To be honest I’m getting a bit sick of it. It’s not such fun – I haven’t been getting the proportions of pigment to washing up liquid to water right.
Anyway I’ve been doing some more experimenting over the very hot Bank Holiday weekend:
I discovered a new way of blowing in Instagram – the bubbles look more like eyeballs to me but I like the technique of dropping some liquid on the paper and then blowing with a straw so that it disperses in thin lines.
I like the white space in the first image. There are some good areas but the dark colour is too dark in places – I should avoid using the froth!. Also The green didn’t turn out as expected and my ratios were all wrong. I Like the second one and also the third one although I’m debating whether it is too much.
I have been experimenting on oil paper as I would like to try on a canvas and I want to experiment with putting thin glazes of oil paint on top.
I’m not sure about these, or whether I prefer the previous set. I think that I need to sit with them for a while. I thought the first one was too bright (maybe because I’ve been in monochrome for so long) and so I tried knocking it back with a dark grey, wiping out areas to bring back some lightness. I like that they are still open – I see cells, someone else might see a flower bed with hydrangeas.
One thing that I would really like to do is experiment with 3 dimensionality. I’ve always resisted being constrained by the canvas and usually go off it – what if there was something coming out of it; out at you – maybe keeping you away or possibly making you part of the work? I was thinking if I had a number of canvases (3 is always a good number) I could connect them with something like an umbilical cord ( thinking back to siblings and microchimerism).
I came across a recipe for stiffening material on Facebook using cornflour, sugar, water and PVA glue. It should have been white sugar presumably so you can’t see it when it’s dry. I only had golden caster. I tried it on a ribbon and some wool. It’s not that great. I think I’ll look at wire and organza instead.
It’s tempting to run away with ideas of further education – I’ve enjoyed this course so much and the research paper helped to explain a lot of things to me and gave me clarity in my practice. It is something that I would like to explore at a deeper level but is now or the imminent future the right time to think about it?
Aside from the commitment of time and the issue of funding, I think that rather than rushing out and trying to find a replacement for the course, I need to learn to practise and function in its absence. I need to focus on continuing to build sustainability into my practice in how, when and where I make. That’s not to say that there isn’t any space for personal development – there is and, as I mentioned to Jonathan in my last tutorial, I would like to improve my skills in a number of areas in terms of photography and film-making, and there are also some printing processes that I would like to explore. I will, of course, continue broadening my knowledge by reading and visiting exhibitions. But for now, it’s sorting out the physical location, carrying on implementing flexible time management (which seems to be working quite well at the moment), and thinking about issues such as building a website and maintaining my Instagram aacount.
I’m also going to carry on submitting work to open calls – since being on the course I have carried on my tradition of applying to the RA’s Summer Exhibition, unsuccessfully. I don’t think that I actually had any aspiration of being accepted; it was more a case of wanting to keep experiencing the feeling of rejection to make me resilient. I used to feel deflated but now I don’t really feel anything anymore, except perhaps regret at paying the submission fee. The only success I’ve had is with ING Discerning Eye last year, but even that had its own issues.
I started this post a while ago. The act of going through all of my blog posts for the book and making the 5-minute video has encouraged me to think about the journey that I’ve been on. Sometimes I have so many thoughts in my head that I need to put them into words so that I can get some clarity and order. So, here goes…
I started this course thinking that I was an oil painter who enjoyed working with colour and shape. I’ve been looking back at the work that I was making two years ago. This is an example:
It still appeals to me – I like a narrative. It was made in response to the brief, ‘On Having an Outside’. I like a painting inside a painting, inside a painting and so on, and the use of a mirror, a play on Magritte’s ‘Not To Be Reproduced’. I thought about it a lot – the idea that we wear masks but in this case what you see on my mask is a reflection of you and how you feel about yourself which you then project onto me. It expresses how I felt at the time. I still like looking at it, but it does feel contrived, controlled, and static even though it depicts me turning to look at the viewer. I didn’t enjoy making it. I had a very fixed idea in mind as an end goal and so the process of making it was restrictive and frustrating. I kept at it until it was how I wanted it to be, what I thought was the best that it could be. It was all about the product and I was driven by my controlling perfectionist self. I haven’t painted very much at all over the last two years. I’m wondering why. Maybe I should?
These are screenshots of some of my recent Instagram posts:
I look at these images and I like what I see, but most importantly I remember how I felt when I made them. I felt free, unencumbered, excited, and intrigued. Interestingly, they are predominantly monochrome, exploring mark-making and movement.
I’ve been wondering what to do. When clothes don’t fit me I sell them or take them to a charity shop. What should I do when my work no longer fits me? Treat it like a photograph of a younger self maybe, a reminder of where I’ve come from?
The last two years have revealed many things to me:
I am happiest in the process
I am at my most productive and enjoy making the most whilst in the process and without a defined end product in mind. One of my mantras used to be that without intention there can be no expectation. I think that was useful in the early days to keep my focus on process, but I’m not sure that it’s strictly true because I experiment and explore with intention. Furthermore, the making of the book is a very intentional act with an end product in mind, but the specifics of how it looks have developed in the process. I think that the difference is that the book itself is not important save to the extent that it is documenting my process and the making of it has allowed me to develop further, as well as to reflect on the last two years.
I don’t need to be in control
Embracing the process has allowed me to give up control and it is now the foundation of my practice. It has helped me better understand myself and has changed me. It has allowed me to see that there is a direct correlation between my behaviour in making and my behaviour in life. It has taught me that in moments of personal overwhelm such as becoming a parent and caring for my mother my instinctive reaction was to try and exert control over circumstances. This behaviour fed through into my making. By allowing myself to give up control by experimentation in making, I now realise that I can deal with uncertainty in life and rather than trying to control it, I should lean into it.
I don’t have to makewhat I like or like what I make
Just because I love to look at Surrealism, works heavy with narrative or full of colour does not mean that is the kind of art that I should be making. Viewing and making are two entirely separate experiences. Because I am privileging process over product I may not always like what I make – what is most important is what I experience in the process. Just recently, I have been working more with video and I’ve realised that this actually gives me a means of exploring narrative.
The meaning of my work is in the process
As in the example above, I used to start out trying to make work that already had meaning. Now, the meaning comes out through the process of making, and the finished piece embodies it in some way. That doesn’t mean that I begin without any direction—I often still start with a line of enquiry or an idea—but it isn’t fixed. It stays open, changing and developing as I work.
I can embrace both the accidental and the incidental
I now feel more comfortable with accepting responsibility for the accidental within the process, and I actively look for the incidental and often go off on a tangent.
I want to be able to choose whatever process or material seems right in the moment
I don’t want to restrict or pigeonhole myself. I refuse to attach a label to myself either as an artist or as a person. I want to be able to choose whatever process or material is right in the moment. I don’t want to limit my ability to experiment or to discover new languages of expression. I live and I make.
I need some soft structure
I think that there are two distinct areas of my practice – the experimental side which is exciting, uncertain and can be overwhelming, and the side which is more of a structured wandering, for example, repetitive mark-making. I’ve commented previously that the act of drawing line after, or even now more recently, stitch after stitch makes me feel contented – it’s as if there is just enough structure to provide a frame for my attention yet loose enough to allow for response. I’ve also been using motifs such as contour lines, automatic drawing, my father’s silhouette etc. throughout the course, and it is really only recently that I understand why that is a feature of my practice. I have accepted that I can never rid myself of the perfectionist self and the soft structure provided by the repetition keeps that part of myself happy.
And my Study Statement?
Since the first year I have thought from time to time that I need to change and update my Study Statement because I’ve wandered off course. In it I was very specific about how I was going to approach things. I had an end product in mind (what a surprise!). Instead of exploring all of the different roles that I’ve had in my life, complying with my detailed workplan and finding out who I am, I naturally deviated from my plan and later made the conscious decision to embark on a dérive contemplating those things which seemed important or of value. To have amended it would be to remove the evidence of my progress and my process. I’m not the person I was back then – I am becoming and the prescriptive framework of the Study Statement would have limited that becoming. Thinking about it even some of the categories on this blog are irrelevant.
Whilst scrolling I came across suminagashi – a form of marbling using floating inks. I was drawn to how the effects are reminiscent of contour lines. I was transfixed watching the process and decided to have a go.
Well, it didn’t go well. The ink wouldn’t float, so I tried thinning it, changing from hard to softened water, even trying distilled. Then when it did float, when I removed the paper from the surface the ink ran everywhere. I tried different papers – watercolour, Ho-sho etc. The most successful turned out to be printer paper. After all that, I decided that perhaps it’s not for me and I’m not too sure about the results either. I might leave it a while and return to it.
But whilst everything was going wrong, I videoed and photographed. That was much more interesting; watching the ink in the water.
I’ve decided to experiment with using the contour image in Procreate as a layer.
I was looking through some old family photos and found this one of my father in Canada. This is a recurring image from my childhood – if there was an edge or a high place, my father would always go and stand on it despite us pleading with him not to. I think he would have been about 40 years old when this was taken. I took him on the London Eye when he was in his 70s and I don’t think he looked out at the view once, choosing to spend the entire time sitting on the central seat, ashen-faced.
I also found this photo of a signpost.
I played around with layering using filters, inverting and adjusting opacity:
The image above is tonally bland; I prefer the one below. I like how the lined contouring gives the effect of the image being woven or embroidered.
Again, the images above don’t have enough tonal range. I don’t think the contouring adds anything, it’s probably more of a distraction.
A mixed bag of results. I prefer the images which don’t crop off the bottom of the sign post. The most successful is probably the penultimate image, but again I think it needs a greater tonal range. However, I do like the effect of the figures against the landscape, the idea of crossroads in life, decisions made, a different path followed and shadow selves.
I was interested to see Jo Love’s remediation of old black and white photos using metallic pencils, in our session a couple of weeks ago. Photographic images quite often form the basis of my work. I decided to experiment with gold and silver pencils on some old unsuccessful cyanotypes I made from the video stills in In A Flash. The results were varied.
I used the silver pencil first but thought that it didn’t stand out enough. On reflection I think there is a subtlety about it which I like, and perhaps it would have been a better choice than the gold.
I’m not particularly drawn to any of them, but if I had to make a choice I prefer the last two images, particularly the last one. What works for me are the marks outside of the original image, the sunlike shape on the left and the drifting cloud on the top right. The overdrawing creates an image within an image, something which always appeals to me. I think part of the problem is the fact that the images are on watercolour paper which wasn’t overly receptive of the pencil. Overdrawing does appeal to me as a concept, though.
In preparation for this week’s mark-making session with Jo Boddy, I dusted off my charcoal box. I haven’t used charcoal for quite a while.
During the session we were instructed to make marks and to think about the context of our practice whilst doing it. We were then paired up and gave each other instructions as to how to make further marks with a view to giving up control, something that I’ve been exploring myself recently. I was instructed to keep my charcoal on the paper and to vary the pressure. We then folded and creased our paper, again taking instructions for a second round of folding – fold an edge as if wrapping a present. This reminded me of our workshop with Christian Azolan in last year’s Low Res – I love how folding and unfolded adds a different dimension, creates shadows, particularly where I had torn the page from my sketchbook.
We took photographs of our piece and uploaded it to the miro board, giving it a title, taking it in turns to talk about it with the rest of the group. I called mine ‘Process’ because it evidenced my process – you can see where I exerted different pressure as I made my marks, how where I folded the paper the charcoal was smudged by my finger and the charcoal left a ghostly print on the opposite part of the paper.
The process felt totally comfortable.
After the session, I carried on doing some more mark-making.
I really enjoy using the charcoal on its side, moving it up and down and rotating it on itself. I used a thick stick as well as a thin stick of willow charcoal. Because I was able to press down harder on the thicker stick I managed to achieve a greater range of tone.
The one above reminds me of coastal cliffs.
I then got the plastic eraser out.
I really like the one above. It feels really dynamic. I really like the effect of using the eraser perpendicularly to horizontal lines of varying thicknesses. Doing it alternately, reminds me of Bakewell tarts or Missoni.
Moving away from organic shapes for a moment, and developing the sense of overlapping circles in my husband’s outline, I decided to try something more geometric.
I also experimented with different combinations of broken and solid lines to create a different effect, and I left some areas blank. Overall I was really pleased with this. On reflection I think that’s it true to say there’s only been one out of all the images that I’ve produced that I’m not that keen on (at the end of this post), which is unusual for me.
I wanted to try and move things forward so that it didn’t become a merely stylistic treatment – something decorative or a pattern. So, I applied it to some previous motifs – contours and figures.
I really like the effect created using the contour lines. Some parts feel almost three dimensional. My system of working was a bit more regimented this time – I used a variety of different pen widths, using the same width and drawing in the same direction for each of the separate contours. It creates something quite textural, almost woven.
At first I wasn’t quite sure about the figures – I didn’t think that it added very much. Also, originally the three figures were solid black and were very prominent, which I wasn’t sure about so I changed them to gold – I think it gives them more of an absent quality. The more I look at it, the more happy I am with it. I used the thickest pen (0.8mm) in the foreground down to 0.1 – 0.05mm on the figures in the background. The choice of direction was made in the moment.
Next, I decided to try lines and I used the same pen throughout (0.8mm). I incorporated a collage element in some of the sections – cut outs from some contour work – which I think creates an effective contrast. There’s a strong sense of something having been folded, creating numerous different planes – almost like origami. The collages areas remind me of chipboard.
I then combined straight lines and circles using different widths of pens. I wanted to create something a bit more complex than the image above so I drew more lines and left some areas blank. I also made a conscious decision to go off the page. I think that the inclusion of circles and blank areas is effective but I think using different pens means that it doesn’t have as much presence as the image above – it’s more subtle – is that good? Is that bad? I’m not sure at the moment. I’ve been making these A2 images one after the other within quite a short space of time and I think that I need to give them some space, and come back to them in the cold light of day.
I wanted to experiment further with circles, but not in a uniform way.
Again, I used different pen widths and made a conscious decision to go off the page (which is the norm for me as I don’t like to be restricted – but here I am filling in shapes with nothing but lines…). Yet again, I’m pleased with it, and I particularly like the tumbling section – there’s a sense of movement. But I’m starting to think of parquet flooring for some reason.
I went back to the more organic form incorporating some more linear elements.
This time I used the same width of pen throughout but included some areas with broken lines as well as black gouache. I think this has caused it to be a more stylised image reminiscent of my original ‘doodles’. I think that I’ve gone backwards.
And then the wheels fell off, when I realised that I hadn’t thought about using different widths of pen, but keeping the lines in the same direction. I used a series of overlapping circles and filled in the sections within each circle in the same direction.
They might have a sense of movement but that’s about it. After making 11 A2 drawings in as many days, I’ve come to the end of the road, for now. Time to move on.
Moving forward I will further explore the giving up of control by enlisting some friends who don’t make art and someone I don’t know at all (how weird that relinquishing control is what we explored with Jo Boddy in this week’s session – I’m taking it as a sign). Otherwise I need to think about how I can progress what I have made so far. I’m thinking about layers, and perhaps cut outs revealing layers below. Stitching? Nails, pins and threads to map?
I didn’t expect to enjoy the Edward Burra exhibition at Tate Britain. His earlier works of figures in bars and cafés in France and the US were interesting, but I was particularly intrigued by his work during the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and his later work. He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a young boy, and during the war his medication was subject to rationing which meant that not only was he isolated from his friends, but he was also in pain for most of the time.
He mostly drew from memory, and used watercolour to build up layers. They were extraordinary. They had the solidity of oil paintings, and yet had a remarkable quality of luminescence about them.
As he got older, and couldn’t travel abroad because of his failing health, he went on road trips with his sister, often accompanied by friends. When they stopped to enjoy the views he would just look, later recreating the scene months later in his work.
I then went round the Lee Miller retrospective which has around 250 photographic images on display. Originally a Vogue model, she moved from being in front of the camera to being behind it, working closely and experimenting with Man Ray in Paris. During the Second World War she was a war correspondent for British Vogue taking photographs of the Blitz, the liberation of Paris and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
I hadn’t really been aware of Lee Miller before I went to see the film Lee, in which Kate Winslet plays her. At the end of the film, you see a selection of some of her most famous photographs including the one of her bathing in Hitler’s bath taken by her colleague, David E Scherman, as well as the scenes she witnessed at Buchenwald and Dachau, the mud of which is still on her boots which she has purposefully placed in front of the bath. Seeing them in the flesh, in a small side room, was incredibly moving. Not surprisingly, photography was not permitted in this part of the exhibition.
British Vogue was reluctant to publish her photos of the concentration camps, on the basis that people wanted to move on from the war, and whilst they published a few, American Vogue published a comprehensive spread of them in the June 1945 issue, including the most harrowing, under the title ‘Believe It’. Her work, particularly her war photography, was not widely known about until after her death when her son found her collection of photographs. She had given up photography, too traumatised by what she had experienced during the war, and taken up gourmet cooking.
I finished off the day by having a look around the general exhibition and came across the subject of one of my favourite Fake or Fortune episodes (other than Frink’s Warrior found at an Essex car boot sale), Emma Soyer’s Two Children with a Book.
I had my second session with Janet yesterday to discuss the my current draft research paper.
It was a relief. I’ve been battling for a lot of the summer, mainly in my head, trying to get to grips with how I could incorporate all the aspects which I’m interested in, trying to find something to latch on to. I’ve been doubting whether there is anything there at all, whether it is actually saying anything, so it was a relief to hear Janet’s feedback.
Her general view is that I’m doing well, and that she found it really interesting. She can see that it is immensely valuable for my own practice – it is, and the process itself, irrespective of the end result, has opened up other areas of exploration. I reflected that when we last met, I was thinking in general terms about selfhood, mapping and memory and that I’ve have been struggling to find a direction to go in. Since then the common thread of ontogenesis has made me think about it in terms of practice : how can an artist capture something which is forever changing particularly when the very processes being used to do it are themselves in a state of flux? She commented that this gives a contextual understanding which is important in art; there is an intensity about art, something to do with the resistance in it, resisting the chaos by ordering the thinking and the work. There’s a need to be able to perceive the depth of the attempt of trying. When an artist makes work there has to be some kind of structure, but that the use of thought is poetic.
She commented that the draft is comprehensive and well researched, and that the themes are coherent. She particularly liked the conclusion. The draft navigates complex ideas in an accessible way, although I need to refine and tighten the argumentative flow. In particular, the conclusion should ordinarily consolidate the argument rather than reopening it, but she actually likes how it reopens it.
She thought that the Dylan quote as a way in was effective, but that I need to define what I mean by ‘ontogenesis’ – it is a motif word which needs to be shaped from the beginning. I could look towards biology, developmental psychology or even etymology.
We then went through the draft in detail – see Research Paper page.
I came away feeling a lot more positive and reinvigorated than I did before the session – I would even say that I had been feeling anxious about it.
Kate McCalmont-Woods 