22/11/19

I feel like I might have got over my creative block. It’s been a difficult period of trying to produce work which tests boundaries, is well conceived and executed with skill. I need to get back to enjoying the process of creating the work. I realised on the train up to Camberwell that I won’t be drawing myself forever and all these women I find interesting and curious I can be drawing before I know it. Using myself is a great resource for producing “bad” portraits. Then I can move on to think about representing others.

Seeing those Kate Boxer and Stuart Pearson-Wright drypoint etchings makes me realise I can have all the complicated reasoning in the world, but what really makes sense is the simplicity of intaglio marks building up to eventually represent a person. My feeling for the person flowing through my hand onto the plate or paper and indelibly inscribing that moment, or period of time in which I’ve contemplated that person. That might be a bit of an egotistical way of seeing the act of drawing, but I think it is often more about the artist than the subject.

In the book from an exhibition at the Drawing Room, Close: Drawn Portraits, Dryden Goodwin’s drawings from a day spent with his dad and then his son really resonated with me. The lines he drew reflecting the changing mood as the day passed, for artist and subject. He describes the drawings as ‘physical remnants of a moment that you can hold’ (p. 48). I think this simple remark is so emotive. I’m not completely there with my art, but having started this drypoint of myself and broken the ice I feel something released in me. Hopefully my confidence will start to really grow too because I have a real belief and passion for what I’m doing next.

I’m sticking to simple lines on paper and on plate and go from there. I think there’s so much to explore, but I want to start with me and the line.

This drypoint is in progress, I seem to have found my own way to Paul Coldwell’s advice about slowing down and taking time over my drawing. Drypoint is making me very happy despite having to deal with some very upsetting family stuff this week. I’m finding myself in extreme emotional states; really excited creatively and at the same time extremely distressed at a loved one being taken seriously ill. Looking back at my self-portrait there’s renewed meaning in what I’m doing within this duality of human experience. My expression feels a little foretelling now.

I am happy to say it’s also a “bad” portrait, it doesn’t look much like me and based on my desire to free myself of these tight constraints I’ve inflicted upon myself, it makes it a bloody good portrait. I would add a little criticality and say it is not bad as in being abject though, and it doesn’t challenge the boundaries of portraiture as much as I think I can given some time and space. But it’s a start.

20/11/19

Most interestingly the little painting was done on copper and is truly inspiring. The disappearing portrait! Or maybe the opposite, coming into being, becoming visible. I think that’s me.

Freud worked his plates up at an easel, I’m thinking that is a great idea, I find sitting over a plate at a table really excruciating. Standing at an easel is so much more natural to me.

This exhibition also reinforced my feeling towards my line, lines are so freaking important, each and everyone can convey something. Darkness, lightness and a feeling. I must draw so much that I’m no longer scared of my lines or of producing a “good” or “bad” likeness, it has thwarted so much of what I’ve done over the years. No more!!

I should be aiming for a poor a likeness of myself as possible, maybe that way I’ll get nearer to myself. Maybe the lines will really start to reflect who I am, rather than just representing a physical likeness that has no depth.

I feel I am building up a deep and meaningful relationship with my lines. They reflect me, even if I’m drawing something else entirely.

Drypoint & Kate Boxer

19/11/19

I’ve had a terrible few weeks of creative paralysis, which is ironic since I’ve never been so clear on what I want to do and how I intend to achieve it!

It started after my 1-2-1 with Paul Coldwell, I came away feeling I needed to do more sketchbook work and slow down my drawing process, but conversely I also want to free my lines, be more spontaneous, let my heart not my head lead my hand. These two aims completely clash and have made me panic quite frankly.

I’ve just turned in on myself and tried to keep doing my sketchbook and not cave into feeling utterly depressed….it’s that duality again. Pleasure and pain. 99% pain at the moment, but with that comes the drive to make more meaningful work, it’s just a shame it has to all be so painful at times.

In this sketch I was trying to capture the mouth at a difficult angle more than anything, but looking back on it there’s a lot of energy in the lines, which is what I’m aiming for!

A part of what I am trying out in my sketchbook amongst all this frustration is using a few different materials together, above is dip pen and ink and soft graphite.

These are very rough sketches, but I’m using different colours, inks, watercolour, it takes time and I can’t expect creative breakthroughs without getting down to some drawing.

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*I’ve since seen a Martin Lewis drypoint, it was great to see it in the flesh. I’ve also been applying sandpaper on my plates to add texture since reading about it in the Printmakers Bible (in the self-portrait drypoint).

But I’ve been reading a printmaking book Liorah lent me, I want this book! In it I’ve discovered several interesting artists, one of them being Kate Boxer, she seems to mainly do drypoint etchings and I’ve been thinking maybe I should do a bit more of this myself as it feels less intimidating that hard ground lines at the moment. Maybe a soft entry back into intaglio, but trying to create the work I’ve set out in my proposal.

These are all Kate Boxers drypoint etchings, she adds chine colle, carborundum, crayon and gouache into them. I love the effect and feel I can use this work to throw me out of my hole of despair.

2/11/19

So I’ve been trying to commit to drawing more, it’s elemental and since I’ve been in Printmaking I’ve somewhat abandoned it. I wouldn’t consider running a half-marathon without doing weeks of training beforehand so the same should go for my etching. The sketchbook needs to come back out, for good!

I’m liking the strangely angled portrait. This could be the basis of a project and certainly I’m going to use this image when I experiment with photo-litho in a week or two.

31/10/19

I’ve been working on a steel plate for the first time, it’s a large plate, about 40x50cm, I wanted to try some new intaglio techniques to start building up my skill set so I can achieve these dark layers I’m looking for. This is not the final piece, next week I intend to go back to the line plate and add in some more texture using tissue on soft ground.

This is a departure for me in that I began the portrait with sugar lift directly onto the plate with no preliminary drawing. My feeling is that perhaps I am better off starting with drawing then going in with techniques to knock the drawing back a bit. It didn’t give me the freedom I had hoped.

Perhaps I am a person that needs the drawn boundaries to know my basic structure and work on my images from there. I’m coming to accept and embrace how I work instead of assuming I must always be doing it wrong. There is no such thing in art and I need to develop my resilience and confidence in my own abilities.

Having said that, this piece hasn’t worked, I’m going to draw a line under it and go back into the plate and make a mess and see where it goes. It’s the first piece I’ve done since finishing my paper and I think inevitably it’s too tight and over thought. I know I want to create more emotive darkness in my portraits and work on my drawing skills with by going back to daily sketchbook drawing. Increasing my confidence in line work will hopefully help me approach plates with more freedom and increase my willingness to take risks.

Annie Burrows suggested I look at Maria Lassnig for the way she approaches her portraits based on feelings and senses.

27/10/19

I wanted to visit the Turner Contemporary firstly because I’ve never been there and secondly because an artist called Barbara Walker had a residency at the gallery and produced some interesting drawings as a result.

Her work was based on local Margate women, huge charcoal drawings of them on the walls of the gallery accompanied by audio recordings of their experiences of living there, with the intermittent sound of seagulls and crashing waves.

It’s good to see that drawing is not dead! These type of exhibitions help me to strengthen my resolve.

I discussed this exhibition in my last blog entry and thought it necessary to include it in my blog because it’s had such an impact on me. This small clip doesn’t do it justice, but it’s better than nothing.

The confusion of pleasure and pain that this musical exhibition had on me is something I intent to take forward into my own work, if at all possible. The feelings that swept over me when I entered this darkened room are the feelings I want to harness in my portraits.

It has helped me realise what my own art is missing!

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27/10/19

Having had my tutorial with Jo last week I’ve had time to reflect on what we discussed and unpick my thoughts a bit more. Jo has helped me see what has been hampering my productivity, my lack of commitment to what I want to create, which comes from a lack of confidence in “exposing” myself creatively.

On the one hand I tell Jo I want to create art that is emotive and touch on those deep dark emotions that I felt when I went to Kiasma and saw the music/video performance The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson.Then, on the other, I show her Sarah Balls photoetchings, which as Jo said, aren’t the same thing at all! These are quiet images, drawn in detail and all about the gaze of the individual.

It’s this inconsistency that bothers me, I feel it has been hampering my development as an artist for years. I’m very good at telling myself my skill set is the wrong skill set and discard too lightly what I am good at.

These are complicated unconscious motivations and limiters. What I do know is that The Visitors has stayed with me because it has such a strong emotional impact on me. It was spellbinding, it made me want to cry and smile at the same time. I couldn’t say what about, just the music, the way we could walk around and interact in the environment was astonishing to my soul. That’s the type of art I’m meant to be making.

I spoke to my mum about it, that I need to dig deeper and understand where my portraits are coming from, why why why the face. That experience in Kiasma is key and relates two other emotional experiences I had over that week. One was a small baby crying inconsolably on the flight home from Finland, it was heartbreaking. The other was the joyous laughter of a slightly older baby on the train to Camberwell. Their mum was bouncing a ball and it was making this baby laugh so much I thought they were on the edge of tears.

I’ve realised through my conversation with my mum that these experiences created extreme feelings of pleasure and of pain. They’re exquisite emotions. I cannot have one without the other and I’ve spent many years suppressing the darker feelings I had as a teenager and young adult, which has lead me to also suppress the opposite feelings. Leaving me in a personal and creative vacuum, where I have dumbed down much of what motivates me to be creative and made me unsure of my footing. There can be no pleasure without pain. They’re dualities and I have to embrace both to achieve what I want in my art. No light without dark, if I’m scared of my darkness and avoid it I cannot achieve anything near sublime feelings I felt in Kiasma.

I am no expert on depression, I’ve avoiding acknowledging it for years and have managed it for those years too, but on a personal level I need to embrace, not fear, these experiences and let my art be charged by them.

It’s the pleasure/pain, light/dark dualities that will inform my practice. This impossible duality of life, this is what I see when I look into a mirror and draw a self-portrait and it can be almost unbearable. This is what I felt in Kiasma and THIS is why I paint portraits and why illustration was never going to be enough for me.

THIS is how I use the idea of the abject, push the boundaries of a portrait.

25/09/19

Some thoughts to start…

I’ve put my computer away for a few days so I can put some thought into life after the research paper, but all based around the research I’ve been doing.

One thing I’ve not quite resolved is how I’m going to achieve all this stuff going around my head. I have the theory but not the means with which to achieve it just yet. I feel positive though, it’s only a matter of time before things start to emerge. It’s a case of not putting myself under too much pressure to achieve “successful” work as soon as the essay is handed in.

19/08/19

I have no children at home so this is my week of research and pulling together what I’ve already read.

Firstly my biggest question feels like whether I need to be going beyond the Beauty Myth and examine more closely how Feminist artists have been self-representative in their work in order to break new boundaries particularly in the context of the female body and how it has been portrayed historically.

Perhaps this is too much to squeeze into a 3000 word essay. I’m reading so much that I want to include. I’ve discovered Lynda Nead, Susan Bordo and I’m now understanding, really relating to, the idea of the abject in feminist art.

It is FEMINIST art that’s really getting me excited about the research and my work.