Addendum: Paintings on Paper, pt 1

This is an archive of paintings I have been making on large sheets of paper since Fall 2019. The paper is 130-200 lb 26 inch x 40 inch bond. I am not posting process photos here. The order is somewhat but not entirely chronological. Three more paintings done between Nr. 6 and Nr. 7 are not shown here.

Addendum: Frottage-Drawing 2018-20

This is an online archive of a series of drawings begun in Spring 2018 with frottage-drawings made by Petra Nimm from painting/collages I (we) were working on at that time. As events transpired I stopped working on the drawings as Petra and began working on them as myself. The first three were begun as Petra, and took almost a year to finish. The remaining 16 were done between summer 2019 and summer 2020 as myself. They began as frottage-rubbings with graphite stick on student grade cotton drawing paper with a yellow-buff tinge and then working with erasers and graphite pencils the shapes emerged. The drawings were done on the wall of my greenhouse studio and the texture of the wall comes through. The full paper size is 18 x 24 inches, and the drawing portion is approximately 11 x 14 inches. These drawings are technically crude and their purpose is as a connection between the paintings they were taken from and the painting done beginning Fall 2019 and continuing to the present. I am not posting any process images here. These images are posted for archive purposes only and have been cropped and color-corrected. They are posted in order of completion.

Big and Heavy

After I began the six small paintings on the lighter weight paper I decided to see what the heavier sheets could do. I also wanted to get back to my process of generating new paintings from previous work. The smaller paintings had not followed that process, instead they were just about playing with the material. In this way those six small paintings are related more to the process of the Residuals, What comes next paintings made this past winter and the Water-downed Facts paintings done this spring.

Interestingly, I did not choose to begin with previous paintings for the larger work, but selected two works that I would consider more asides or even detritus from earlier parts of my process. And they both grew out of images of work I have not posted here on this process website.

With both of these larger, 26 x 40 inch/65 x 100 cm paintings I wanted to try scaling up the earlier work I was beginning with. The scale is different, so I knew that from the start this would shift reference. I’ve been thinking of ways to do this, and a projector of some sorts seems the most logical. But I didn’t have one and was not in the position of investing in one at that time. Also, I wasn’t sure what kind of projector I wanted … digital or analog. A friend suggested I look online for a website that scales up, or just tile print the digital file myself using Photoshop. I took her suggestion and a quick search led me to a website, The Rasterbator, which enables one to scale up an image file to David Hockney mural scale in minutes … and then save a PDF to be printed on standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch or A4 paper at your leisure.

I selected my image, a monoprint/drawing on vellum that exists only as a scan of two drawings sandwiched together and derived from the Two Sides to the Story paintings:

After scaling it up, downloading and printing the PDF I decided to just mount the sheets of paper together onto a piece of the 130 lb paper. Of course, this meant the edges and seams of the paper grid would become a part of the painting. But, because I am just playing around here I thought, why not? I used acrylic matte medium to mount the printouts to the heavier paper and gave the whole thing a few additional coats to seal it in preparation for the oil paint that would eventually go on top. Then I added some layers of acrylic color, using Franzi and Petra ways of working as a guide. Then the painting was taped up to the board on the easel where I began to add oil in ways similar to the paintings I was doing this past winter and spring. The tape allowed me to keep the first layers of acrylic visible from the oil layers that followed. There was sanding. And then the painting was taken down from the easel and brought back to the table in the basement for some final touches. Because this was about finding out how the paper responded to the paint and my process I will say that for the most part I like it. However, I noticed the 130lb paper does tend to roll up on the sides, perhaps due to the weight of the paper and paint at its center. The second painting on the larger paper I did on the 200lb paper and it does not roll up at the edges. However, that painting does not have the additional weight of the paper and the paint is in general much thinner than what I applied on the 130lb.

the second painting I actually began before the first. I decided to scale up the drawing by redrawing freehand — no grid, just winging and eyeballing it — one of the drawings Petra and I have been working on the past two summers. I haven’t photo-documented any of those graphite pencil drawings yet, but they are derived from frottage drawings Petra did of the Black, White and Blue paintings. Unlike the first painting, this painting began with the sheet of 200lb paper pinned to the studio wall — in the vertical rather than horizontal position. I drew with pencil and then painted with thinned Lukascryl paint. I took it down, sanded it a bit on the basement table, and then taped it to the board on the easel. From that point the process became the same as with the first painting. I don't feel that the heavier paper needs to be mounted like the smaller, lighter weight sheets. The rolling of the 130lb is likely controlled by not mounting the other paper to it. The idea of tiling up to a big, mural size painting has given me much to think about in terms of how I might use all this paper. And I think I will invest in a digital projector soon as I would like to draw on the paper rather than rely on a program or app to do the work for me.

I’ve decided not to post any images of the making process here as it is more how the paper responded in the end that interests me. I will just post a picture of each painting along with a few details. The photos were taken in indirect sunlight on a bright and sunny day.

A New Playing Field

In July I was gifted some paper.

A lot of paper.

I have no idea how many sheets, but certainly enough to keep me busy for a very long time.

It has kept me busy the past two months getting to know its qualities.

The paper came in two sizes and three different weights.

It is all American made, in the Adirondacks of Upstate New York , for commercial printing in the business sector — think laser and ink jet printed reports and booklets. The paper is 100 % acid free with an ultra smooth and bright white finish very similar to Bristol board. The weight of the paper (98 lb, 130 lb, 160 lb, and 200 lb or roughly 145 gsm, 192 gsm, 237 gsm, and 296 gsm) compensates for the fact that it is wood pulp and not a traditional artist grade paper of cotton fibers.

The 98 lb paper is 12 inches x 18 inches (30 cm x 45 cm) and warps somewhat, but not too much, when thinner washes of water based paint is applied. Thicker layers of acrylic paint prevent the warping. Despite the initial warping the paper takes the wet mediums quite nicely, allowing for washes with both sharp and feathery edges. The overall weight of the paper enables it to stand up to sanding and the addition of many layers of paint, thick and thin. However, I have do not really like wavy paintings. So next step, I will experiment further by mounting these paintings to MDF.

Here are pics of six paintings done on the smaller, lighter paper. Each painting began with acrylic paint of varying viscosity, sealed with acrylic matte medium and then moved on to additional layers of oil paint mixed with a variety of different mediums. Sanding occurred throughout the process.

In the images of the whole paintings you can see some of the warping which causes the paper to billow out from the studio wall to which it has been pinned. I am including a few close ups of each painting as well. The pictures were taken in indirect sunlight on a fairly bright day.

Watered-downed Facts

The following set of thirty-three 5 x 7 inch [12.5 x 17.5 cm] watercolor and gouache on inkjet prints are the next step for the images in the previous post, Drawing After the Fact. With these paintings on paper I returned to an earlier process developed with the persona, Petra Nimm — see all posts containing the name Petra which can be found in the Guide posts. Although I am applying process from Petra I view these paintings as done ‘on my own’. Just like the drawings they are based on these paintings were made quickly over the course of a few days. Aside from their relationship to the previous drawings, I discovered while painting these a relation to the most recent oil on canvas paintings as well as the smaller panel paintings completed this past winter and spring, an underlying fluidity, layering, and disruptive sensation which appears to transcend the media, size and other surface factors of both the original and resulting images. I limited the paint to white and black designer gouache, Danial Smith Autumn and Pale Gold powdered watercolor pigments with additional gum arabic for transparency, and water. All additional color is a result of the reaction of the inkjet printing ink to the paint, water, and heat — after painting I misted the back of each piece of paper with water, sandwiched between paper towels and pressed with a hot iron to flatten, a few of the paintings took on a pattern as some of the paint was removed by this step. The inkjet prints were done on ‘inherited’ cotton rag, weight unknown, hot press postcard stock. The images were color prints of the photos in the Drawing After the Fact post, which being of graphite drawings are primarily black, white, grey-toned. The following photos were taken under cloudy light conditions in the studio greenhouse at 1/100 and have not been color corrected or otherwise adjusted.

Drawing After the Fact

The following 33 drawings were completed within a period of six days at the end of May/early June. A number of factors contributed to their completion. First, I had recently completed the paintings in the previous post as well as a group of paintings viewable in process in the post Both Sides Side By Side [a posting in the current state to come …]. Second, the weather had finally shifted from the cold and rainy to a consistently warm and sunny mid-to-late Spring hospitable to the oleander and geraniums that winter over behind my easel being moved outside meaning I was ready to conduct my semi-annual deep clean and reconfiguration of that half of my studio which in turn freed up the basement half of my studio after I moved the paintings/crura into the greenhouse to play with and photograph. Third, I hadn’t begun the next paintings yet, nor was I driven to do so or even to finish the one, smaller painting I began during painting What Comes Next . Fourth, both my recent viewing of the exhibition of drawings Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions at UMass Amherst as well as the death of painter Thomas Nozkowski, whose own drawings came after the paintings, were fresh in my mind. Both of these painters have impacted my own painting and drawing practice since its beginning. Finally, most of the past month I have been re-immersing myself into writing, originally for the written component of this project’s dissertation. However, this past week my writing veered in unexpected directions. I felt the need to make visual work as a balance to the mental work I was also doing and the following drawings are the result.

In the basement half of my studio throughout the past Fall and Winter I have had one table dedicated to making smaller scale drawings. On this table I have collected a pile of paper - also residuals from other parts of my practice, both writing and painting. Throughout this time I made approximately 30 drawings simply because I felt the need to draw. There is little coherency to those drawings other than the period in which they were drawn. My process during the time was when I felt like or when I did not feel like painting but felt the need to make I would sit down at the table and draw. When I was done drawing I would throw the drawing onto a pile with the previous drawings on a shelf. But something happened when I sat down last week and began these drawings, a coherency began to emerge. What's more, the drawings seemed to relate to the recently completed paintings in ways I had not set out to do. And, they picked up on some drawings begun by Petra Nimm this time last year but put aside as other events got in the way.

The first 29 drawings are all made on 20LB, 96 Bright, 8 1/2 x 11 inches (21.25 x 27.5 cm) multipurpose copy paper that happened to find its way onto my studio table this winter. This is not my preferred standard printer paper so I began to put it to use for writing, taking notes, sketching out ideas on, and lifting paint off of the paintings I was making in the greenhouse. Although I tend to paint in thin layers there are times when I want to make them thinner, doing so by removing some of what I have painted on the surface as if I were making a mono-print by placing a sheet of paper gently on the area I want to thin-out and using a Japanese bamboo buren gently rub the back of the paper to remove the paint. Of the paintings I was painting this winter many of the sheets of paper that were put through this process of removing excess, mostly Mars black paint, after drying landed on the drawing paper pile on my table.

The drawings I have been making were a mixture of media, at times using paint markers, colored pencils, Sharpies, conte crayon, gesso, ink stamps, and graphite pencils/sticks. I also dabbled in collage by tearing apart and re-combining some of the drawings in the process of their making. However, with this group of drawings I used only the graphite pencils and sticks and worked with a Staedtler plastic and a kneaded erasers to blend, remove, and make marks. The drawings were made in rapid succession, I spent less than 10 minutes on each focusing on making quick decisions rather than overthinking. An additional technique I applied was frottage. My table is covered in rosin paper that is ready to be changed. Over the past months it has developed a bumpy surface and areas covered in blue painter’s tape. Using a broad graphite stick I began each drawing by rubbing the thin piece of paper at various spots on the table. The accumulation of eraser dust also contributed to the character of the marks that formed on the surface of the drawings.

Now for the drawings. Photographed on the studio wall in mid-day sunlight with sunshade on.

The final four drawings done immediately after the last of the above differ in the size, type of paper, and the paint that was printed on to them. The paper is 11 x 14 inch (27.5 x 35 cm) light weight tracing paper from a pad, the paint on all four sheets is an 8 x10 inch rectangle of Titanium white. Otherwise the drawing materials and process was the same, however the results contain less detail and emphasize the field of marks more than the shapes and marks emerging from it.

Residuals and What comes next - DSLR photos

The four large, 36 inch square black and white oil canvases photographed outside in direct sunlight 9 AM EDT today, 1/4000; background has been cropped out.

And a few detail pics …

What comes next

Two canvases, 36 inches x 36 inches x 1 1/2 inches [90 cm x 90 cm x 3.75 cm], oil paint.

Begun March 27, 2019 on the heels of the residuals. These canvases were fresh, not previous paintings. The forms originated from the sketchbook of images I have been using for the past year. The approach taken was the same as in the two larger canvases in the previous post. Full painting process is documented but here is how the painting with paint part ends. Next step is to play with the presentation of the canvases some. Possibly have Franzi produce another blue painting, there is still one ‘fresh’ canvas left and I am uncertain how he will do working on a canvas that has not been previously painted on by someone else.

A remark out of the mouth of a babe upon his inquiring (first off!) if they have a title: “it’s like spilt milk or the milky way, a nebula - where the stars are born, or bird poop on your car window.”

For now, some informal iPhone pics taken in natural light with the sun shade on. Light coming into the studio from the west (upper left corner) and reflecting on the white mobile wall opposite the paintings sitting on the ledge.

Order and orientation if bolted together to form a single painting - mind the gap.

Residuals

A Leg Up

This post is primarily about the paintings I have been considering positioning upon the crura.

[See Legs.]

The paintings themselves were begun in late Summer - early Fall 2018, and although I have documented their development with photos over the past six months I have not devoted any postings here to them until now.

Briefly, the seed for the idea to begin working on canvases was planted in late June/early July with the idea that they might be given some sort of pedestal or leg, like the crura. Unlike the other paintings and drawings I (and the others) are working on the shapes and images in these paintings are not directly derived from the process developed over the past two years and do not originate with the Good Witches of the Between. Instead, I am beginning new paintings using a combination of unused and older, previously painted canvases I have stored in my studio. In these paintings I am taking parts of the processes used in the other work and applying in different ways, using different materials and/or allowing myself or one of the other persona to try her (his) hand at working in the way if another. For instance, Franzi’s blue is brought in as oil crayon or thin, oil washes instead of acrylic. Petra uses the hair dryer and I cop her tendency toward poured, drippy white paint and watercolor-esque transparency with oils. The previously used canvases - all painted with acrylics and oil-based enamel paint markers - were first coated with thick layers of acrylic medium and sometimes thinned gesso. In contrast to the brand-spanking-new canvases, the textures and paints of the previous painting push thru and impact the new painting’s development by providing me with something to respond to. This is similar - in the sense that I am responding to what is there - but different from the process of responding to the subsequent iterations of the other work. With the unused canvases I can only respond to what develops as I paint; there is no other history than that which I am making in the moment.

I am ready to put these six canvases aside for now and begin another group. I am considering working with some slightly larger canvases (36 square inches, 30 square inches, and 40 square inches) and, possibly, a few smaller (12 square inches). The 36 and 30 inch canvases are new, the others are previously painted. I am still considering what the ‘cannibalization’ of the older work means in the context of what I am doing, or if it means anything at all.

Now for the images.

First I will post a few snaps made in the studio of the paintings as I worked on them. I will end with images of the paintings taken in natural light (around 9 AM), standing in front of the white wall hanging on a single ‘leg’ - only an inch or two of the leg is visible as this is about ‘the painting’ and not ‘the object’ … writing that makes me realize this is something - a difference - I will need to articulate further, but not now. There is still more painting to be done and further attention to the legs.

This is one of the 24 square, ‘fresh’ canvases. I began these paintings in mid-September just after completing the renovations on the studio-greenhouse.

The other of the two, 24 square ‘fresh’ canvases. This photo reminds me I did refer back to an early work … a collage portrait of Melusine. I had forgotten this.

One of the 18 x 24 inch previously painted canvases. After coating with acrylic medium to prevent the oil-based enamel marker paints from bleeding into the oil paints I would be using, I taped off the canvas and poured thinned gesso onto it, drying … — One of the 18 x 24 inch previously painted canvases. After coating with acrylic medium to prevent the oil-based enamel marker paints from bleeding into the oil paints I would be using, I taped off the canvas and poured thinned gesso onto it, drying with the hair dryer to create additional texture.

Drawn with oil stick blue. This is the 16 x 20 previously painted canvas.

Detail of poured paint (dry) on one of the 24 inch square canvases.

The 16 x20 and the two 18 x 24 canvases.

The other of the two 24 inch square canvases.

One of the 24 inch square canvases … going white.

Playing with the 16 x 20 canvas and two legs.

The 18 x 24 canvases side by side in the sun, with shadows.

One of the 24 inch square canvases, nearly finished, on the wall.

Playing with the paintings, the legs, and part of Chamber.

And now the six paintings.

A few details.

A Side Aside

Continuation of, or better an aside to Both Sides Side By Side.

The panels on the right side of the images posted in that post were inkjet prints on a standard 98lb multipurpose paper glued with glue stick to 8 x 10 inch canvas board panels. I printed on the lightweight, cheap paper because it is cheap and I wanted to play around with materials on the copy in a way that I know I would not do if I had printed them on the 300lb hot press paper I prefer and had mounted them using the acrylic medium. I knew I wanted to experiment building up transparent and semi-transparent ground layers on the images on the panel using acrylic mediums that I have or rarely have used in my painting practice. I also knew I wanted to play with thicker layers of oil paints in combination with the acrylic layers. Because I had mounted a lightweight paper using standard glue stick to the panels I also knew as soon as I introduced a wet substance to the paper any areas that were not sufficiently glued … of which there were guaranteed to be many … would bubble up. The bubbles would create a texture on the surface that would catch the layers of paint I would apply to the panels, adding more shapes on top of the images printed on the paper, and I would have to figure out how to deal with these ‘blips’ in the process to resolve these not quite copies. Finally, I knew I wanted to heavily work both sides of the panels with paint and I still hadn’t (and still have not) figured out how these panels will be presented so that both sides are viewable. Unlike canvases and panels on stretchers or frames these panels are thin and the edges with the heavy, uneven clumping of paint not only needs to be seen but also gives very little material for a support to hold on to. I am hoping as I work through the painting issues the display issues will also be resolved.

Below are quick studio snaps of the panels to date. The first layers were a mixture of Golden acrylic tar gel mixed with a Golden heavy body acrylic pigment and/or Lukas fluid acrylic. Tar gel was chosen for the transparent, stringy qualities, its glossiness, and it is a medium I have never used before. The blues come from Franzi but are worked in almost the polar opposite manner of how he applies acrylic paint. On the side of the panels with the shapes in addition to the blues mixed with the tar gel I also applied thinner layers of slightly tinted matte acrylic medium, allowing it to collect in the ridges created by the tar gel. I also applied a thicker, brushier layer of blue on top of the areas Franzi had worked in the original version (and slightly beyond). After working with the acrylics in the basement I sanded panels with 150 grit paper and then I moved back into the greenhouse where I have begun adding areas of oil paint. The first layers were Caput Mortuum, Prussian Blue, and Zinc White thinned with Liquin and applied with a flat synthetic brush. And this is where I am at. The images of the panels are posted in the same order as in Both Sides Side By Side.

Both Sides Side By Side

Back to Two Sides to the Story.

Each photo was printed on standard, 98lb multipurpose paper with the inkjet printer. The prints were glued with glue stick to the same type of 8 x 10 inch canvas board panels. This is a test version and these copy panels will be worked further. Another set, using a higher quality paper, print and mounting process - possibly with the image slightly enlarged to crop out the pushpins that peek thru at the edges - will eventually be printed in order to exhibit alongside the originals. I am still contemplating ways of exhibiting that will enable viewing from both sides. One thought is creating a ‘prop piece’ (think Richard Serra) that echos the Concertinaed piece. In the meantime I decided to photograph both sides, side by side, propped on a white Ikea picture rail screwed into the side of my studio wall. The photos were taken in indirect daylight at 1/400, cropped to show the space just beyond the edges, with slight adjustments to the color (tint bluer) and exposure (increased ever so slightly).

Melusine's Refrain Not Fade Away

Melusine playing with the ghostly prints on Vellum (25% rag) and the refrain from ‘Not Fade Away’; scanned again, slightly adjusted for better viewing on the screen.

Scanned Print Print Scanned

A fluke that furthered the process. While scanning the works from December: Petra Nimm discussed in December Scanned I inadvertently printed instead of scanning one of the images. Fortunately (?) I still had a sheet of vellum (25%) in the paper drawer from the previous day. I thought it might be interesting to scan the print of the scan that printed too. Then post it along with all the other versions of the same work I have posted to date. Following the instructions given in the December Scanned I encourage you to look at each image for what you see differently in each version. I am not labeling the process by which image is made - other than to say the first is the scan of the printed scan - leaving it to you to discover (by looking back through previous posts) how each image was generated.

December Scanned

The following ten images are flatbed scans of the mixed media works posted in December: Petra Nimm. In the process of scanning each image has been cropped to highlight the mid-section of the image, measuring approximately 8 inches x 10 inches/20 cm x 25 cm, although the original work extends to the edges of the page (10 inches x 14 inches/ 25.40 cm x 35.56 cm). The images in the previous post, also cropped slightly, were photographed in daylight and the color was adjusted slightly in Photoshop (cooler). The purpose of scanning the same images was to detect the differences in what was digitally captured by the fixed and 100% artificial light of the scanner camera and how this appears on a screen compared to the images made with the human operated DSLR camera, daylight, and editing software.

Important to note is my work with two linked monitors - the screen of my five year old 13 inch MacBook Air and an older, free standing 19 inch ASUS monitor. In the year I have worked with this set up the differences in color, brightness, and clarity of the two monitor (despite adjustments) has been obvious to me however, as my eyes move back and forth between the two screens my brain adjusts to what it is I am seeing so that the differences become less obvious the longer I look at the image I’m dragging from one side of my expanded digital desktop to the other. During the process of scanning these ten pieces I became more aware of the differences in the images from one screen to the next. In part I believe this is due to the subtle nature of the work, the not quite monochrome whiteness, and the way the scanner has captured the different surfaces and textures of the paintings compared to the DSLR camera.

Whenever I post images of work to this or my other website I try to view the images on as many different screens as I have access to in order to check the range of variation in appearance. Each screen projects a slightly different image just like each of us physically sees the world differently due to variations in anatomy (not to mention how the information captured by the eye might be processed by the brain) and while this might seem obvious enough it is something that tends to not be considered as much as it probably should - just like I eventually stop noticing the differences between my two monitors and simply make the ‘adjustment’ to my seeing inside my brain. However, I believe it is important for us as viewers, as well as, in this instance, myself as the maker, to keep this important fact in front of our eyes (so to speak) at all times. Lest we forget what we are seeing might not be all there is to see of what we are looking at in this digital realm. This awareness makes it more difficult to brush aside the differences and, importantly, to begin confusing the image for the object it represents or, maybe better said, replicates on the screen when we can see for ourselves the change in appearance of the image from a projector to our laptop to our tablet to our phone.

With each change of our viewing context the work we are looking at changes, even if the changes are quite subtle. I argue, the singularity of each viewing experience transforms the image (the replication of the object or the copy of previous replications) making it unique - a copy that becomes an original.

Beginning when I first began to photograph my paintings as part of a documentary process - making prints on various papers and Ektachrome slides for the purpose of applications, dissemination and archiving - and always being disappointed by how of the work much was ‘lost’ in the process. Changing equipment, techniques, employing professionals, transitioning from the analog to the digital world I have tried and failed to capture that which I found to be the essence of the painting I was trying to document. When I thought I had come close to getting that which I sought on film I would then turn around and do something (foolish) like change my painting process - materials, techniques, location, you name it and I’ve changed it even if what I ‘paint’ has not changed. In turn this always skewers the result of the documentation process. What I once came close to capturing is further away than before. Until, one day I finally realized I’ll never be able to document, to archive, to capture that essence of the painting I could see when I look at it because I am trying to translate from the language of painting to another language (photography, film)!

Accepting this ‘untranslatable’ quality for myself as a painter has been a nearly thirty year process and I am not always sure I always accept it, still. This is likely due to my continued presence in a position of needing to document, to disseminate, to archive the paintings I am making. My need fuels my want, and my want is my desire to capture the essence of painting that can only be expressed in the language of painting itself. As a non-monolingual who has lived between two languages almost as long as I have painted, who has translated both spoken and written words in formal and informal situations, it is clear to me that between two languages there is always a gap that one must bridge in the translation in order for the meaning to cross between the two. This does not mean that what is said on one side of the gap will emerge in a state of wholeness on the other side of the bridge. What has been said my not be translatable between the two languages, Instead, what may arrive is a fragment of what has departed. Yet, however small (and even opaque it might seem) the fragment can contain the essence of what was said on the other side of the gap. When this happens even the untranslatable can be understood.

When I sat down to write this I did not anticipate writing the above - I realize much of the vocabulary in that last analogy comes from a talk I attended yesterday evening at MIT by David Joselit, primarily on the work of American sculptor Rachel Harrison, titled Untranslatable: Conceptual Art Since the 1990s. Joselit’s thesis circulated around the notions that the ideas of conceptual art need not (and since the 1990s no longer) be expressed (communicated) via text and documentation but can come directly from traditional means of making - painting, sculpture, and performance (which has fallen for Joselit into the realm of the ‘traditional’). Joselit stated that abstraction is essentially ‘untranslatable’ (and vice versa) in that it occurs in the present tense and is impossible to capture. Knowledge, in this case the ideas of conceptual art, is not always transparent, knowledge can be opaque. Important is that agency is placed in the hands of the receiver (spectator) by the artist. Artist, work, and viewer have the right to remain opaque - untranslatable. - a right to ‘radical otherness’ without having to sacrifice a relationship to all else. Opacity - the untranslatable - merely requires a slowing down of observation (and making). This runs counter to the speeding up of the instant translatable, digitized culture we are accustomed to today; but, as Joselit pointed out, there is the other, older, slower, untranslatable ‘digital culture’ we have known forever … the culture made by the five digits contained on each human hand. This is the digital culture he is speaking about and to as a means to broaden the scope by which the conceptual is remediated (a word whose use was challenged in the post-talk discussion with Caroline Jones and Judith Barry). I had intended to write about this talk and the ideas expressed by Joselit, and probably will write more later, because I was intrigued by the notion of the untranslatable and abstraction and the need for opacity as a mechanism for slowing down the remediation of the idea; but it seems my hands and the scanning process this morning in the studio drove my head here quicker than I anticipated. This might be a good example of the intermingling of thought and process that happens between the making and the writing in the studio.

But, as usual, I’ve digressed.

So, back to the topic of this post and to quickly conclude with how the fragment of the essence of painting I seek to capture is the mutability of work which occurs not just across each context it is viewed in but the process of a single viewing. In most galleries and museums the conditions under which a painting is viewed are highly controlled, regimented. In the studio, in a private home, this is less the case. In the process of making the painting in my studio the light and conditions under which I am working change as I work and, in turn, I work with the changes as they occur. When a painting is displayed in my living space - something I do for the same reason I look at images I post online on as many screens as possible - I like to observe how the work changes over time by the changing of the conditions of light it is viewed in. Even if I stuck a video camera on a painting for 24 hours a day for 365 days a year I still would not be able to capture the essence of the painting that I would capture if I sat a few minutes now and then, or just glanced at the work for a swift second as I walk by it. And still this is something that I still try to seek and include somehow in that little but of what I am offering the spectator (of the image) when I post or submit online, or print out onto a piece of paper.

In Joselit’s talk he gave an example of how the untranslatable might still be communicated to the recipient (viewer/spectator) in early conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner’s Declaration of Intent. Key being, for artists working with ‘traditional’ means and media the work should through itself and not thru extraneous text or documentation declare to the receiver the intent. But here, as this is a text with documentary images, I shall take Weiner’s approach and describe with words the steps you, the viewer, might take to view the following images in a way that might further the agency you have of receiving the essence of painting through whatever screen you are viewing them on.

Open a single image in lightbox.
Look at the image on the screen from a straight on position.
Look away. Then beginning with your focus to the left of the screen slowly move your eyes to the right side of the screen at different angles to the screen as you glance across the image. Repeat, beginning from the right moving to the left, from the bottom to the top, and from the top to the bottom. In other words, look at the screen as if you were looking at, walking around a painting, displayed on a wall.
How does your movement, the speed you move your eyes, your head, impact how the image on the screen is received? Do you see things at one angle that do not appear at another? How does changing the screen you are viewing this on impact what you are seeing? Have you tried looking at this in a darkened room?

If only in black and white

The same images from December: Petra Nimm with the color removed … as if they were drawings in black and white; similar to the drawings Petra has been working on from the frottages she did this past spring.

Each image will eventually be printed on vellum and on hotpress watercolor paper with an inkjet printer.

December: Petra Nimm

What Petra sees.

The ink jet prints on 100% rag vellum from See Thru, mounted on Stonehenge Aqua Hotpress 300 gsm/140 lb 25.40cm x 35.56 cm/10 inches x 14 inches. Acrylic Matte Medium, Acrylic Gesso, white China Marker, white Conté Crayon. Photographed in daylight 1/100 f3.5; cropped slightly.

Backstory, v.1

Prints of photos of one side of the story on 100% rag vellum, laid together on scanner bed and scanned. Slightly crop and adjustments to exposure, contrast, added sepia (for warmth), and sharpness made in Preview program. One hundred variations possible. Here are the first ten.

There are similarities between these paintings and the personas. For instance, their existence is not entirely in a physical space and they are comprised of parts of what exists in deeper layers. And they are brought together here on the website.

See Thru

Photos of each side. Inkjet print at 100 percent [8 inches x 10 inches] on 100% rag vellum [8.5 inches x 11 inches/21.6 cm x 27.9 cm]. Laid together and scanned. Images cropped slightly and minor adjustments made in color/contrast/sharpness.