Catch up time - the mind wanderings of an insomniac
Wow - it's been a really long time since I last wrote a blog post - exactly a month! I guess my blogposts are like buses - nothing for ages and then 3 come along at once...
I have my excuses - one week was half term and since then I have mainly been finishing off things that I have started, annotating my sketchbook in preparation for university interviews. This has caused me a lot of sleepless nights just lying in bed wondering where I am going, what I really want out of my further and higher education and how to talk about art. As I currently have some spare time whilst sat on a piece of lino, warming it ready for cutting, I thought I'd write it all down & see if it will help my insomnia if I set my thoughts free and send them out into the ether for anyone to read...this post is going to be a bit of a personal mental exposure - an insight into what is going on in my mind rather than pretty pictures, so if you're easily bored feel free to leave now!
The first thing I should say is that it's hard for me to say what I really think these days. Somewhere along the lines I lost the ability to be frank, scared of what others will think or how they will react, so this post is hard for me to write. At the back of my mind I am thinking 'what if my employer reads this and thinks I can't do my job and fire me, or what if my university interviewers read this and think "this isn't what she said in her interview" and reject me because of it?'. Hopefully they will understand that just because sometimes I feel incompetent doesn't mean I am - everyone has self doubt sometimes, I just have it a lot. I have learned to fight through it & just keep doing my best, but sometimes it prevents me from sleeping.
I'll try to keep this short-ish - I'm not re-typing my personal statement. Going back into full time education started as a self-indulgent time filler fuelled by a desire to improve my skills, knowledge & confidence, but has turned into more of a priority in my life. I am now thinking I would like to be an artist or maker or designer or teacher. Working in Financial Services pays the bills, but my heart has never been in it, and the older I get the harder it is to concentrate on something that doesn't really interest me. Art, on the other hand, consumes me.
Sounds great - what am I worried about? What am I losing sleep over?
The main thing I worry about is can I step up? Is a Fine Art degree for me? The more I learn, the more I doubt myself and conversely at the same time I feel more like an artist. I am struggling with talking about my art. I am happy to talk about other peoples art - what I can see in work, implications and connotations of elements of composition, media used, colours, art movements it fits into, mood, how the title affects the piece, what they intended versus what I see etc...but with my own work I just can't do this. I feel pretentious, disingenuous, embarrassed.
Take my monochrome relief piece for instance:
If you ask me to interpret the finished piece pretending I had nothing to do with its creation, I could write essays - The stark contrast of black and white has connotations of good versus evil. Pure, clean, light versus impure, dirty, dark. The lack of colour makes you wonder what colours things could be - are the drips and splashes and pools really blue with water or red with blood? The black and white also gives it a feeling of a moonscape from the 1960's - it could be an alien landscape - imaginary pictures from space showing evidence of life on another planet.
The wires could represent the arteries of an organ - the ripples of paper a protective casing around it. I can see arteries, veins, ventricles, blood, parasites and cancerous growths.
Put in it's contemporary text, maybe it is representative of terrorist attacks with the bloodstains, or brexit with the small island in the top right hand corner separated from the rest of the work by the paper ribbons.
I can also see what was originally intended - a representation of a rock pool - barnacles, clam shells, seaweed, limpets, whelks. Maybe the black and white represents putting a historical twist on it - highlighting the plight of our oceans due to pollution and how soon it could all be dead and gone.
It would fit in with the Abstract Expressionism movement - it is more about the feel of the relief work and the freedom of allowing the ink to flow and drip and pool where it may than any attempt to accurately represent the subject.
It is reminiscent of Willem De Koonings' black and white paintings from the 1940's, although the subject matter differs as his works were abstracts based loosely on human forms and his work was 2d, using oil and enamel:
(have I seriously just compared my work with Willem De Kooning?!?!? Now I feel ridiculous even in type!) I could go on for hours...
However, if you ask me to tell you what this piece means to me, I would tell you that I did the following charcoal sketch of a still life arrangement of shells that I collected from Barmston beach:
We were then asked to create an abstract relief piece based on this sketch, in any medium we could find, then paint it black and white. I started with the intention of just recreating it in 3d - the shadows make it look 3d anyway, so not abstract at all and not very imaginative, but I had to start somewhere.
I started by making a wire frame for the limpet and adding papier mache, then started making the barnacles out of chicken wire. The more I did, the more I got a feel for it and it took on a life of its own - growing organically and becoming more abstract. Once the barnacles were in place I sensed the need to balance the piece, making the smaller barnacles with newspaper and adding another limpet. It was all feeling very solid so I wanted to represent the clam shells in a lighter, more abstract way & came up with the idea of a bare wire addition. When I started to sketch it out, the clam shells started to look more like a pattern than clam shells, but it felt right so I went with it. Once the wires were in place, the shadows pleased me so I made a mental note to exaggerate this when making it black & white.
I put the paper ribbon curves in to bring the piece together, to create a pathway around the piece for the eyes to follow, made origami shells to make it look less abstract and give it more of a sense of what it was supposed to be. I finished by pulling party poppers to create a background texture like the bright green slimy stuff you get on rocks. It is all about aesthetics - what I find pleasing to my eye - no hidden meanings.
Given the option I would have used colour - colour rocks my world. It's what makes my heart skip a beat. Having said that, I do love the black and white - lesson learned - I am happy to keep an open mind and have a go at stuff - in this case black and white is definitely better. So I had to paint it white - hated every second of doing this. Then I had to add black. I didn't want to do the obvious & just paint the shadows dark, so I started by watering down some ink and letting it drip down the limpet shell. It instantly made me think of ski runs or rivers running down a mountain, so I went with it, letting the ink run where gravity pulled it.
I then remembered to paint the shadows from the wire, but then found that wire became almost invisible so painted that too. Then I put a thin wash of ink over the party popper strings, but accidentally tipped the piece and trickles of black ran all over my neat wire shadows! Nothing I could do about it, so I balanced it out with more deliberate trickles and a couple of contrasting splashes. I stepped back and decided it needed more black to balance it out, so painted the gaps in between the paper ripples and the centres of the barnacles black.
Now after writing all this, I am sure you're thinking I am worrying about nothing - either of the above blurbs will show I have an appreciation for art and can talk about it. They aren't looking for the finished article - just someone with potential. But whilst I can write freely and confidently about this stuff, I can't talk about it. I feel like an idiot! I'm not good being put on the spot - my brain doesn't work quickly enough - it takes me time to find words.
In addition to all of that, whilst I am enjoying learning to let go and be expressive and explore new processes and mediums, what I really enjoy is landscapes, seascapes, light and colour. I am getting the impression that Fine Art is all about Post Modernist art, Conceptual Art, the more abstract the better. What's wrong with going back to Impressionism - trying to capture light or colour or a feeling? Or Art Nouveau - craft based, elegant, decorative art based on natural forms?
Personally I am sick of controversial, political, shocking art - I've said it before I know but for me, art is an escape from the depressing news stories and the horrors of the world - I don't want art to draw my attention to causes or shock me with the realness of the brutality of some lives - it's all over social media. I want to find a way to capture the beauty in the world. I don't know if I'm on the right path or if I am just setting myself up to be a laughing stock as a philistine.
Anyway...I feel better for getting all of this off my chest, so hopefully I will sleep better tonight! Bonsoir mes amis!
I have my excuses - one week was half term and since then I have mainly been finishing off things that I have started, annotating my sketchbook in preparation for university interviews. This has caused me a lot of sleepless nights just lying in bed wondering where I am going, what I really want out of my further and higher education and how to talk about art. As I currently have some spare time whilst sat on a piece of lino, warming it ready for cutting, I thought I'd write it all down & see if it will help my insomnia if I set my thoughts free and send them out into the ether for anyone to read...this post is going to be a bit of a personal mental exposure - an insight into what is going on in my mind rather than pretty pictures, so if you're easily bored feel free to leave now!
The first thing I should say is that it's hard for me to say what I really think these days. Somewhere along the lines I lost the ability to be frank, scared of what others will think or how they will react, so this post is hard for me to write. At the back of my mind I am thinking 'what if my employer reads this and thinks I can't do my job and fire me, or what if my university interviewers read this and think "this isn't what she said in her interview" and reject me because of it?'. Hopefully they will understand that just because sometimes I feel incompetent doesn't mean I am - everyone has self doubt sometimes, I just have it a lot. I have learned to fight through it & just keep doing my best, but sometimes it prevents me from sleeping.
I'll try to keep this short-ish - I'm not re-typing my personal statement. Going back into full time education started as a self-indulgent time filler fuelled by a desire to improve my skills, knowledge & confidence, but has turned into more of a priority in my life. I am now thinking I would like to be an artist or maker or designer or teacher. Working in Financial Services pays the bills, but my heart has never been in it, and the older I get the harder it is to concentrate on something that doesn't really interest me. Art, on the other hand, consumes me.
Sounds great - what am I worried about? What am I losing sleep over?
The main thing I worry about is can I step up? Is a Fine Art degree for me? The more I learn, the more I doubt myself and conversely at the same time I feel more like an artist. I am struggling with talking about my art. I am happy to talk about other peoples art - what I can see in work, implications and connotations of elements of composition, media used, colours, art movements it fits into, mood, how the title affects the piece, what they intended versus what I see etc...but with my own work I just can't do this. I feel pretentious, disingenuous, embarrassed.
Take my monochrome relief piece for instance:
If you ask me to interpret the finished piece pretending I had nothing to do with its creation, I could write essays - The stark contrast of black and white has connotations of good versus evil. Pure, clean, light versus impure, dirty, dark. The lack of colour makes you wonder what colours things could be - are the drips and splashes and pools really blue with water or red with blood? The black and white also gives it a feeling of a moonscape from the 1960's - it could be an alien landscape - imaginary pictures from space showing evidence of life on another planet.
The wires could represent the arteries of an organ - the ripples of paper a protective casing around it. I can see arteries, veins, ventricles, blood, parasites and cancerous growths.
Put in it's contemporary text, maybe it is representative of terrorist attacks with the bloodstains, or brexit with the small island in the top right hand corner separated from the rest of the work by the paper ribbons.
I can also see what was originally intended - a representation of a rock pool - barnacles, clam shells, seaweed, limpets, whelks. Maybe the black and white represents putting a historical twist on it - highlighting the plight of our oceans due to pollution and how soon it could all be dead and gone.
It would fit in with the Abstract Expressionism movement - it is more about the feel of the relief work and the freedom of allowing the ink to flow and drip and pool where it may than any attempt to accurately represent the subject.
It is reminiscent of Willem De Koonings' black and white paintings from the 1940's, although the subject matter differs as his works were abstracts based loosely on human forms and his work was 2d, using oil and enamel:
(have I seriously just compared my work with Willem De Kooning?!?!? Now I feel ridiculous even in type!) I could go on for hours...
However, if you ask me to tell you what this piece means to me, I would tell you that I did the following charcoal sketch of a still life arrangement of shells that I collected from Barmston beach:
We were then asked to create an abstract relief piece based on this sketch, in any medium we could find, then paint it black and white. I started with the intention of just recreating it in 3d - the shadows make it look 3d anyway, so not abstract at all and not very imaginative, but I had to start somewhere.
I started by making a wire frame for the limpet and adding papier mache, then started making the barnacles out of chicken wire. The more I did, the more I got a feel for it and it took on a life of its own - growing organically and becoming more abstract. Once the barnacles were in place I sensed the need to balance the piece, making the smaller barnacles with newspaper and adding another limpet. It was all feeling very solid so I wanted to represent the clam shells in a lighter, more abstract way & came up with the idea of a bare wire addition. When I started to sketch it out, the clam shells started to look more like a pattern than clam shells, but it felt right so I went with it. Once the wires were in place, the shadows pleased me so I made a mental note to exaggerate this when making it black & white.
I put the paper ribbon curves in to bring the piece together, to create a pathway around the piece for the eyes to follow, made origami shells to make it look less abstract and give it more of a sense of what it was supposed to be. I finished by pulling party poppers to create a background texture like the bright green slimy stuff you get on rocks. It is all about aesthetics - what I find pleasing to my eye - no hidden meanings.
Given the option I would have used colour - colour rocks my world. It's what makes my heart skip a beat. Having said that, I do love the black and white - lesson learned - I am happy to keep an open mind and have a go at stuff - in this case black and white is definitely better. So I had to paint it white - hated every second of doing this. Then I had to add black. I didn't want to do the obvious & just paint the shadows dark, so I started by watering down some ink and letting it drip down the limpet shell. It instantly made me think of ski runs or rivers running down a mountain, so I went with it, letting the ink run where gravity pulled it.
I then remembered to paint the shadows from the wire, but then found that wire became almost invisible so painted that too. Then I put a thin wash of ink over the party popper strings, but accidentally tipped the piece and trickles of black ran all over my neat wire shadows! Nothing I could do about it, so I balanced it out with more deliberate trickles and a couple of contrasting splashes. I stepped back and decided it needed more black to balance it out, so painted the gaps in between the paper ripples and the centres of the barnacles black.
Now after writing all this, I am sure you're thinking I am worrying about nothing - either of the above blurbs will show I have an appreciation for art and can talk about it. They aren't looking for the finished article - just someone with potential. But whilst I can write freely and confidently about this stuff, I can't talk about it. I feel like an idiot! I'm not good being put on the spot - my brain doesn't work quickly enough - it takes me time to find words.
In addition to all of that, whilst I am enjoying learning to let go and be expressive and explore new processes and mediums, what I really enjoy is landscapes, seascapes, light and colour. I am getting the impression that Fine Art is all about Post Modernist art, Conceptual Art, the more abstract the better. What's wrong with going back to Impressionism - trying to capture light or colour or a feeling? Or Art Nouveau - craft based, elegant, decorative art based on natural forms?
Personally I am sick of controversial, political, shocking art - I've said it before I know but for me, art is an escape from the depressing news stories and the horrors of the world - I don't want art to draw my attention to causes or shock me with the realness of the brutality of some lives - it's all over social media. I want to find a way to capture the beauty in the world. I don't know if I'm on the right path or if I am just setting myself up to be a laughing stock as a philistine.
Anyway...I feel better for getting all of this off my chest, so hopefully I will sleep better tonight! Bonsoir mes amis!
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