Post 32 - September Seminar
Works
Various compositions 1-6
rabbit skin glue and pigment on linen
fig.1
Everything I know about Red
everything I know about red
Oil, oil stick, gouache, printers ink on primed canvas
2023
I have continued to develop my ideas around what I think about painting – what I think it should be versus what it becomes. For me, the works are a paint-based enquiry into the nature of colour and light.
I start from observing nature and end intuitively.
In “Various Compsitions 1-6”, fig 1, I have been using offcuts of linen, priming them and using different mediums to create layers of colour. These are experimental pieces, originally intended as collage works but then continued as compositions. I liked the colour of the linen acting as a mid-tone, but also have found the contrast with white primed canvas as seen in the larger works create a different mood, and helps to project the light forward.
I draw on the Abstract Expressionist ‘impulse’: to paint without cynicism, to prepare, create and express, being autodidactic, and affective. I am also informed by the post-Impressionists from the 19th Century, specifically the Nabis Group (Vuillard, Bonnard, et al.), specifically how they regarded space, decorative qualities and experiments with memory.
This leads to my interest in other artists working today who have been similarly influenced, such as Peter Doig, Jennifer Packer, Cecily Brown, but whilst these examples include the figure I am trying to leave this out of my current paintings, and see what it is that I can enjoy with the space this leaves me.
I have been encouraged to look at local female artists, and have learnt about their work and how it might relate to mine. Milli Jannides, Ahn Tran, Nicola Farquhar and Emma McIntyre, are all artists who are responding in various ways and degrees to the American Abstract expressionism, and Modernist pasts of Impressionism, Expressionism and Symbolism.
Ann Tran draws on the history of Western postwar painting, including American Abstract Expressionism and 1980’s German abstractionism, but says she approaches these Western Styles carefully, with the lens of imperialist and colonial understanding.
On a personal note I can see that these eras are loaded with the idea of ‘patriarchal’ mastery, and as I have a tendency to feel overwhelmed with a reverence for past ‘masters’ this can prevent me finding my own voice. I like the way Tran acknowledges the work of say De Kooning or Hoffman in this work and others, yet ‘pushes back’ with her own response.
Milli Jannides reaches for her images through the memories of other paintings, which is something I am definitely understanding that I do and wish to harness in a more concrete way. Jannides seems to have a surrealist impulse that appeals to me specifically with the work often beginning with a quote or passage from literature. This is something I have used in the past with Janet Frames stories, and want to do again with The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Jannides also works with memory and connecting landscape to emotions. She deals with the language of ‘inner worlds’. I have now seen 2 exhibitions of her work at the McLeavey Gallery in Wellington 2022, and Coastal Signs Gallery Auckland 2023 and have reflected on her essay Thinking Out Loud.1 Jannides describes “searching for the major and minor ways our interior, psychological states are made present in the physical worlds we occupy.”
The ideas that drive my painting forward currently, are exploring the hypnagogic (the ‘in-between’ state just before falling asleep), which I can achieve through listening to music while I paint, past and current colour theory, drawing from life, en plein air specifically. I aim for somatic experiences, mind and body integrated, and I have been researching anthroposophist, spiritualist and surrealists techniques such as automatic drawing, as well as the idea of ‘thought forms’, what images of emotions look like in our heads. For example see below with Annie Besants ‘Thought Forms”
Annie Besant “Thought Forms”
Found studio Objects include a pile of tiles discarded in the recycling outside my studio, and although much smaller than my paintings they are about the same proportion as the larger paintings. I have started to quickly paint an image once I have first mixed my palette and create an image on a tile. This seems to work in much the same way as jotting down thoughts ‘without thinking’ as a way to warm up towards a creative endeavour.
Tile Paintings/thought forms
My process is becoming more self-determined through a series of guidelines I have written for myself to follow with regards to the canvas size and preparation etc. I assemble ‘found’ studio ephemera, old work and drawings, discarded supports. I collage, prep for larger canvas sizes, re-use drawings and mix larger quantities of paint. I have tried to be more relaxed and natural in my gestural movements and not always push for completion. I am experimenting with materials I have, but have never used, such as beeswax, shellac, rabbit skin glue, printers ink.
This has created a sense of tension between the colours, contrast and harmony struggle to compete and I am freer to be more experimental. The ‘body feeling’ versus the ‘head thinking’.
These then feed into the larger paintings in a remembered way rather than self consciously copying a smaller drawing.
Sally Barron wip
oil on canvas 1800 x 1650 mm
2023
Sally Barron wip
oil on canvas 1800 x 1650 mm
2023
I am building a collection of smaller studies that also feed into the larger works, as well as framing parts of my ‘experiments’ with large cardboard viewfinders to isolate areas that are working well and try to analyse and recreate some these.
With this way of working I am reminded of the quote Jasper Johns: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” 2
footnotes
Artnow.nz Milli Jannides Aug04 2023 Thinking Out Loud, On the development of ‘Hothouse’ at Coastal Signs
The Long Read by Barbara Rose pub. 7th September 2017 RA Magazine
Sally Barron wip 2023
oil on unprimed linen 300 x 200 mm
