Beginning: September 8, 2018
The Bowery House
220 Bowery, Cabin 433 NYC
Introduction
(Chapter 1)
This chapter will consist of introducing my research question, outlining the three part structure of this written component, and provide a general literature review for the research project.
Dearest Readers, it is most logical that I am the one writing this to you. For you see, not only am I the writer in this ensemble, I was the first one here. Without me none of this would have happened; this research project, the questions it formed and is formed by, and certainly not the others personas! If not for me there would be nothing to write and so it follows, what must be written I must write.
Apologies if you are already confused by my utterances, I can get ahead of myself at times. Allow me to take a few steps back and begin by introducing you to this project, the questions, and the personas referred to in the previous paragraph. But even before I do that I should step even further back and begin by introducing myself.
My name is Melusine and I am a writer. Those of you with the slightest bit of art historical knowledge might recognize my surname ‘Van der Weyden’. Indeed, I am a direct descendant of that famous 15th century Flemish primitive, painter of religious triptychs and diptych portraits of the noble and elite of his day.citation Perhaps this connection to painting is why I am here. Honestly and truthfully, I can hardly think of another reason, I have almost no interest in painting otherwise. Sure, they can fill empty space on a wall, brighten things up a bit, and have developed into an investment commodity greater than almost anything else humans have created a market for but painting as an art, well I think most of you, dear Readers, would agree with me when I say that ship has long sailed.citation I like to believe I am here because of my distant relationship to another painter, or as he preferred to be called anartist.citation The origins of my great-grandfather many times over may have been in the painting pasteur but I’d rather play with the ideas generated by my cousin of the field of art, Marcel Duchamp. Yet, here I find myself, stuck with a painter.
Don’t get me wrong, dear Readers, I have nothing against painting or painters per se; if I did I would not have stuck around these past three, four years. The brief period when I was ‘gone’ it was not of my own volition - it was all her doing - she killed me but more to that later. More importantly I am back, doing the job I was created to do, the job she needs me to do: write.
You see, dear Readers, I am not just a writer, I am a persona of the painter, Robyn Thomas. I was created to give voice to parts of her personality which otherwise are silenced by her own inhibitions. Through my writing I say and do things she might think but herself (rarely) say or do. As Robyn tells it and I myself remember citation from earlier writing I was not the result of significant conscious forthought; one day as she sat down to write an email I just appeared. She, along with the email recipient, were probably just as surprised by my sudden presence as I was. However, as Lady MacBeth said, what’s been done cannot be undone but that doesn’t mean we can’t ignore or simply shrug off what has been done; nor does it mean we need to sleepwalk around like crazed murderers trying to wash the blood from our hands each night. citation What can be done is to examine the creative potential contained within the persona which could allow the artist to free herself from inhibitions within her artistic practice. Therefore, this is what Robyn and I did: we took the idea that is me and ran with it straight to the development of this creative research doctoral project.
Okay, maybe we did not run straight into the research project’s developmental stage, after all to get there first required more interaction with me and admittedly, I am not the most predictable persona when it comes to making appearances. Nonetheless, by early 2016 our thoughts on the potential application of personas in within the methodology of Robyn’s creative research and painting practice to submit an initial proposal to begin her doctoral studies. After further thought and refinement not only had I been joined by the painter personas, Petra Nimm and Franz Ignatius Walsh, both of whom I will write more in subsequent chapters, she had arrived by the end of the same year at the following three questions to frame this research project:
How do personas applied with the framework of a self-reflective methodology based on psychological understanding of play as a tool in my painting practice impact the form and content of painting?
How might a visual artist employ play as a means to accommodate the multiple perspectives of the artist-object-spectator relationship model within a painting practice?
How can tools and methods atypical of my painting practice and stemming from non-object making creative practices aide in the construction of a playful self-reflective methodology in which consistency of identity is preserved?
As I wrote, these are the questions that she arrived at in tandem with the creation of the two painter personas. In my opinion, as a writer, these are not the best written questions. They are a bit unwieldy, and soon after writing them, when working with Petra and Franzi and delving further into the scholarly side of her research practice, she came to realize this too. At that time her solution was to consolidate the three questions into a single question to allow herself to focus more on the work she was doing with Petra and Franzi. The result of this consolidation was the following:
How might the use/application of personas in conjunction with developmental concepts of play within a painting practice contribute as a tool or a method to the formation of playful painting strategies relative to this project’s aims?
Not that significant of an improvement over the three previous questions but it did allow her to focus in the early stages of the research. However, just like not being able to undo what has been done, and the personas, I believe in taking what is there and working with it. So, in the course of my writing on this research project I will continue to use the three questions as the framework for addressing the results and the contributions of new knowledge brought forth. When necessary I might even refer back to the consolidated question. Finally, I could possibly mention a few of the more expansive questions which emerged through the research process as framed by the three, narrower questions.
This research project might belong to Robyn Thomas however, as I mentioned in the very beginning of this introduction, I am the writer. She may have been the one to develop framework, the questions, do the scholarly and the studio research leading to its conclusions as objects presented to various spectators but it is I, the writer, who ultimately gives form to the research as you, dear Readers, experience it here via the words I write. At one point in the process, early 2018 to be exact, she did create an outline of how she foresaw the structure of this writing could be. Dear Readers, I won’t bore you with the details, I can only say you are fortunate to have me be the one to deliver this writing to you. No need to confuse everyone by doing something other than what it is you do: painters paint, writers write. People should stick to what they do and leave the rest to their personas to work out as needed. But again, I don’t believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater anymore than I believe one should ignore what is done. Therefore, I took another look at the structure she proposed for this writing and have decided to use it as a guide for creating my own structure for this writing.
For most of the duration of this project she has emphasized the role of three in the title, overall structure, and the number of personas of this project. The working title has been Playing Painting Personas, encompassing the three main elements of this project’s methodology. By Summer 2018 she expanded the title in hopes of providing you, dear Readers, a bit more insight to what the project is about. In doing so she mucked up her own strategy of ‘three’ and now the title reads: Playing Painting Personas: Tools for Making Identity and Authenticity in a Painter’s Process. Maybe I’m being to harsh by saying she mucked up particularly, if you recall my statement two paragraphs earlier about the more expansive questions which emerged through the research process. This expanded title does allude to these areas and I will address this more in the following chapters. In terms of overall structure three can be viewed in various ways. First, in terms of the stages of the project: development, execution, dissemination. Second, the approximately three year duration. Third, the forms the project encompasses: paintings to be exhibited, writing to be read, and the research website as digital archive of the process. In her proposed structure for this written exegesis she even suggested that the writing be divided into three generalized parts, each receiving as a header one of the three terms of the working title and subdivided into smaller, more specific parts. I suppose thinking about these things is all good and a part of the process. After all, we all have to start somewhere. But I don’t think here suggested approach is the correct one for myself or for this research.