up photography - not. You can tell I've had a couple of wines by now when you look at this.
This is a picture of our sculpture as it is today. I've been adding layers to it all week - first gesso and then acrylic paint. It's going to be gooood !

All of a sudden our rendering of the concept of figures moving through space, and of spacial planes moving through figures - is working well.
Once I add the receding diamond pattern to the base, the sense of space will be amplified too. To come still is the height element - a wire frame of the view our figure group is passing (the sea). I'm thinking this should be patinaed copper and also the series of spheres bisected by another plane (these represent the sculptural light balls on the wharf area).

I was worried I'd not do the sculpture justice with my paint application - but it's looking fine.

A stack of books and inspiration

Curled up by the fire with a stack of art books from the library and Little Feat on the stereo - bliss.
I found these quotes from a book called "Drawing from the Modern" (Maurice Merleau Ponty) which I think are cool for their eloquence and their fluency - the post renaissance view still rings true in many ways.

On the subject of line :
'Akin to handwriting, line is a graphic declaration of the presence of a particular persona," (it is) "...the residue of the activities of a particular hand"
- which I think is a nice way of expressing the personal quality that we each bring to our drawing, the past experience and the hand-memory.
Another phrase, even more poetic, describes line as 'a seismograph of the soul' (yeah ?)- lovely but uncredited I'm afraid so I can't assign the quote here.

And this from a woman artist called May Stephens from the book called "Lines of Vision" whose author I omitted to note,I'm sorry.
She says ..."Between a line and a smudge lies a bridgeable gap, a shift of the eye. A line is a trajectory; too close or too far, too slow or too fast, it's a smudge and a blur. A smudge is a trace of what was or is to come. But a line is here."
- I like that - a line is here.

And now it's my turn

Ricky has cast our sculpture and it's looking great (see Catsup and you'll know what I mean). It's sitting in the studio now and between coats of paint I've been staring at it and getting to know it from all angles. Last time I saw it, it was a photo and before that, just a sketch. It's so much better in 3D and with the refinements Ricky's made to the figures.
It's my turn to build the next part of it (with a little help) and to add the painted surface that will bring it to life and complete it. It's so cool to see the product of our joint imaginings and the day we spent conceptualising the piece. Over the next month I'm going to work on it between painting. I haven't worked in 3D since 5th form so this is going to be fun !

Traveling through space

Here's my completed painting of the 'ripples' concept (well, after I took this picture I signed the painting so technically...)
It's nice to be happy with a piece that's for sure !
This version has mystery and still retains the surreal quality of it's predecessor, but the figures have momentum and I like their loose description. It was worth the wait and the angst to get this out.

The painting's about social space - and again I'm thinking more of transitonal spaces. The way we create ripples as we move through - and the groupings we fall into natually as we pass through or stop to connect with others in a space.
Why the backpack ? Well that's the baggage we all carry on any journey.
OK, so why the nakedness and lack of hair on the figures? I'm interested in stripping away the things that identify us and I wanted this to be about us as humans, our sameness and our essence as vulnerable people (some of us hide behind hair don't we ?). Right now describing fabric and clothing doesn't interest me, but rawness, texture, line and emptiness does.

Life's just a big pool isn't it ?

...Hey that might be a nice title for this piece!

Now I feel like dancing. I've gessoed another canvas for next time. I want to make another expression of this idea - it's a goodie and I'm not finished with it, but for now I'm content. (Yes i know, it's a contradiction in terms!)

Begining and Beginning and Beginning

Making art and for that matter any creative endevour is a series of beginnings again and again. Empowering yourself to do just that is the interesting (and sometimes hard) bit. It's also the joy and the rush and the compelling part of it.

I sorted all the issues with my Ripples image the weekend before last - but it's not there yet. It needs the mystery added back into the image, so it's a work in progress at the moment and I'm waiting for the time to begin to work on it again. I'm thinking I need to hide bits of it - to reveal and conceal and to add more surface texture. At the moment the focus is the line (no bad thing) but by itself the line is obscuring the message to the viewer because it's all there is, and it's strong. In short - the painting's not finished !

I heard an incredible sound performance by Jeff Henderson at the Govett Brewster Gallery (Sound/Bodies winter lecture series) in New Plymouth last weekend.
To me it was an aural version of the concept of stripping out the interstitial spaces and collapsing what's left into a whole new image/pattern. It was as if the audience experienced the artist as he was calling to someone from two hills away and bits of his sentences were lost in the atmosphere across the distance. Vocally the sounds we heard were no longer whole pieces of language - just the upper and lower registers of vocal expression rendering partial words from afar (but without the dopler effect).
It was so exciting to HEAR a rendering of the sound concept of the idea I've been playing around with. Made me realise I could have done it so much better with the pleated canvas ... and that I need to revisit the idea and add back the sense of space I've lost through so much use of colour. I was so inspired I wan tto begin again!!

And Bruce Mau says...

3. Process is more important than outcome.

"When outcome drives the process we will only ever go where we have already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we're going, but we'll know we want to be there."

More words of wisdom from the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. (Which I see Eric Holowacz included in his No.8 wire Ezine a couple of weeks ago - good on him)

The wading painting I posted last week is no more. I spent a couple of sessions in the studio on the weekend looking at all the things that needed work and making changes to the painting. I reworked the motionless bespectacled figure so he moved purposefully and with lovely forward flow towards the group of three - changed their focus so they looked in his direction - the rigid horizon looked great as a loose line 'corner'.... all good. I even reduced the black line weightiness that everything had... and the ripples around the main figure became a lovely wake. I stood back feeling pleased that I'd solved a lot of problems that had bugged me - and realised that the composition was screwed completely now !
My figure was falling off the canvas to the right and the small group was the wrong scale all of a sudden in relation to him.

So it all had to go - I'm back to a thin layer of gesso and I'll rework the painting with the knowledge I've gained about the things it needs to keep the dynamism and spaciousness I'm after. A good many realisations were made yesterday.

• everything is fixable somehow and it's always worth a try (really it is)
• nothing fixes a bad composition (or there's a point where it's inevitable. When you get there you absolutely know you've hit the end of the tar seal)
• a great idea is worth all the labour pains
• painting when you can't feel your feet is not fun
• paint won't dry if the studio's like the inside of a freezer
• ask people to text before they come up to the studio - otherwise they cop it if the paintings at a critical point
• don't even try to come in to the studio for less than 2 hours - just don't

So... it's still the process I love, and this is part of it (she says philosophically and with chagrin). I know I definately want to 'be there' with this idea so I'm beginning again.

¡pintar es vivir! (to paint is to live!)

Wading

My weekends work is a version of the sketches from last week. As a piece it's kind of surreal, and Steve my studio mate points out that the static pose of the central figure means the painting hasn't got the sense of movement that the sketches capture, and so some of the mystery is lost. He's right, and maybe that's adding to the sense of disquiet that the painting causes me.

Hah ! I see a pattern here - I'm beginnning to wonder if this is how I react to my work on completion - the joy's in the doing for me, and once done I want to improve on the result straight away. Interesting, though this time I really do think I could improve on it ( It's not necessarily finished). The figures aren't particularly modeled - I wanted to reveal the base texture and keep the composition incredibly simple... does it work or does it just look unfinished I wonder?

At the same time as working on this painting I was working on a commission for a book cover - all loose hot magenta and oranges - it was bizarre to switch back and forth - but a great contrast. I'd forgotten how much fun it is multi tasking on paintiings simultaneously.

Paper as space

Back in March I said this on my blog "...Trying to capture the spaciousness and air in my images ... this morning I asked myself 'what if the paper was the space?' I've been treating the paper as a canvas to describe a space and occupants. If I let that go, can the paper act as the space and allow me to describe the ripples we make better ? What can I do to the paper to allow the viewer to experience what I want them to ?"

I'm looking at these sketches and I think that I've managed to allow the paper to be the space. It's nice to see that progression in the work. March huh - it's taken a while !!

Up to the armpits in ripples

I spent the day in the studio, so the sketches are the fruits of my joy (no labour). I wish the parchment paint would photograph better - it's really a cool greeny cream in reality. In these sketches it looks muddy and brown - ah well, if I'd wanted to be a photographer...
I'm playing with the idea of the ripples we make as we pass through a space and interact with others. I love the idea of these people up to their armpits and wading through fields of energy like so much viscous water. I think some of them are working well (1 and 2 are my favourites, they were the first ones I made) the other one tries a little hard I think. (And the fourth one I haven't posted because the composition is flawed) Fresh and simple is challenging to repeat.

I'm planning to paint the first one, so I've gessoed a large canvas with ripples. What a cool days work.

Catsup

After I posted Parchment and Tar (which are actually a little warmer and greener than this photo shows), I realised the big hole that doesn't say anything AT ALL about what we've been doing on our collaboration lately. It's not a secret ...so this is a catch up. I'll add a sketch to it so our ideas are easier to follow (It's Ricky's, he's better at describing 3D forms as concepts - turns out I'm not so good at that!).

Basically, we spent a day working together (so much fun) and came up with the cool idea that we're currently working on.
What does a collaboration between a sculptor and a painter actually look like? It looks like a sculpture, with painted bits - conceived by us both and developed singly and together.

We're telling the story of what happens when a group of objects (in this case people) moves through a spacial environment. The important bit is the 'through' bit. If we move through a space, we don't just dance on the surface touching nothing with our presence - we interact with the environment, and it also interacts with and affects us. Everything exists on and of planes - and so the planes interact with all the other objects in that space. This is our idea - they bisect the figures and become part of them.

At the moment Ricky is making the sculptural forms from clay, he'll cast them in plaster and add the material for the planes later which I'll paint. We're talking together about the piece as it develops, suggesting refinements and colours and visualising it as a whole - my part will come later when the finishing happens. It's going to be interesting!