"Failure by definition, takes us beyond assumptions and what we think we know and can be represented... Experiment and Progress, examines failure's potential for experimentation beyond what is known, while questioning the imperatives of progress. The act of testing takes on a different register when considered as a process rather than a result-orientated search for progress"
-->
Feuvre, L. L. (2010). Introduction: Strive to Fail. The
Whitechapel Gallery, London: The MIT Press. Pp. 12 – 19.
When Thinking about failure I think of how paint operates on surface, it becomes transparent or subdued or illuminates marks that where attempted to be covered. Although my choice in colours and form are very structured, I am Interested in the way the pigment attempts to break a way from is confined form, through either a drip or a water mark, these attributions are out of my control acting either in a failure or succuss - the process of trail and error tends to form my practice by repeating it over and over, until I exhaust the materiality of paint through repetition.
" Chance is a role that providence has reserved for itself in the affairs of the world, a role through which it could make certain that men would have no influence"
"The ability to open up to chance is triggered by a personal desire to set something in motion."
I see my work as the artists hand the guides the material of paint to a
surface where it operates freely depending on the pigment. There is no
determined outcome in this process but through consideration of the
materiality which pigments operate differently as the watermarked pigment drys in away that I had perceived before, resulting in either the so
called master piece or dissolved with another layer of paint. where it
is still presented every so quietly emerging from under the top coat of
paint.
"Art Operates as a fissure in representation, and we as spectators as representational creatures are involved in a dance with art, a dance in which through careful manoeuvres - the molecular is opened up, the aesthetic is activated and art does what is its chief modus operandi it transforms, if only for a moment, our sense of our "selves" and our notion of the world."
I see this quote important in terms of my practice, it is through the viewers movement and connection with the works that makes them come alive. From every viewer point a new form will emerge or recede on the surface of the paint, creating a subtle optical shift. I see this as an aesthetic of the work operating through light and shadow. It "transforms a sense of ourselves" I think for me this peice of writing becomes important through this engagement both in making and viewing, I repeat my process over and over again, yet the paintings never become what was intended, through this failure and absurdity it becomes about how far as an artist I want to exhausted this material and move onto the next and through making it is an engagement with oneself placed in the world, the paints call out for attention yet not so much load mouthed, they speak softly, charming the viewers with their colours, yet they are far from being perfect, they displace a certain amount of elegance as they are propped up right on the wall.
I intend the viewers thoughts to linger in the depths of their minds as they become some what as the banality of the everyday, things that go misplaced, or lost for many year are recoiled and displayed as an abstract form.
I will leave you with another quote that I also found interesting from the same text by Simon O'sullivan which also make connections with the paragraph I have written above.
"The work of art is a block of sensations, that is to say, a compound of percepts and affects. Percepts are no longer perceptions: they are independent of the state of those who experience them...They go beyound the strength of those who undergo them. Sensation, percepts and affects are beings whose validity lies in themselves and exceeds any lived." Affects are not one to be pinned down to one definition it is much more than a sensation it is something this is unlocked through the viewer as the artwork then reveals its Secret "affect."
"I worked a lot in watercolour and gouache painting. I work in acrylics
now because I find they can do most of the things watercolour and
gouache can do. But for years, even before art school, I would be doing
quick paintings on paper and I think developed a kind of fluidity with
working flat and working with thin paint – paint that could move on its
own accord"
When I was having a discussion about my work to Amber the other day we were talking about my work in terms of composition, the way things become disjointed and don't want to connect in a way where we would perceive. Julian Hooper took get interest to me as his works display a similar disconnection in form. Where line and shape don't want to connect, layer appear and disappear on the surface of the paint. It is through the mix media that both Hooper and I use juxtaposing transparency and fluidity with a solid form or ground.
"the activity of painting is generating the image, whereas for several years I was making quite planned images. Still, a certain amount would happen during the process of doing the painting, and I’ve made decisions along the way that could change the course of the image – but things now are much more kind of utilising chance and accident in order to create an idea for the painting"
I see this process a like mine as there is room for a random occurance to happen that, this may reveal a certain failure, that could change the discourse of the practice. Corrosponding with the reading of Jan Verwoert's reading of 'Emergence' a process of become through a commitment to materiality.
".. Paint as a factory - made commodity. The colour that possesses no higher truth than the materials that were required to make it"
This quote was taken from the book Colour Chart: Renivating colour, 1950 - Today, written by Ann Temkin. I think it is interesting to view colour through a process of materiality. The use of a 'colour chart' makes us (the viewer) more aware of the everyday and the surroundings. I tend to notice that in terms of my practice the colours chosen cause a further interpretation into the surrounding architecture. It invokes not the realm of fine art, but rather the non art purposes for which the overwhelming majority of paint in the world is made.
This artist is one that I looked at last semester. Tomislav Nikolic is an Australian Painter that work a lot with the casting shadowof pigment. " The teasing manipulation of the visible - what is chromatically barely detectable around the outside of the conspicuously framed rectangle or within it." this artist presents blank or extremely delicate stained canvases delineated by the starkly painted boarders and / or dark frames in florescent chroma to diffuse the contoured presence of the painted stretcher. He uses this process to create colours that float outside and inside the frame, on the canvas and on the surrounding wall. This casting of light catches the viewer in a space that encloses them as discrete entities.
Working with a similar process, I want the viewer to move around the work consider each side of the painting, through colour. I think Nicolic's process works well in a very subtle way, I went to this exhibition at Fox Jensen Gallery and only then did i see the reflective side of the frames, they act in a very subtle way but they draw you in wanting to know how the process is done, which I find interesting.
Ruth Thomas-Edmond is interested in how paint operates in two and
three-dimensional form and produces drawings, paintings and sculptural
works that reference "multiple landscapes and experiences, seen and
sorted and later remembered".
Thomas-Edmond's work renews our
wonder of the meandering journey and the particular passage that is the
exploration of visual space. Her work operates at both the level of the
map and the territory simultaneously, for she creates spaces while
recording them. Yet because she generates her own territory, literally
making her own terrain, she evades having to actually refer to any
location or real place. The paintings are reminiscent, they resemble
and they float like thought bubbles, ideas or memories... The work is
imbued with aspects of our everyday lives; tracts of time, momentary
tea breaks, interruptions and concentration. They hum, shiver, shimmer,
vibrate and oscillate. James Robertson
Im interested in the way Thomas - Edmond using transparent pigment to create depth, texture and the history of what was left and what was covered in each work. The forms are bold and stand out not just in colour but they give a sense that these forms hover over the paper, into space.
Evoking the idioms of painting, Pozanti eschews its formal constraints
and presents visual ciphers that foreground the possibilities of
imaginative space. Her abstract fields are derived from an intensive
process of meticulous brushwork that attempts to arrive at what the
artist describes as “shapes that have not existed before.” In this,
Pozanti mines the legacy of American artist and theorist, Frederick
Kiesler, who argued that geometric forms are “the trading posts of
visible and invisible forces.” Perceived reality is defined by this
continual interaction and he termed the exchange “co-reality.” Referencing the
interface of the body and technology, her process intercedes as a means
of slowing down, creating spaces apart from the flux of information.
Underscoring the physicality of the medium, optical abstraction
invariably yields to haptic perception, inviting moments of
contemplation and reflective silence.
I am interested in the shapes and forms that are represented, through layers of colour and how they become intertwined with each other, resulting in forms that jut out and don't seem to want to connect with others. The colour pallet is very opaque, matt resulting in a depth and space between bright and dark colours, which how I consider my works to act with this medium too.
" Art is a discipline.... and discipline is drawing" Butler, H.C. (2000) The Art of Richard Tuttle. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, inc.
I came across this book today at the library on Richard Tuttle called "The Art of Richard Tuttle" written by Butler, H.C. I am influenced by Tuttle's watercolour paintings, and how they link to drawings, Butler states that the "experience of the drawings is linked by the uniformed experience of the horizontal line, which bisects each sheet and makes a sort of synthesized time line of perception along which incidental marks tease and dance. The question of what Tuttle is representing is through the materials ability to create an 'object in space' A 3.D dimensional illusion, that resonates something of the everyday. Each glyphlike watercolour drawn on an everyday sheet of lined notebook paper is like a chinese character, but no sentence is formed, no logical sequence developed, they simply overwhelm with their unyielding recurrence.
"Often palled hues, patched - together supports, and loosely brushed shapes, combined with his liberal use of emptiness and dispersal" The subtly of watercolour in these works, makes them look quick, fast sketches of something bigger something Tuttle may of seen of interest in the everyday. I guess this reflects on a memory of what the viewer may or may not interpret out of these drawings.
The drawings act "freely and grant the same freedom to those elements and to the viewer who enters into the sphere that they reframe, reconfigure and fill" The viewer becomes the context to these works as they display pencil marks and finely brushed watercolour, they are open to interpretation, through there 'light' aspect of representation. Tuttle "liberates the eye and mind to roam in the tandem from
sensation to disinterested, even disembodied, thought and back to
sensation" The works act casually with the surface being lined note book paper - an everyday material that does not normally have connotations to an artwork.
"If you can create a space between appearance and reality, you can do anything"
Tuttle imposes devices repeatedly in his compositions to suggest a layering of both space and consciousness." It is through this layering of pencil and watercolour that I am most interested in, they way in which transparency and the temporal material of the lined note book act with each other in contrasting ways. What i like about the nature of Tuttles work is that he plays off this very whimsy constructed 'child - like' freedom with materials, by combining art material with ephemeral plays off this push/pull of what we percieve as high art, low art.
This movement developed from Impressionism and involved the use of many
small dots of colour to give a painting a greater sense of vibrancy
when seen from a distance. The equal size dots never quite merge in the
viewer's perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one
experiences on a hot and sunny day.
Although I do not depict anything representational, I see a relationship to this movement through the small watermarked dots applied by brush or the finely etched incision marks that cut the surface of the paper along with small pencil marks that imitate them. These processes i use to form my image, display a vibrancy when viewed up close of a smudge on the paper when viewed from far. "The equal size dots never quite merge in the
viewer's perception resulting in a shimmering effect like one
experiences on a hot and sunny day." I see this quote in relation to my work as they too display a shimmering effect when the dots and lines are built up in a cluster or mass, when caught in the light these etched marks look almost like a velvet as each direction of view point declines or emerges these forms.
When the water colour dots are applied to the colour field they bring the painting to life, bringing a movement to the field of the opaque hue.
I am currently reading a book called 'The Infinite Line' written by Briony Fer. She discusses repetition as a function in which we all act upon with a quote from Deleuze, he describes the 'unconscious of representation. If we are lost without repetition, we are also lost to it and in thrall to it. As the very ground of consciousness, repetition cuts both ways, both shoring up and shattering its fragile and precious hold.
"What would life be like if there was no repetition?"
The book discusses paintings by Agnes Martin as how when setting up a process that is based upon repeating a line over and over until the painter is satisfied it becomes, mundane and mechanical like, removing the artist's hand from the paintings all together. They do not represent any thing - Martin states creating only meaning brought by the viewer. She does though consider sensation in her paintings such as - joy, bliss and sublime.
"The series alternate and interrupt the grid in a variety of ways overlaying it with hieroglyph - type arcs the lozenge shapes or reducing it to morse - like dots and dashes"
I think in terms of Martin's practice, I find interesting this mundane process in which she individually draws single lines on a canvas over and over again, each trying to better the other. I see my practice at a similar point, although i am not drawing single lines on a canvas, I am creating build up of tone and form creating shadows and layers - each time I make a work I will try better it in the next by trying to apply the same or similar to process.
When looking for delicacy and detail i go to the works of Kristy Gorman, where she created a series of hole punched works looking at structure and biomorphic forms how they can co - exist at one time either butted up together or overlapping each other, creating a translucency in the figure field.
"In 'Punctum',
Gorman again uses light and shade to give layer and depth to her work.
The viewer is required to bring the same intimate and intense gaze to
the paintings, though this time, we see the shadows play above the
layered painted surface. The closer we look, the more we see that the
small black dots are indeed punched holes or 'Punctum' which act as
dark outlines resting above the subtly layered muted hues. Again, the
shapes echo a flower, a leaf, or some kind of topographical patter
constantly changing the more we look. We reminisce. We might be
reminded of embossed velvet, where the background has been
painted with an invisible hand to resemble the lining of a beautiful
coat or an old tablecloth.
Gorman's works are the antithesis of
our bright 'mall- filled world', where we greedily snatch and grab at
everything that is shiny and lurid. Instead Kristy Gorman encourages us
to simply mediate, so that through her works we can view ourselves more closely." Retrieved from the Jonathon Smart Gallery: http://www.jonathansmartgallery.com/content/view/83/38
I see Gorman's work as constantly morphing the figure field, by puncturing tiny holes across the page the light catches of the curves of the holes creating shadow and depth, when the viewer engages and moves around the work the shadow moves with you.
In the article 'Shadow Work' written by Claire Regnault she describes Gorman's work as " Painting forewards then backwards, erasing individual marks and entire layers through the process of addition and subtraction only to begin again"
I find this quote useful to think about when attempting to cover the mistakes and shadow the failures, because this is a process I am inclined to do in some of my works. When the form and colour does not seem right i start over, but to my surprise the past is always still present even if you tryed to smoother it in gesso, the hint of the red or blue still shadows through and I think this is important to embrace as it create an interesting push/ pull of foreground and background as depth and presence become interchangeable.
Quotes from the essay on Gorman's exhibition written by Anna Smith, she states that Gorman's work presents - "Shadows that make visible what seems invisible. The eyes strain myopically"
"Gorman's vision is to allow us to acknowledge our own blind - spots: our unwillingness to looks, eyes open and our confusion at what we see when we do begin to remain in attendance, in front of the work, waiting for meaning to appear"
Dreamy, quirky, beautiful and enigmatic – descriptors all very apt for
Saskia Leek’s painting. But to describe other than these paintings’
content (which is fruit subjects, the show’s deft title) requires more
scrutiny, more visual detail than that.
So let’s start with colour. In Fruit Subjects IV,
Leek uses black for the first time. It provides in a rubbed-back, worn
and almost striated looking way, the ground in front of which a variety
of colours hover. Blobs of lavender and greeny blues float amorphously
behind a crisply outlined bunch of grapes in the central foreground of
the painting. This is a dance of colour sharpened by (differences in)
edge.
Edge here is important. In these paintings, areas of colour and form edge towards and touch
each other in a variety of ways. In Fruit Subjects IV they
overlap, they rub up, they veil and they obliterate one another in the
gentlest ways possible of course. Edges are soft and hard, transparent
and dense. In Fruit Subjects II, harder raised edges left by
masking tape describe architectonic forms that are dramatic (and often
laid down on diagonals) against softer areas of blue behind. Witness
subtleties of definition, density, overlay and transparency here, in
oranges, lavender and yellows that are very fine. This sense of edge, or the places in painting where form and colour meet, is more even, more homogenous in Fruit Subjects I.
And colour is kept close (through blue and green to yellow) within this
painting too. Having said that, the small corner of differentiated
reddy brown bottom right drives this painting, not only earthing it,
but giving it the drama and movement that make it so appealing.
Then in Fruit Subjects VII,
where you probably won’t see such a lurid and wonky description of
fleshy fruit for some time (!), Leek washes much of the painting and
also its frame with a light transparent layer of yellow green. The
effect is halo-like, gilding in green the incredibly lustrous central
offerings. And it focuses the gaze, harnessing the energy of
underpainting and overpainting into strange and artful acts.
This is a very descriptive piece I found in a written critic of one of her exhibitions at the Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch. I see her pieces in relationship to mine because of form and colour, through the subtleties of density, overlay and transparency.
"All painting involves the smearing of coloured paste over a flat surface, and it is done in order to trick and deceive the viewer, a viewer who wants to be tricked and deceived into seeing something that is not there. and behind the make - up which is painting, there is nothing. There is no substance beneath the surface, no depth behind the appearance."
Chromophobia
is a long meditation on color in western culture. Batchelor claims that
color doesn't fit in with any of our social constructs. It's too
immoral, unnamable, seductive, foreign, elusive.
I think this is an interesting read as you think of form instead of colour when viewing an art work, an artwork should be simple - it should be plain, but that is not the case in many works of mine. I see my practice about form and colour and how colour creates a depth, a way to change a persons perspective is through colour, it creates depth and dimension. I use colour as a drawing tool and it is through this materiality and pigment that creates my works, it creates a fluid structure, something pen or pencil could not do with out the artists hand at present.
The Barthes quotes, as one might expect, are delightful: "Color ... is a kind of bliss (jouissance)
... like a closing eyelid, a tiny fainting spell" and "if I were a
painter, I should paint only colors: this field seems to me freed of
both the Law ... and Nature (for after all don't the colors of nature
come from the painters?)"
"Colours, nicely modulated, give the eye pleasure, but that is purely sensory" Sensation and pleasure in a painting to me makes the image complete, if it is aesthetically pleasing it will keep both the viewer and painter active in looking and creating.
I see Vances work in relationship to mine by the similar forms, the use of layering, compostition - how lines and shapes dont want to connect, but are made to.
there are a lot of things going on in the paintings of Vance's and the artists hand is present as the brush strokes and outlines of forms emphasized and not hiding any secrets of the process. I think this is a useful to think about in my own studio practice "truth to materials" through texture and roughness of the brush strokes.
"There is a great focus on aspects of moment and light in there works.
In some, luster seeps through hairline cracks; others seem to channel
the source of their illumination from a hidden presence. " http://www.davidkordanskygallery.com/?n=artists&aid=18&c=press This website has many articles on this artist such as Artforum, Frieze, BOOM etc...
I think the use of colour channel a direct light source this may be illuminated through a natural source emphasing its layers or the light is illuminated within the figure field, forming depth and space. I am working with a similar sort of idea recently - illuminating the forms within the mat colour field, I realised that brighter, more translucent colour display volume and depth within the painting, the bright greens and oranges recede into the background adding some vibrancy to the work and catching the eye of the viewer
9-27-00 3, reworked 10-11,7-11-00 3, reworked and 7-11-01 1, reworked 1-12oil on panel 24 x 24
Check out his website and stockroom at: http://www.mcgowanfineart.com/stockwell.html A Brief Overview - This website is a great source to find out about Craig Stockwell, with writings about and by the artist. http://www.craigstockwell.com/about/articlesabout/
"Craig Stockwell follows his own formula when he paints. He always
starts with circles layered as in a three-dimentional grid, like a box
full of balls. Then he finds forms within, outlining groups of balls
into bulbous, organic-looking forms.Abandoning meaning, Stockwell takes us on a freefall into color and
form. He’s an abstract painter, building every work on a skeleton of
circles drawn in careful order up and down the canvas. He heavily
outlines shapes formed by clusters of circles, and these bump, overlap,
and glide along the surface of his paintings and drawings. He shades
them, colors them, gives them volume, or leaves them flat. They’re like
atoms randomly colliding, sometimes grouping into molecules.
By revealing preparatory grids (in pencil) and overlapping form upon
form, the process becomes as exciting as the idea of the finished work."
The process of Stockwell's interests me as his work is determined by a grid that was his first layer applied. It is through the many layers that he applies that reference back to a grid; the line, depth and composition.
The materiality of these works interest me as transparency and opaque
pigments co - exist. The layering of form creates depth and also an
optical shift as a viewer i become lost in the pattern of line. Shapes
begin to fold over one another, through each other, around each other
creating a sense of movement in colour and form. The way in which the
lines intersect cause this static to become dynamic as the still image
moves.The colours are muted yet forced to compete with the transparent pigments.
"painting has thus achieved the possibility of becoming more meaningful by being less important.”
I see this in reference to Italo Calvino's theory on 'Lightness' or the modernest approach - art for arts sake, these two theories both share similar notions of the quote above as lightness extracts weighted meaning by language through mythology and poetry and the book Art for Art Sake only considers the painting as it its - line, colour, form. I see connections between the two theories as they are both trying to make interpretation lighter.
Title and Theme for the Show: Snow falls on mountains without wind is the second part of PX
In trying to understand the difficulties of
painting, and what it might be to be a painter today, or, rather, what
it is to work in the midst of painting's continual presence, like a
child alone, picking away beside her bed at tiny cracks in the wall,
sizeable fault lines open up. And these lines, which begin
imperceptibly as invisible fissures but seem to diverge, chasm-like,
chart the same ground: they declare to be about painting's (principled)
way of being/acting in the world. And since we are speaking of lines,
we find here lines bifurcating - some become lines of flight along
which new ways of thinking proliferate, while others pull us back to
earth, to sedimentary thinking (the difference between unbounded hope
and the despair of conformism, between lightness and heaviness) (1).
Lawson says that he “works under conditions of
restraint rather than freedom.” The works are tightly controlled. He
doesn’t try to articulate what he’s looking for. He doesn’t give it a
name and he claims that there is no style, but ” its execution does
require a heightened form of concentration and a play of extended
thought and memory.” From afar, they are paintings that try to
disappear into their surroundings but the viewer is welcome to take a
closer look, for it is only then, once the viewer comes very near, that
the tiny brush strokes are revealed and the surface is transformed into
a thick and broken shell.
Bryant, J. (2007).
Colin Lawson's work is light and subtle, while still reminding you the process of accumulation and mark making which demands time and attention. He briefly discuses his work through the eyes of the viewer in a similar way I would describe my works, I want the viewer to engage with the tiny marks that are only revealed up close, but you have to be attentive in the works of mine as you may miss out if you don't fully engage with the works. I think this is a similar approach to Lawson's as he describes the tiny brush strokes that are revealed up close, causing the surface to be transformed.
Elise Rugolo, Thunderhead, 2008, flashe vinyl paint and collage on birch panel, 8 x 8 inches.
Resume: The artist Marc Chagall's declaration, "I work inwhatever medium likes meat the moment,"
has always resonated with me. As a mixed-media artist, I have explored
a wide variety of media, but lately have been focusing on the encaustic
medium. The encaustic process is an ancient painting technique in which
the pigments are mixed with a medium of molten beeswax and damar resin,
applied to a rigid substrate, and fused with heat. The encaustic medium
appeals to me on many sensory levels, but because I naturally gravitate
towards mixed media, I am primarily drawn to its compatibility with
techniques and elements from other disciplines, such as digital art,
drawing, printmaking, collage, and fiber art.
When I work with encaustic I am often compelled to create imagery akin
to the natural world, most likely due to the organic nature of the
medium. I particularly like to juxtapose organic or biomorphic forms
with geometric shapes or patterns to create a unique space— sometimes
lively, sometimes meditative in nature. I am directly influenced by the
seasons, the weather, occurrences in the natural world, and the
abstract forms of the landscape. The fluidity of molten wax can be
suggestive of water, or the first spring thaw, which I find to be a
delightful paradox considering that wax immediately hardens when
separated from its heat source, becoming impervious to moisture.
My interest in art history has run parallel to my development as an
artist, and I am deeply influenced by art traditions of other cultures
and eras. My current body of work reveals my fascination with Asian and
Tantric motifs and compositional devices. Much of my creative problem
solving revolves around finding a balance of these influences within a
contemporary framework and mindset.
Rugolo, E. (2012) Artist Resume. Concept Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Retrieved from: http://www.eliserugolo.com/resume.html
I became interested in this artist through the various materials chosen in Rugolo's practice. highlighted above in her resume, I see a similarity through my practice as I too place together contrasting effects of both biomorphic forms and geometric shapes. What I love most about these painting is the compositions and colour, they emphasis a deliberate pattern, although there are subtle changes as the materiality of paint seeps across the line, creating furry edges, which softens the overall look.
Defenester, (2001)presents a visual
vortex of depth and space, as the title preserves symbolic meaning to describea window. This may suggest that the
painting acts as a translucent or transparent opening into the world. The
artwork engenders the possibility of open interpretation, inclining a hiccup in
perception when viewing the abstracted painting. The materiality emerges
through many layers that were applied, and then erased, emerging an image and
then declining the appearance. The painting almost hovers in front of itself
between the viewer and the canvas, activating a relationship between the two. This
conflict played out within the canvas, wrestles familiarity out of the frame.
The viewer’s interpretation only leads the mind to chaos.
"Von Heyl draws with colour. Shapes that appear to overlap are, on close inspection, made from deepening the colour's value or carefully abutting different coloured shapes. Only sometimes is the painting tool a brush and gravity is a regular contributor to composing the image."
Kaneda, S. (2009) After I was asked to do the mural. New York: Frieze Magazine.
This quote that is taken out of a frieze article, gives me vision for the materials I am working with and how different pigments will associate with each other. Working with a similar process of butting together both geometric and fluid forms creates an unbalance as the light organic form looks as though it is weight down. Gravity is another way of operating the material of water paint, when I leave the paintings to dry the paper can fold and bend through the process of drying and the water colour creates a spill down the paper which operated like a drip as through it was suppose to be there.
Heyls process is like a tug of war between total isolation and reliance on what has come before is at the core of her practice. She proceeds to bury them in a vigorous two way process of destruction and creation in order to find that elusive thing, the 'new.' I see my process a lot alike Heyl's as it is through this destruction and creation that my desired forms emerge from the surface. I have now learned to embrace failure with a new coat of paint.
" The spatial leaps false starts and abrupt changes of direction or mood in these paintings create a sense of questioning and instability that keeps the view alert."
I find this quote useful when making my own work as I see myself as both the painter and the viewer, I want the viewer to engage with the work as a similar way I do, standing up close so that your cloths almost brush the painting, the painting will start to become clearer when you gaze at the accumulated marks or pencil and incision cuts, or stepping back the works creates optical movement.
"The paintings become not so much a fight against outside elements as an elaborate and entertaining dance with the elements within."
I see Von Heyls work not as an optical shift but as a layering or mix process', that causes an unpredictable outcome, a transformation as you have to spend time with the work to draw out the layers from underneath to try to visualise what the artist was thinking when making.
Von Heyl states in an interview with BOMB magazine in 2010 that her "paintings are often aggressively distant, through the refusing to play together with the beholder; they rather play with themselves in this self - satisfied way".
I see this as a process of emergence as Jan Verwoert states: Emergence is a process of becoming where a material can reveal itself through a process of folding and unfolding on the surface of the canvas. I see Von Heyl's work in a similar way it is not just through the making, it is also through the viewing that these contingencies occur. "I don't want to make the painting, I want the painting to invent itself and surprise me.
Saskia Leeks work is of interest to me for her composition, colour and form.
Leek’s playful questioning of the conventions of representation and
notions of what constitutes “good” painting. Working in oils on a small
scale on board, the artist is interested in producing works enhanced by
a raw and modest quality. The shifting meanings that one encounters
from Saskia Leek’s paintings can range from the clichéd to the
fantastic and the eerie. Her sourcing of subject matter from amateur
found art works and unfashionable outdated second-hand prints creates a
sense of both kitsch sentimentality and nostalgic melancholy.
The matt colours create a subtly while the yellow consumes our attention. The colours in the painting above create depth and 3.D dimensional space. The forms are organic while still containing hard edged geometric shapes. The compostional is arranged in away where forms create a cluster, they hover in space, yet contained by the rectangle surrounding it.
This is what I am constantly forced to think about in my own practice, how the picture is contained, why a rectangle? questions that arise in my head become resolved through an intuitive process of making. I think though different layers I can try many different compositions, yet I always try to off set the viewer, creating a sort of wobble in perception.
