29/04/20
These small casts are slowly increasing in number and getting better as I learn. I have also thought some of the middle sized plates could look great cast and hung on the wall (see below!). I’m trialling one today and will see what it looks like tomorrow.
I feel like I’m in a haze this week, I’m going through the motions of doing a bit of work here and there, but I cannot think clearly. I’d hoped good work would come out of lockdown because I want to see some positives in this situation, but right now I can’t see beyond the day I find myself in. When I think beyond that I get depressed and sad. I have lots of thoughts around drawing the day to day and seeing where it leads me, but the reality is the girls have their heads down doing work. Both of them find sitting for me boring too. I might insist with Cléa because she likes my ideas and wants to be a part of it (in theory!).
Maybe work will come after the event. Maybe it’s all too close. I just don’t want to look back and regret not trying to find ways to work harder through lockdown. Motivation really fluctuates, which is crazy because I am so motivated by my MA, but that feels pretty much over to be honest.
I was reading about Angela Kauffman’s Self-portrait: Hesitating between the arts of music and painting, painted in 1791. Apparently the 18th Century was a popular time for paintings depicting choice and it made me think about how I could perhaps use my portraits in this sort of way. I’m grasping out in panic, all my ideas are half baked and they need a lot more working out and on. I still have the Celia Paul and Freud inspired images of my girls circulating around my head, but I think it’s more important to work on things I can put down easily. So it’s sketchbooks and working on images I’ve already got. Perhaps consolidating is a good aim. I need some solid aims, I feel I lack edges.
I have been trying to have specific aims every week and I tick some off, but there seems to be so much dead time between doing things with the girls. I have been spending a lot of time working out problems with my press. Printing is such a time consuming thing, especially when you have no technician by your side. And at the end of the day it’s frustrating if I haven’t even resolved my problem (which I haven’t!).
10/06/20
A the latest incarnation of my objects, I’m trying to recreate a more gallery style view of them, obviously understanding scale for the viewer is still going to be difficult. They are definitely in conversation with one another, in an intimate space of their own, but they’re also taking a look at those who look upon them.
Ideally I would have continued to create more of my small army of women, I do in fact have another one, but with all the home schooling and lockdown it’s been incredibly difficult to have enough time in the studio, but I will complete the set in time.
These slightly larger plates are much more challenging to cast in plaster and I’m hitting a few issues with pouring it on the plate quick enough, I’m not sure I have the time to pursue many more of these for the moment. The smaller ones are more resolved in this medium than the larger ones, although I can prop the 16x12cm ones against a wall on the floor or on a table. Taking them slightly off the gallery wall.
Marigold Plunkett 