I want to apologize in advance for the dreadful formatting in this post. I am a bit of a techno idiot and have spent hours trying to line everything up and get the font right but despite my best efforts Blogger doesn't like me today.
Progress Report
I decided to
do a masters in fine art after meeting Ian Calder from UKZN at my exhibition ‘Body Vessel Archetype’ at artSPACE Durban in 2012.
This
exhibition consisted of paintings and ceramic vessels and tried to reflect my
interest in the relationship between body and psyche, body and soul. The vessel
symbolising the body. The body as the physical Vessel for the soul in this
Lifetime. The Soul, it could be argued, being at the core of the Psyche. The
journey of the body/vessel/psyche through life and the slow revealing of the
true Self, the Soul, through Life’s challenges. The connection between the
physical, mental, psychological, emotional and the spiritual. Furthermore the connection between us as
Individuals and the Collective. (The
concept of us all being linked not just to other humans but to the rest of the
Animal Kingdom and Nature as a whole.)
Here is a
quote I found and used at the exhibition. It seemed to sum up so much of what I was wanting to say.
"Each of us starts out a watertight vessel. And these things happen
- these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get
them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack
open in places . . . Once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable .
. . But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and
when we finally fall apart. And it is only in that time that we can see one
another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others
through theirs."- John Green- Paper Towns
I decided to
take these ideas further during my time as a masters student, the first year
culminating in an exhibition entitled Personal Myth, Collective Dream. Below is
the artist statement for the exhibition:
Personal
Myth, Collective Dream (2014)
Joseph Campbell talks of personal myths as dreams and collective dreams
as myths.
Each of us has a personal myth
that shows itself to us through our dreams. It further reveals itself through
the patterns in our lives, choices we make, stories we are drawn to and images
we work with. Our myth impacts our everyday lives and influences who we are and
how we behave.
When we become aware of our mythology, both on a personal and a
collective level, through a journey into the psyche we gain the opportunity of
facing and changing our story. Each part of the journey brings us a step closer
to Individuation which, in Jungian terms, is a transforming process where the
personal and collective unconscious are integrated into consciousness.
One of the ways this journey is being explored is through my artwork.
The theme of the forest in my oil paintings represents that journey into
the psyche, an unknown environment in which the adventure takes place. In order
to capture the atmosphere of the forests I have focused on mark making and tone
using ‘Grisaille’ (grey scale) allowing forms to emerge from the tones and the
marks.
Hermes, in ancient Greece, was the mythological messenger of the gods
and god of transition and boundaries. He features in my work as a guide on my
journey into the myth in the form of winged shoes and feet.
My childhood love of Pollock’s Miniature Theatres inspired my three
dimensional theatres and two dimensional etchings. Each construction embodies
one of the ‘rooms in my mythological house’. In analytical psychology the house
represents the psyche. The sets; story, decor, characters and images symbolize
aspects of my psyche that I am endeavouring to become aware of, accept and
befriend. There is also something metaphorical about ‘The Theatre of Life’ and
acting out the scenes.
Think of all the legends, myths and faerie stories where one finds a
house in the forest and the guide that, in various forms, helps the protagonist
to find a way out. These narratives link us all past and present- all part of
the Collective memory.
This journey is ongoing.
This exhibition felt like a natural half way point for my masters. From
experience and knowledge of my tendencies, it was important to give myself that
self imposed deadline as I can easily spend my time endlessly trying new things
and a focus like this reigns me in and forces me to focus.
Below outlines the creative journey leading up to this exhibition and
describes the process that followed and continues now, with the aim of
completing my masters at the end of this year.
Ceramics
I started off by taking the
images, ideas and techniques in my sketch book and translating them into a 3D
prototype cardboard house. I then started reproducing what I
had done in cardboard into porcelain.
I liked the results however I was now concerned with the fact that this
mythical house that I was exploring with Estelle Hudson using active imagination and using as inspiration had many rooms. Not just one. I therefore
needed to find a way of creating a ceramic house with many rooms. I had
decided on porcelain rather than other clays because of the fine work the
material lends itself to and the translucent quality of the clay. As beautiful
unglazed as glazed, with a depth to it rather like when one looks at skin and
gets a sense of its depth and translucency. And after all in looking into the
psyche I am looking metaphorically speaking beneath the skin.
I was inspired at this stage by images of stacked rooms/flats and
started building my own stacked house out of cardboard boxes. Although I liked
some of the combinations of images I wasn’t very impressed with the piece in general. It looked
rather like a kindergarten project.
.
In the meantime I started experimenting with different surface
applications on porcelain samples to get layered image effects. This is a theme
that repeats itself often in my work, layering images. Life is complex and
there are always many hidden layers to people, emotions, motives, concepts,
philosophies, conversations, dreams, myths, and so on. Sometimes something
shows through from beneath.
I was happy with these samples and confident that I could get a
combination of layered textures, patterns, images and colour all working together
but the issue needing to be resolved was the form; How to build a house full of
rooms in porcelain. I moved into making some open rooms with three walls and a
black and white tiled floor; A recurrent feature in my dreams. I liked these
rooms to a point but the walls were very prone to warping and the pieces didn’t
feel complete. I also liked the idea of how these would look stacked but it all seemed rather precarious.
I then came up with the idea
of making miniature theatres. As a child I used to make miniature Pollock Theatres and they really fired my imagination.
For the exhibition I decided to work on some wooden prototypes. Getting
the concepts and imagery right at this stage and then using them to inspire the
art work on the porcelain theatres.
I have made three porcelain theatres so far but
again they are very prone to warping and cracking. I have yet to draw all the
images on with oxides and glaze them but in general they are attractive pieces
and look complete form wise.
The next step will be to perfect the theatres. For
this I will probably have to make the walls, the front, the base and the scene
changes etc separately by cutting out slabs of the right size and shape, adding
onto each the oxide images, glazes and textures and joining them together after
firing. Working on these individual slabs will make it easier to perfect the
artwork on each piece before assembling the final theatre. As they currently
are the erected walls make it hard to get the imagery as I want it and
therefore the art making in and on the theatres is not up to standard.
As well as the theatres, I have been making porcelain winged shoes.
The
winged shoes as mentioned before allude to the role Hermes plays in this particular journey.
In ancient Greek mythology, he moved freely between the realms of mortals and gods, of the consciousness and the unconscious and is therefore a good guide to have when exploring ones' dreams. He features in my work in
the form of winged shoes and feet. And in keeping with the theme of the
theatre, the shoes are themselves theatrical.
Inspiration: Lee Kavaljian. Grayson Perry and the Victoria and Albert
museum ceramic galleries. Kiki Smith has also been a great inspiration with her
mixed media. Kiki ‘is a leading figure among artists addressing the human
condition, the body, and the realms of spirituality and nature in work spanning
mediums from sculpture and printmaking to installation and textiles.’ http://www.pacegallery.com/artists/442/kiki-smith
Throughout my ceramics, as with my paintings, you will also be able to
see my love of textiles and pattern.
Painting
My painting has taken up most of my creative energy recently with some real highs and lows. Doing representational paintings doesn't pose the biggest challenge for me but moving away from 'reproducing the subject matter' towards a painting that relies on aspects that are not so much seen but felt and intuited is a far harder task for me. I am no longer aiming to produce purely representational work. One of the challenges here is to know what to do and when to stop. Looking to myself for the answers rather than to the reference. Not something I find easy.
The
forest paintings that I did for my last exhibition were tonal paintings, with
colour coming through from underneath instead of on top, with a great emphasis
on mark making and a degree of layering in the form of silk screen printing on
to the canvas before painting allowing the silk screened theatre image to come
through in areas. This was an exercise in tone for me spurred on by Ian after he'd seen a rather dodgy painting of a colourful fig tree I had done and brought in to show him. He had pointed to an area of the painting I had worked on the least, in fact barely at all, and declared that this was his favourite bit of the painting. He then suggested I tried some purely tonal painting...
The forests represented the journey into the unknown, into the psyche and as
such weren’t supposed to be pretty pictures. They were supposed to be pensive and just a little uncomfortable. Well executed but with a strong
emphasis on creating the right atmosphere. On the surface they were representational
but with far more to them. In the forest one finds the mythical house.
The next
series of paintings are going to be very different. I am moving out of the
forest into the house.
Each painting is going to be an interior with figures
and other elements that have the same layered, dream like quality as the photograph
collages I produced for the last exhibition. Each painting could
therefore not only be seen as a part of a room in my mythological house but also, tying
in the theme of the theatre, a scene in a play.
Also until now I have been too focused on trying to
work out the meaning of the images and setting which rather held me back as I
was not allowing the images in the painting process to come up spontaneously
and was therefore rather stuck in the theory and battling to move into the
practical.
Trui
Rooseveld Van Der Ven, a local Durban artist was very inspirational. She just
painted her dreams, just allowing the images to emerge and not focusing, before
or during the painting process, on why and what. So I’m letting go of the
theory at this stage and just painting and allowing the images to emerge.
Trusting that like in a dream, when painting, the psyche knows what images to
use. Later I will sit with Estelle and
discuss any meaning. There was also an element of playfulness in Trui’s work
which spoke to me as I can be very serious and pedantic about my work.
Other artists that I find particularly inspirational
at the moment are, amongst others, Tiffen Python and Sol Halabi
The elements
of a painting that I am aiming to achieve include:
A very conscious focus on each mark
that I make. If a mark or combination of marks can be beautiful then I want to
create beautiful marks with a good balance; large, small, soft, sharp, short,
long, thick, thin, wide, tapered etc. Ones that say what I want them to say
without being too obvious. Ones that look spontaneous. Not too laboured. I suppose this comes with practice.
Having
said this, I also want to give chance a role. So as well as the very conscious
marks I also want to have areas of the painting that happen by chance. When I
work with paper I spend hours creating interesting surfaces, textures, patterns
and images combined on different types of paper. I rip the papers up into pieces then
randomly pick pieces from different piles and place them together. This allows
for chance to play a role and if I’m lucky I get beautiful and unexpected
elements playing together that I could never have consciously come up with
myself. When I worked with canvas off the frame for my exhibition ‘Adornment in
Borderland’ I applied the same principle.
I would apply layers of colour, sand
the canvas down exposing colours underneath. I would stitch and rip and create
piles of beautiful pieces of coloured, textured and patterned canvas that I
would then stitch together before painting something on top.(As mentioned above,
I am a great lover of textiles, pattern and layering. Matisse is one of my
favourites although I apply my use of textiles and pattern to my work in a very
different way and can only ever dream of being able to use colour the way he
did).
As mentioned earlier, layering is a theme that repeats
itself often in my work. Life is complex and there are always many hidden
layers to people, emotions, motives, concepts, philosophies, conversations,
dreams, myths, and so on. Sometimes something shows through from beneath. To
play around with different ways of adding layers of images onto a painting
which will probably result in going too far in some cases and ruining the
painting. Which has happened. But I suppose we learn the most from our mistakes
and knowing when to stop.
To risk
going too far. Here is a painting strongly influenced by Sol Halabi. A self
portrait in a forest. There were elements I liked but I just could not get it
to gel together. Probably among the reasons is that I was using a classical
approach for the figure against a highly colourful, patterned background. I
pushed it too far trying to get the elements to work together and ended up
painting over it. Learned a lot though.
An understanding of colour which
includes a use of it that is at one time subtle and yet deep, rich and unexpected.
To make the most of different types of
paint e.g. opaque and translucent and techniques such as glazing and scumbling
to bring out the most in the paints/colours. Something yet to be fully explored
is that I love colour and playing with it but am still unsure whether my
tendency to use a more subtle palette is erring on the side of caution out of
uncertainty or whether my palette is naturally more muted.
A balance
of quiet and busy areas. A challenge for me to allow quieter areas. I panic and
want to fill them with something.
Applying basic
classical compositional rules to the painting without being too obvious but
also playing with throwing the composition out a little with, again, something
unexpected.
When adding the more representational aspects to the paintings to
continue with the specific kind of light that I like in my work which is more
dramatic and chiaroscuro like if you will.
To create a dream like environment
and feeling in my paintings using the elements I have talked about above that
evokes a sense of something beyond and has the viewer wondering. Below are sections of some works in
progress.
Into this environment to add images,
figures and objects that have come up in the active imagination work I have been doing with Estelle. It is also important for the painting to speak
to others and to allow for the viewer’s own interpretation and perhaps projection.
I am currently painting figures classically starting
with grisaille, then adding layers of scumbling and glazing to get the same layers
of colour in one area that skin seems to have. Below are some sections of works in progress.
I may well not stick to the classical approach
as I also enjoy the looser mark making colourful approach to portrait painting and
painting in general but feel that my future work would benefit from some time
focusing on form through grisaille and exploring the use of many thin layers of
colour.
So this is a
summary of where I am currently and gives some ideas and direction for the
coming months. I’m sure I haven’t covered everything. As mentioned earlier the
aim is to complete my masters at the end of the year and take my ideas further once it is completed.
For this post masters phase I would like to move away
from my personal psyche, my personal mythical house and journey and towards the
collective psyche.
