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DEE MATTHEWS -WEEK 7 – NOW IS THE TIME

I’m not sure if I’m a poacher turned game keeper, or a game keeper turned poacher. As I wrote the script for the workshop PK in the voice of Global Warming I felt quite sick. I love paint and pigments, love making the stuff, love using the stuff.

Here I am taking on another portrait commission which I adore, the real stuff, sitting with your clients, bringing something to a canvas that is a snap shot photo in time rarely can; unless your David Bailey with his sneaky large format cameras and his cunning as a weasel chatting to his sitters, then Wham Bam thank you Mam, a run of sneaky beautiful lit moments in time that capture the essence of self.

Painting is not like that, you have to let go of the self and channel some weird external energy between yourself, the sitter and the bloody paint. Yet just like eating a cream egg it disgust me because I know in it’s own small way that painting is destroying the planet…. But still I want it’s creamy delicious satisfaction.

https://www.pechakucha.com/presentations/now-is-the-time-to-save-the-world

Let’s Have Fun

I’ve included the PK prompt script here :-

These are my notes from the presentations and Jo’s career talk. These notes are really invaluable to me, as it helps me reflect on the day.

As always there were so many beautiful side conversations and the brainstorming that went on for everyone in the room on their projects and practice was nothing short of Art in itself.

Week 7 notes

This weeks artist experiences:-

A film night at the TFTS hosted by the 3rd year film students with a chance to meet and ask questions of experimental film maker Vicky Smith. Kim Knowles the module lecturer guided us through the experience and the whole night was wonderful. Especially valuable for me in these early stages of film making and enabled me to talk through concepts with experienced artists.

Smith’s scratched on handmade film
A bee’s wing attached to the film
Flying insects are the first Mass Extinction Event of Global Warming

Smith’s handmade films were astonishing and their film Not(a)Part was relevant to both my own practice and the work of the other Artist I visited this week. The work of my own tutor Miranda Whall and her drawing performance When the Earth Speaks.

I felt both were extraordinarily inspirational. Both were artists of vitally importance. Both works were exquisitely beautiful.

Whall during her durational drawing performance
The delicate balance of Art, Science and the Earth manifests in Whall’s work.

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