Studio activity / Tutorial with IB

 

  

I brought some previous work and a couple of new peices into the studio to discuss with the intention of a review and reset going forward.  The 2 crows are studies based on adding Morrigan to the Venus compositions.

• I've themed work on the studio walls -akin to how I curated the Interim exhibition last semester
• I feel that the work around the Veiled Venus - is exploring the artist's intentions and transcriptions.  In my mind it's about female complicity, patriotic social norms and forced sexuality and domesticity and agree with IB that it is restrictive; 
• The new painting is a composition -which I've found difficult because I like to work from a firm reference, and there's a lot of imagined or estimated elements that read like an illustrtion. 
• I know which bits I've enjoyed ( the experimental marks and scribbles) but not the rest or the outcome although i'm still playing with it.
• Work on the other wall, links to domesticity in relation to nature and the witch and i have more freedom to expore the themes 
• I raised that I do not enjoy painting a set idea - a subconscious (although I'm conscious of it but can't shake it) methodology kicks in where i plan the substrate, composition and each step of the process and i don't enjoy it and tend to hate the process and the outcome. 
• Sketchy paintings like the crows above are much more enjoyable but i feel that I don't create as much work recently because i need to know the purpase before i can set about starting. What is the context? - what does it do?
• IB - I can take lots of elements and put them in the same image without composition - instead i can construct - which takes you on a journey of workings out. The constructedness is apparent - you get a sense of how it works and what it does. Suggested cutting section out of board to mount an image inside or using canvas that is supported at the back to prevent sagging. 
• IB - Sketchy paintings are a language - look at Marlene Dumas - they're a working out that is more satisfying than a resolution - you can enjoy the place where things are starting to form - What is being formed?  It connects in a different way, if its not complete it can be invested in- more interesting to see something that someone is resolving.

Paper - I explained that I was interested in the Veiled Venus as an act of transcription and this will be helpful in relation to studio works in terms of transcribing photographs into paint.

IB: explained that in order to transcribe a photograph into paint - there has to be something that exists with CHANGE; A copy, with change into another form.  It has to be something that destabalises the original See Glen Brown/Gavin Turk. (Changes from familiar artworks) 

A (familiar) photo> change the person > paint - doesn't have to be a familiar photo but there needs to be something curious 

Spoke about the works that are engaging to IB: The edges and suggestions. The painting of the boy that looks like its documented and you can see a background to the painted photo but the edges are unclear.

IB personally prefers this to the sketchy lines that feel illustrative and don't read in the same way/ reminiscent of a different thing.  Sketchy Morrigans venus also reads slightly as fantasy art but draws in, in a different way too.