After crit 17th January 2010
Title: Stepping outside that which
appears to be safe.
A critique experience that was not desirable. On the Fine Art Degree at Canterbury college with Charles Williams, who refused to teach me, because i wanted more than to just paint pretty pictures.
I
am expressing a dialogue of balancing conflicts between being organized and
being spontaneous. Which this conflict dominates. Where the painting becomes a vision, a
self portrait a prediction of the crit.
Perhaps, part of my preparation for this piece was to
organize unconsciously, a highlighted guide line. At this stage of this idea I
distrust my judgment to freely achieve what I intended by spontaneous free
hand.
Once this outline was visible on paper
, I gained confidence to create dense black marks in a chosen composition with
a large paint brush for the large areas and a smaller brush for the smaller
areas. This delivered moments of a sense of freedom, particularly when the
brushed outside the guide line. Similar
to freedom that comes with being disobedient. The recurrent themes
of stepping outside the gallery system (as in my caravan work),
and the notion of perfectly imperfect are again present in the black and
white painting
Black
thunder dominates the paper.
As
if the air suspends the chairs…
A
premonition of a particular moment…
Perhaps
I projected an emotive ‘self portrait’?
A
balance of was up in the air.
A
brewing darkness stirred up this moment
Urging
the chairs off the wall.
Curiosity
and dialogue challenged the vulnerable
that
swirled in the eyes as a cognitive glare.
This
precariously poised moment,
now
silent and adjusted,
draws
new boundaries with her pencil,
and
awaits the next chair.
I now believe an enquiry to obtain
satisfactory dialogue with the knowledge and curiosity of the process and
intention of the piece was in question. I believe I do not have the correct
vocabulary to express my integrity and conscious dialogue with the piece in an
articulate way yet, and have little more skills to articulate it in writing.
However, this has stimulated me into making a conscious attempt to begin:
At the point of talking about this
piece, a stirred up a brewing darkness was first felt in my heart and
shoulders, filling my eyes with blackness as my emotions passed over a another
safe boundary, the first part of the crit held. I admit I lost the plot. My
defense mechanism dominated my aura, like thunder and black clouds rapidly
dominate a tranquil scenery, and the black dominates the painting. I wanted to
take flight but pressured to fight. What I thought I knew, I now didn’t know,
and was turned upside down like the chairs in the painting, had almost become
unrecognizable. The overwhelming urge to destroy my work and walk out was
blowing out of proportion as the storm got swirled into a tornado. The chairs
had been scattered and then projected out of proportion on the paper. Perceived
now, as an image of a suspended precariously poised moment in an explosion or
the moment lightening just decides to strike and the damage has not yet been
realized. At that moment I had become the piece I had painted! With the thunder
silently rumbling inside this dark cloud. My aura had become consumed and
dominated by the piece in the critique, perhaps like global capitalism
dominating and silencing the masses. I
waited for the chairs to come crashing down on my head. (Perhaps like the
current global financial crisis).
I needed some time to dry off from the
storm I had put myself under. I needed to be suspended over the situation for a
wider over view (maybe that is what the effigies are doing?) to adjust, for me,
to this new revolutionary way of being with my work. I needed time for the dark
colours to turn light again, to se a wider horizon that the cloud had engulfed.
This painting could finally be the
markings of a new deeper relationship with my work.
All consumed by a cognitive and
cathartic moment !
