Collage and transfer
This is an image from a workshop I did with the wonderful Kate Boyce at Northlight Art Studios. We spent the day learning how to layer collage, paint and image transfers using a range of techniques. After months of painting and intensive research for my BA course, it was wonderful to just play again! I’m wondering about using this technique to incorporate written memoir and other ephemera to do with memory.
LiteracyHead is a new online magazine providing resources for literacy educators. According to their website “A Literacyhead is someone who is intensely serious about exercising creative literacy, making connections across multiple literacies, pursuing thoughtful literacy as an individual and as a teacher, and constantly searching for ideas. Literacyheads may have expertise in different areas of literacy, but all are committed to children’s literacy, passionate about the arts, incessant thinkers, and display a propensity for having fun.” On this site, creative literacy is not just about words, but also about visual literacy – the art of reading pictures.
I was lucky enough to be approached by them, and asked to collaborate on an article in their magazine, and the article about my work is in the current issue.
The other thing that these paintings have made me think about is working in series. When you present a series of works to a viewer, how much time do you want or expect them to spend looking at each individual painting? And how much of the meaning comes from them making connections between the paintings, and responding to a mood that gets built up by looking at them as a set? These questions may consciously or subconsciously influence my decisions about the level of finish or clarity that I give each individual painting. If I’m viewing them as a group, then I must expect the viewer to as well. And this will influence my decisions about how I hang them. Do I create a cluster of them, or do I space them out with plenty room around each one? This will also depend upon the space that I manage to get for my final show.
Northlight Art Studios where I have my studio are starting a new term of art classes from 12 April 2010. So if you live in Calderdale and have always fancied trying your hand at painting and drawing; or if you want to join a class with like minded artistic folk, take a look. The tutors are relaxed and friendly and have some inspiring exercises to help you produce work that you will be proud of!
Dad's guitar
Oil on paper 5″ x 7″
Another work in progress. I’ve reached the point after a long period of not knowing what to do with these where I now want to work on them again. I’ve been struggling with the balance between retaining the immediacy of my initial painted response to the photograph, and working it up into a more realised image. After a period of looking at these on the studio wall, I realised than I do want to work them up a bit more. I now have my work cut out to do this in time for them to dry before the show!
Oil on paper, image size 5″ x 5″
Mugshots
Another idea I was working on before Christmas which I will continue to work on as I get time. I was intrigued looking through photographs of myself over the years by the number of different roles I seemed to play. I went through some of the images and cropped my head and shoulders to create a series of ‘mugshots’. I am now working with these, initially painting them in the same format as they appear on the computer printout.
I had a useful chat with my tutor about the final show, where he helped me to work out that I just need to do what comes naturally. I need to paint what I want to paint (or make what I want to make) and the show will come together in its own time. ‘Thinking’ ahead is not good for my creative process. I need to ‘do’ first and ‘think’ later when it comes to my art. I feel a weight dropping from my shoulders …
Finally, after a month of snow, ice and freezing temperatures, I made it back into the studio today. I am now gearing up to prepare for my BA final show. I had hoped to be able to take some of the little pictures in to college, but unbelievably they are still not dry. Clearly oil paints cannot dry in sub-zero temperatures.
I did manage to pick up a paintbrush, and started two more of these little paintings. I’ll post pictures tomorrow; I forgot my camera today.
I am also trying to visualise how I will display them. It is not enough just to paint pictures and hang them on the wall. The way in which they are displayed, how they are organised, and the space that they are in will all affect the way they are experienced and read. So I’ve started by doing a sketch to visualise how they might hang in a space. I had an idea of painting the space a dark green/grey colour to create a sense of intimacy and delving into memory. However, having painted a little sketch of how this might look, I’m not so sure.
I want to give the viewer a sense of surveillance – how perhaps snapshot photographs become a form of surveillance in the way that we experience them being taken, and being looked at afterwards. Also, I wonder whether we use them as a form of self-surveillance. Surely everyone sits up and pays more attention when they see a photo of themselves. What are we thinking? I know what I’m thinking most of the time – too fat, too grey, what-a-stupid-smile.
Not sure how this project will turn out, but I’ll blog it here as a way of helping me think about it.
Another glimpse into my studio … these are tiny, 5″ x 5″ oil paintings on paper. I’m playing with painting on a small scale using a very loose style of painting. I’m not sure whether anything is drying at the moment though. It’s so cold in my studio that I only managed an hour today before I had to give up the attempt and go home for hot soup.
Thank you to everyone who came to the Open Studios. I hope you enjoyed it! We did well as a studio group, making sales from our exhibition downstairs, and selling lots of the ceramic Christmas decorations that we had made during one of our group artists’ evenings. As promised, I had my new paintings on display, and was encouraged by the amount of interest that people showed. Making work is rewarding, but being able to discuss it with other people is even more rewarding. Many of my visitors saw their own childhood photos in my paintings, and quite a few people commented that the lack of face makes them more universal. More paintings soon – I’m experimenting with a change in scale – you can just about see a sneak preview to the left of the photograph below (beside ‘Nets’).
