Last month I used the excuse of the October update as actually covering a period of six rather than one month for it being longer than I originally thought it would be. Unfortunately that excuse cannot apply this month. Anyway, in addition to taking things slower this year I also have challenged myself to avoid making excuses.
The period I am cover in this post is October 14 to November 14. Immediately after posting last month I set to work preparing a presentation I was invited to give shortly after returning from Berlin to the Women’s Guild of Beneficent Church, UCC. I do receive a generous scholarship from Beneficent Church for my studies with Transart Institute, and I felt it would be a good challenge to put together a presentation for people interested in what I am doing, but not necessarily involved in the art world. The presentation, titled Dumb as a Painter: Where Research Meets Creative Practice, consisted of some background info on my personal history and what led me to becoming an artist. I presented a few of the paintings done in the years leading up to my current studies, some of the self portraits I created for my first year project, work from an exhibit I had locally in June 2015 which was for me a bridge between the two parts of my current studio practice, and what I am working on now as I move towards my thesis project. I used the presentation as an opportunity to share my understanding of the role research plays in creative practice through my studio work and research projects. The talk lasted just under one hour, the audience remained engaged throughout and then proceeded to ask questions for an additional 20 minutes. An edited version of the slide show will eventually be posted to YouTube with a link provided on my blog once it is available. Overall it was a good experience not just because I had to prepare the presentation, but it also encouraged me to reflect further on how I got where I am, look again at where I want to go, and explain it to a different group of people.
Next up was the start of the Fall Semester crit group season. I presented to my crit group on October 23 and responded to the feedback on October 30. The critique post, feedback and response can be found here.
November 2 my studio advisor, Andrew Cooks, and I had a conversation via Skype. My 150 word response can be found in the blog post directly preceding this post, or by clicking here.
This past month aside from a few local exhibits in Providence, RI I have not gotten out to experience much art in person; instead relegated to looking in reproductions and online, neither very satisfying experiences. I am preparing a trip to NYC in early December to view a number of exhibits, more to those in next month’s post.
This past month my writing has focused primarily on notes to myself, email conversations, and crit group related feedback. However I am feeling the itch to another form of writing. In the process of preparing for my December art-viewing excursion I have begun to mull a piece of writing based on one of the exhibits I intend to visit with the intention of posting another essay in the writing gallery by mid-December.
Aside from reading a number of interviews with artists, exhibition reviews, and other art as well as non-art related journalistic endeavors I picked up once more my copy of The Essential Kierkegaard, taking in the essay Works of Love (1847). I also broke out Ecrits Jacques Lacan, to look at On the Subject Who Is Finally in Question. To round out my theory reading this past month I turned to Meyer Schapiro’s Words, Script, and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language. Although both essays/lectures from Shapiro contained ideas of interest and relevance to my research, it is the second essay, Script In Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language which I have found to be of greater relevance; particularly the author’s discussions on Goya’s self portraits, the role of text as a mirroring of speech, and the position of the ‘reader’ as internal or external in relation to image and the text contained within.
To balance out the pleasure of theory with some pleasure for the sake of pleasure reading with Denise Mina’s Resolution (2001). I’ve included photos of a couple of quotes from this crime novel in the Painting Studies Process Gallery One; reading in the studio is something I’ve found myself doing more since my return to oil paints. It is something to do while the paint drys. Both citations are revealing of the characters’ identities and their struggles to come to terms with the complexities of those identities. I have since moved on to the first of Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike novels The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013). The recommendation of these and other crime novels came in Berlin from Andrew Cooks; mainly for pleasure reading but also as a way at looking at character development [identity]. In our recent Skype Andre recommended the novels of Robert Galbraith, as possibly being of an additional interest because Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of the author J.K. Rowling. Ms. Rowling’s creation of a pseudonym as a means of publishing work that is different for that which she has become well known is of relevant interest to me as I explore working with a pseudonym, a form of ‘alternate identity’ as a means of broadening my range and exploring areas which under my own name might be more difficult to do. More to my work with/as Melusine van der Weyden in the coming months.
Other than reading while waiting for the paint to dry I have been watching films. In addition to the two films I mentioned in my 150 word response watching on the Artists Documentation Program webpage I have also watched All Divided Selves by Luke Fowler, Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter, Venus in Fur, This Must Be The Place, and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict. All Divided Selves, a film exploring the work and legacy of psychiatrist R.D. Lange was enlightening to Lange’s ideas concerning mental illness and identity as well as introducing me to the work of Luke Fowler. The documentary on Joan Mitchell was interesting to watch after the filmed interviews with Terry Winters and Frank Stella as it consists of her talking about her paintings, though not from a purely technical/material viewpoint as in the ADP videos. The recent film on Peggy Guggenheim was interesting to me as a memory prompt for an autobiography she wrote and I had read many years ago, but also to hear how the current art world figures, those who knew her and those that did not, speak about the role she has played as a patron in 20th century art, and her identity as such. The two other films, Venus in Fur and This Must Be The Place are fictional works which place questions of identity and how our behavior or actions are directed by our understanding of who we are as must as by the ‘who we are’ we project is responded to by others. Venus in Fur is a pretty clear, almost ‘traditional’ adaptation by Roman Polanski of the two person play by David Ives. This Must Be The Place left me questioning whether or not I was hallucinating the storyline as it became increasingly more bizarre. On the other hand, the shots were quite enjoyable, almost like a well crafted graphic novel by someone who really wanted to mess with the viewer’s sense of his or her own sanity.
With this I come to the actual work I was doing in the studio this past month. As I mentioned earlier in this post I reintroduced oil paints and self-mixed medium into my studio practice. Yes, I have officially reopened that can of worms. For my crit group post I did add images of the beginnings of those studio explorations along with a brief text to the Painting Studies Process Gallery One on October 23. Here I want to re-emphasize the nature of this and the other image galleries, Sketchbook, Painting Studies Process Gallery Two and Photographic Painting Studies Process Gallery, as galleries documenting the process and not necessarily showing finished work. The images are posted in a way that requires the viewer to scroll through, often unable to take in an image in its entirety. This is intentional. The text which accompanies the images begins on the left hand side of the page, near to where a new group of images begins. The text does not line up with the images, nor does it provide detailed information to the images. The text and the images are merely glimpses into the process; the parts of their identity which will eventually develop into a ‘final’ work. Once the self portraits I intend to complete for this project are completed, they will be viewable in their own gallery separate from the process. Until then, bits and pieces are what are presented as building blocks of that which is being constructed.
I have added to all three galleries a brief text and images of work in progress between October 23 and November 13. Please click on the following to go directly to these galleries:
Painting Studies Process Gallery Two
Photographic Painting Studies Process Gallery
In the past few days I have begun focusing my thoughts towards two dates coming up this winter. The first being Winter Residency in NYC in early January, and the second being work for an exhibition of women artist working with contemporary feminist concepts at the University of Rhode Island Providence Campus in March. For both of these I have begun work on two larger scale paintings, both of which I hope, most likely in the state of full scale studies, to bring to Winter Residency in January.
Bringing this monthly blog update back to where I began, with my mid-October presentation which involved dredging through the origins of my existence as an artist; is one final thing I did this month, and that was create a video slideshow of some of my paintings and drawings produced between 1988-2008.
In recent exchanges I have once more become aware of how conversations surrounding the current art I am creating are often limited by the inability to experience the materiality of the object when only viewing it in reproduction, particularly in a digital representation. Add to this inadequate knowledge of paths traveled prior to the digitally represented work around which the discussion revolves. With this the conversation itself becomes either one by which neither party admits to the limitations of the conversation and simply accepts by means of not acknowledging these limitations; or the conversation deteriorates for either one or both parties into a Sisyphean endeavor. This is not to say that I in anyway feel as if I get nothing out of either form the conversation takes; sparks generally fly no matter what. What I am saying is, even after a conversation which has started new fires or re-ignited dying embers, I am often left feeling as if there could have been more. Perhaps this is a more beneficial state to be left in? A state where questions remain unanswered. Ultimately such questioning does instigate the search for additional fuel sources to keep the fire in the studio exuding warmth and glowing bright. Colder weather has returned to my home in New England, but in my studio the fires are producing an ever increasing amount of heat and light.
