14.12.2019 - drawing watercolour

Producing a drawing of a watercolour and ink image, scaled up x4

Working with water soluble graphite. It has a delicious density, so intense and grey. Shimmering in the light. Silky to apply with brush.

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Process writing:

Stop resisting
I stroke you 
Lightly,
You leave no trace
Pressure exerted,
I layer
Still, you don't succumb
Putty in my fingers
I work you. 
Fragments breakaway
Eventually a little grace,
You smudge
And misbehave
But I know how to work you,
Wet
You surrender
And do as you are told.
                                       *graphite putty*

Your filth calls me
I want to get messy
Cover me
Under my fingernails
Into the cracks of my skin
Blemish my cheeks
Soil my clothes.
                               *charcoal dust*

11.12.2019 -mars black

Longing
Fingers aching to touch
Deep inside
This yearning
To grab you
Spread you
Move across the surface
Show me what you can do
Feel the desire
It burns 
my fingers tingle
The urgency
Its agency
To make stories with you
To fire up the memories
intoxicating
Transfixing
                      *mars black*

9.12.2019 - together

If two objects can’t seem to stay away from each other, maybe they aren’t supposed to.
Perhaps I will clean differently. 

If two materials can’t seem to stay away from each other maybe they aren’t supposed to.
Perhaps I will not erase the graphic marks from my work.

28.11.2019 - painting process - post tutorial

Skeleton frameworks added to clarify the moments below. Slowing the process, engaging tools instead of digits and tissue. Removal of limbs adds distance, a viewing space, time for contemplation. How these layers hold together, in their transparent splashes of pigment, clinging on to each other begging not to be concealed. Those latent portions adding power in their density.

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Paper tests for form included, a play with composition, a distraction from the consuming line painting of tiny brush and acrylic.

28.11.2019 - Tutorial Notes - MW

Reflections since the last tutorial

Still struggling with keeping up with workload since job change, I have managed to continue working on my paintings at night and in moments of frustration. 

Concerned about the move from various media and material collisions in MA2 to painting in MA3, a medium I haven’t worked in since starting the MA in 2017. Feels like a waste to move from those investigations.

Discussion and recommendations

Notes and discussions with Michele Whiting:

Sent Michele an email with images of my current paintings in process:

Discussing the tactility and touch - the process of making

The light - search - searching

Process of making - the link between body and the making

The light coming through - monochromatic abstract paintings - 1970’s

Materials elements in the mix

The tension that I’m trying to work with is the place where the work resides

Writing is a similar space - 

Cathartic moments - not present but in the moments - conceptually a similar space - painting as an object - absorption of texture, your touch and process and the other idea of light that’s there and apparent - whether to consider it or not is my intention

Collapsing - rules around the painting - more about absorptions

You can see your weight - own and admit - into my methods - in my methodology and its evident in my work, the construction not removed in the sense of a paintbrush

An area in art practice - mise-en-abyme 

Light - Sandback - Turell - Flavin - dichotomy - process - working with the dark - sucks you in and the light forces you to stand back - metaphysical thing - go a lot further - elements are really there - held on to them in a polite way - let go and just deal with them - Michele worked with soot - alludes you as you try to fix it

Think about it - it’s very elemental - what can I use to force this really come through, the poetry to come through, 

A surface is an object, not painting - 

My investigation is monochromatic - texture, touch, light,

Anticipation and interruptions - poetry - write as I’m working - a response to my body and the surface and the body working on the material - write about how it feels like - feel the space and the ideology of the space and open it up - thinks about what my body is doing in relation to the surface - embodying the process - what does that mean, how am i doing it? Think about it philosophically - keep digging into the properties - the investigation.

Document the process - through video - don’t worry about editing - fixed camera- amass the documentation and the output - it will find itself - investigate the doing - what’s happening - 

Defying the normal painting standards - the Stuckists won’t like me - I’m doing the drawing - the primacy of drawing - Dianna Pepperbridge - the bible of drawing - find your sense in it - understand drawing as an idiom

Agreed actions (if any)

• keep working with the painting, 
• film the process - front-facing fixed camera, continuous shoot.
• write during the process - how do they work together
• consider the paintings are objects

28.11.2019 - pre tutorial reflections

It’s been a messy few months and my practice feels like it’s taken a hit but upon reflection maybe it hasnt.

I’ve been channelling my frustrations in to painting, something I haven’t done for a couple of years which is odd as my practice before the MA was paint based.

The layers have come back: add, subtract, repeat. This time layering on the watery paint, moving it around, removing the excess with tissue and cloth and repeating the process once dry.

Most of the work has been happening at night, in the garden, under the odd lighting in the yard. The process was the important element, the carthesis of movement, liquid, fibre.

I made bad work - I knew it was bad but had to get through it. I worked with some words I’d collected, moved them around, photographed them, arranged them.

I stuck some of them down on a piece card I had been playing around on with graphite putty and water soluble graphite. It got worse.

I persevered, it's going somewhere now, I not sure where but something is emerging from the haze.

Week 9 - Independent working - Mon 18.11.2019

painting, what is practice?

To term it practice is to continue until you know how to do something. When do you know a painting? Perhaps its when the time spent feels enough, or when you are tired of it, for now.

I am getting to know these paintings. Repetitively. Like good friends that come for a cup of tea but end up staying for dinner. I work with them, on them, in them. I'm here, present and so are they. We hold the silence of the night together as the washes of pigment flow. And when it's too much for them I bind their burdens with lines and shapes to enclose their weaknesses. It enclose my weaknesses, when the chaos is too much.

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16.11.2019 - projecting pattern layers

Forgetting to take images of process

The light changes the grounds, the tones appear in altered shades. The projection is the brightest this pattern will be. Its fate is not embrace the lower layers while they are suffocated together under water pigments to come.

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A wasps nest, displaced. The leaves betrayed them, as they fell they were seen and destroyed. No one wants them here, they are unwelcome, and like fallen autumn leaves they are left to rot on the ground until the broom comes to clear them away.