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.
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*
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*
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.
Paper tests for form included, a play with composition, a distraction from the consuming line painting of tiny brush and acrylic.
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
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.
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.
Stein. G. (2018) Food. London: Penguin Random House.
Stein, G. Tender Buttons. Pp. 459-509 in Van Vechten, C. ed. (1990) Selected Writings Of Gertrude Stein. New York: Vintage Books Edition, Random House.
Wilder. (2019) Nocturnal. Missouri: Andrew McMeel Publishing.
Unnahar, N. (2017) Yesterday I Was The Moon. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers
Ballah, Kay. (2014) Preparing My Daughter For Rain. ISBN:1500233439. Self Published.
Carson, A. (2016) Float. London: Jonathan Cape.
Poetry Theory:
Gibson, A. and Falley, M. (2019) How Poetry Can Change Your Heart. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Midgley, M. (2001) Science and Poetry. London: Routledge Classics.
Oliver, M. (1994) A Poetry Handbook. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Rowland Smith, R. (2012) On Modern Poetry: From Theory To Total Criticism. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Theory:
Barthes, R. (1977) 'Death of the Author'. In Barthes, R. (1977) Image Music Text, London: Fontana Press.
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, London: Penguin
Danchev, A. (2011) 100 Artists’ Manifestos From the Futurists to the Stuckists. London: Penguin Classics Random House.
Dorfman, E. (2014) Foundations of the Everyday, Shock, Deferral, Repetition. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Foster, A. (2004). Tate Women Artists. London: Tate.
Godfrey, T. (1998) Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon Press Limited.
Hemmings, J. (ed.) (2012) The Textile Reader. London: Berg.
Linden, D.J. (2015) Touch: The Science of the Sense that Makes Us Human. London: Penguin Books.
Phaidon Editors. (2013) Vitamin D2, New Perspectives in Drawing. London: Phaidon Press Ltd
Reckitt, H. ed. (2019) The Art Of Feminism: Images that shaped the fight for Equality. London: Tate
Russ, J. (1983) How To Suppress Women’s Writing. London: The Women’s Press.
Satrapi, M. (2000) Persepolis. London: Vintage, Penguin Random House.
Shafak, E. (2007) Black Milk: On Motherhood and Writing. London: Penguin books.
Solnit, R. (2017) The Mother Of All Questions. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Papers:
Amnesty International (2010) Amnesty International Report 2009, State of the World’s Human Rights. London: Amnesty International; Kirdar, Serra (2010) ‘United Arab Emirates’ in Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin, eds., (2010) Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa. New York, NY: Freedom House; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Breitbart (2014) Rape victim told to marry her attacker or face jail in United Arab Emirates (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/02/01/Austrian-rape-victim-told-to-marry-her-attacker-followingcrime-in-United-Arab-Emirates). in Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI). 2014. Country Profile: United Arab emirates. SIGI. [Online] Available at: https://www.genderindex.org/wp-content/uploads/files/datasheets/AE.pdf [Accessed: 25 March 2020]
Pourriat, E. 2018. I Am Not an Easy Man/Je ne suis pas un homme facile [Film]. Running time: 98 minutes, France: Mademoiselle Films/Netflix [Accessed: 5 May 2020]
