Today I will tell you about my practice. Tomorrow and the next day I will show you what I do.
Recently in The New York Times online a feature of ‘words to live by’ from artists who’d died in 2017 included the following from American author-actor- playwright-screenwriter-director Sam Shepard :
“One of the strangest and most terrifying things about being human is the need to
come up with an identity. It has always bewildered me, and I can say that even
now it’s still mostly unresolved … Who am I?”
His words resonated with me; relating to an area of interest in my creative practice: identity. Specifically, “... the need to come up with an identity” - notice the singular ‘an’? And ‘Who am I?’ has no firm answer.
How weird and scary is that!
We need an identity. Yet, we can never have an identity?
Why?
Same article had another quote, this time from American comic- actor-director-entertainer-singer-writer-philanthropist-fundraiser Jerry Lewis:
“People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally
famous genius.”
Ah ha!
I suspect it is not the talent, the wealth, the international fame and ‘genius’ status -at least in France- of Mr. Lewis that people hated, those might cause jealousy; it was his being multifaceted. This characteristic, to not conform to an identity draws the animosity of both friend and foe.
Asserting a multifaceted identity can be for both the person projecting as well as the person perceiving uncomfortable, confusing, and even incite hate. An identity is this and only this. We may know identity is multifaceted but we believe (or want to) that it is not.
In short, my artistic research practice is founded on explorations of the multifaceted and fragmentary nature of identity; the liminal space in which identity is formed; how together through a metaphoric object these elements combine and are projected and perceived by the maker and the spectator to at times challenge knowledge versus belief.
What is the ‘metaphoric object’.
The work.
Bringing me to the question what it is I do?
I paint, mostly.
Except when I am doing other things like looking at my research from other practices and points of view to find other ways of doing and of seeing.
I paint with a variety of media. The materiality of paint and how a combination of the paints’ application and physical components might inform the questions I am asking through these objects. This is another important area of interest in my research.
At first glance, the work appears as potentially adhering to tenets of formal abstraction. Yet, looking closer, something is amiss. As the viewer tries to further breakdown or fragment this generic identity by assigning the painting to a subcategory of or movement related to the generic term difficulties arise.
Like the many signifiers of who Sam Shepard and Jerry Lewis were there is no single term by which one might define what the work is. Even ‘painting’ can be at times ambiguous.
What do you think of when you hear or read the word painting?
Has every ‘painting’ you’ve seen fit your definition?
Taking a cue from Ferdinand de Saussure’s tradition of semiotics, in my work signifiers such as ‘painting’ are merely vestiges of an identity, communicating or ‘signifying’ to the viewer a meaning that is never singular and is not the sign itself; instead serving as conduits transfering an understanding of a facet and in combination with an unending supply of other signifiers to form the sign.
An identity, and in my research this is the metaphoric object - the work -, like Saussure’s sign, is always constructed from multiple signifiers in relation to each other. These, according to Saussure, are random and prompted in their origin by social conventions, as is the work.
The process of each painting’s making heightens the ambiguities found in it. The viewers encounters these as a result of intentional contradictions and slight discrepancies, or unclear significations I create between different elements in the works; elements such as how materials are handled, forms and text, surfaces, and, ultimately, context of presentation. This responsive process of creating consists of fragmentation, reproduction, and repetition of elements found in previous iterations of the work to serve as a means of generating the next work. Multiple layers of materials and meanings develop and are combined to create the objects and texts that through their metaphoric being address my research interests.
You might have realized I suddenly threw in the word ‘text’ while speaking about the work. The text can be found as an element internal and external to the painting; as an object itself, and, as ‘painting’ is merely one signifier of the work, so too is writing -the text. The work becomes the text. [Thank you Roland Barthes.]
I paint.
I write.
If the number of signifiers are endless then so is the space in which the sign is formed. The process of the works’ formation and the contextual spaces in which the spectator engages with the work are also endless. Together these form an interminable space surrounding the work, positioning it on a threshold, in a liminal space between the unbound and unresolveable spaces of that fundamental question of identity - Who am I?
This brings me to how this general area of interest is manifested in my current research project, Playing Painting Personas.
Playing refers to my methodology; a conglomeration of ‘playful’ methods applied in developing metaphoric objects. Playing is predicated on theories from developmental psychology, specifically, how play informs a child’s exploration of identity, how adults play differently than children, and leads to my question how I might apply these two different types of play within my methodological framework for exploring identity.
The next two words in the title, Painting and Personas, refer to a method and to a tool within my methodology of Playing.
The many different meanings associated with Painting emerge as multiple signifiers which might be qualified for the viewer through the addition of ‘as’, as in: ‘painting-as-action’, ‘painting-as-material’, ‘painting-as-object’, and so on.
My research of Painting takes place across many of these ‘as’es.
In the studio my research is led through the practice of painting. In scholarly activities the ‘as’es are manifested in the research of formal and historical aspects of painting-as-mentioned above and painting-as-product-of-a-painter. Additionally I am researching how alter egos and personas appear in the creative practices of non-visual artists.
Both are done under the auspice of my general research interests and my specific project’s questions. For this project the question pertains to the application of the Personas as a tool in my playful methodology of painting and their contribution to both the methodology and the resulting object.
This project’s question is:
How might personas in conjunction with developmental concepts of play applied within a painting practice contribute as a tool or method to the formation of a playful painting methodology?
The search for answers is ongoing.
Hopefully, you have had the opportunity prior to today to view my ‘Research’ website, the location of my ‘blog’ and project documentation. The ‘blog’ page is more or less a Table of Contents for the postings that I make over the course of a month across the various sections of the website. Digging deeper into these different parts you will find notes and images which may or may not make sense to you, making it important for me to clarify to you now why this could be.
Although it is set up as a website, it is not geared toward viewers other than myself. This is an intentional contradiction to what we have come to expect from blogs and websites as existing for viewers and not the maker. Similar to the expectation that paintings are made to be hung on a wall and viewed.
I have a professional website created for the viewer. This is the mask or ‘face’ of my practice; my ‘Research’ website is what is behind the mask. At times a glance behind the mask is requested. However, giving others a glimpse does not change the purpose of what goes on behind the mask.
An analogy for my Research website are two of Marcel Duchamp’s boxes -the Green Box and the White Box. The Green Box was published by Duchamp in 1934, eleven years after he stopped work on The Large Glass whose process the 94 pages of notes, drawings, and photographs contained in the box documents. In the Infinitive or The White Box, contains more of these documents and was published by the artist in 1966, forty-three years after the in-conclusion of The Large Glass and thirty-two years after publishing The Green Box.
Why did Duchamp publish these two boxes of notes to himself and why so long after the work was public?
Were these simply choices driven by personal economics and/or a renewed interest by both artist and public in the work?
The reason is unimportant.
What is important is our desire to accept the boxes as something other than notes the artist made to himself of the process but as artworks in themselves.
The greatest insight to the work is given to us by the work itself.
This brings me to the last word, Personas.
Rooted in my scholarly research of the imaginary play of children, rules of play, method acting, and, how and why performers and writers, as opposed to visual artist, use or have used alter egos or personas in their creative practices I have begun working with three personas of my own creation. Two, like myself, are painters and ‘alive’ and one, a writer, is recently deceased. In this project the personas are tools I create, modify and apply to my research process.
A large part of working with the personas has been developmental; actively embodying the two painters as they work in the studio; and, for the writer, writing as she lived and died. With all three it has involved a fair bit of reading and writing ‘as’ the persona and, as the story of their existence unfolded, observing and learning who they are by how they worked alone, their interactions with each other, and how, in collaboration, we work together. This has been followed by reflection on the documentation of their work and shifts in my own work and process resulting from their application as tools.
I judiciously considered how much to talk to you or show you of these tools, the personas, today. There is ample information, including videos, on my Research website.
I decided to keep this telling of the personas to a minimum; doing so not because they are not of great importance to my research question but because I have found their presence among others can distract from the core of my general research interests and away from the objects of my practice, the work which ultimately communicates these interests to the viewer.
Showing you the tool will not tell you more about either it or the object it is used to create.
I asked myself: Would I bring my favorite or most-used brush to the presentation to talk about my practice? The answer was “no”, because most likely what you would takeaway is an image of the brush and not of the intentions associated with how it is used in the research.
So today I chose to tell you about my research practice. Tomorrow and Wednesday I will show you the objects of the practice, giving you the opportunity to directly engage with them. At that time you will remember me as the painter who told you about her work today.