Reading
In response to my feedback last week I have taken the time to partially read both ‘What is painting’ by Julian Bell and Vitamin P3: New Perspective in Painting’ Phaidon Press, 2016. In reflection to my research I can see more clearly how reading can inspire art, this is something I didn’t feel a connection to previously to this semester.
New Perspective in Painting
When reading I found myself drawn to the final artist Mairead O’hEocha, the book explains that O’hEocha’s project is to have a “reassessment of overlooked objects”, a subject matter that I have explored in the past with readings such as Object Orientated Ontology. The paintings themselves have a whimsical flow about them and its clear that I’m drawn to her artistic abilities as much as her concepts. For example the way she uses colour is magnificent, both strong and subtle it contradicts itself in a familiar and welcoming way.
In reflection the reading overall made think more about how my concepts and ideas are not certainly not a new perspective but more an addition to an ongoing conversation in the creative sphere. Its possible that by simply painting everyday and exploring my emotions through painting I’m responding both consciously and subconsciously to all the material I have viewed.
What is painting?
Overall I feel that Julian Bell engages the reader in an important conversation in regards to the relevance of painting in contemporary society, appropriately explaing the historical significance of painting and creating a dialogue of questions. In particular I found the similarities as to why artists paint throughout history to be a mirror in my own practice. The book explains that as artist we have evolved through imitating nature, documentation and mimicray in-order to indulge. One quote I found profound was used by Monet in which he said he was ‘expressing a stimulation of his soul’ through his work, though I’m not sure how replicable this source is i certainly think its important. In many ways my current project is an extension of myself, one of the goals to fall in love with painting again and I feel that I’m doing so though stimulating my own soul.
Experimenting and reflection
Throughout week I painted everyday as I have done consistently the last 6 weeks, in theory this means I should have 42 paintings, I certainly feel a sense of pride for keeping up with my goals and being able to post my work each week no matter how good or bad I feel it may be. For example the paintings below from this week both have a theme and are entirely unrelated at the sometime. Inspired by Emin’s tapestries and the conversation about women in art I decided to play around with some fabric (second photo), from a technical standpoint it was much harder to paint on as I couldn’t blend or layer the paint as easily.
Towards the being of the week I was determined to squeeze in some time in the project room between my other meetings, I wanted to spend this time to feel myself being creative in a different space to which I’m used to, if I plan on recreating a studio space for my final outcome then I need to explore this further. However due to issue I ran into for another moduel I found myself having downwards spiral yet again, instead of going straight home to burst into tears like I wanted to I tried to be proactive about the negative emotions. I made some doodles, basic sketches of objects such as my earring but mainly focus on the words I was trying to connect to. inspired by my theories surround Tracey Emin’s work and its legitimacy to her personal life, I began to write simple statement about me. The important part of this exercise was to not only tune in to how I feel towards art but to think about how a viewer may see me, would they assume everything I have written is true? would they issue I’m being self indulgent for attention? I think I should evolve this practice into my work further, even in my own studio home space.
