some thoughts on the edge of painting, or maybe on the side of painting, a casual sideways glance at some things i have been working on.
edges of some some paintings i have been working on [stacked]on the side of painting suggests support or encouragement, to keep going. on the edge of painting is the doubt or hesitation before starting a painting, or the anxiety about not painting, or whether it really is a 'painting' - but i will try not to get too hung up about it.
more sides or edges of paintingsa page from a recent sketchbook, from around february-march 2014.
these sketches remind me of my older stuff, way back, before the internet, back in the day when we weren't encouraged to check out what every other artist was doing every hour of every day. life seemed so simple back then.i was toying with the idea of creating relief constructions, but in the end i used the square as a building block. there is a sort of push-pull tension between holding it together [containment] and it all falling apart [collapse].curiously, i have also written [alongside the sketches] that "these [inserted 'manly'] discussions on abstraction are getting nowhere because they can't let go of the 'machismo' ego in the act of creation" - not sure what was i thinking - is some abstract painting an act of male bravado, showing off?here is one 'painting' in progress on my studio trestle table. i think i have a title for this one: shedshack.
this piece has texture, or textural incidents and juxtapositions - it's not really a painting. incidentally, i have makeshift shelving constructed from old housebricks and scaffold planks, and around the place are bits of bark or driftwood, crushed or corroded bits of metal, pebbles and the like. i like things that are tactile, that you can pick up and feel, as much as look at.i am interested in the objective 'craft' element of minimalism and how it [usually] rejects narrative, representation or emotional content, at least from the perspective of its making. afterwards, i guess it's anyone's guess - the precision and clarity of minimalism gives joy to many. [by interested in i mean intrigued, curious - what are we/they really thinking?]here is a quote from a young Frank Stella (aged 31), a painter best known for his constructed 'paintings', where perspective, shape and form are real elements, not illusional:"My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he's doing. He is making a thing."[A New Cut in Art, LIFE magazine, 19 January 1968]Hey Stella!
[Frank Stella in his studio, circa 1967]
lost in translation
it took me twenty four hours [well, three days] to finally decide on a title for this piece… which translates timewise as eight hours per word, or one hundred and two minutes per letter, four hours per vowel, three hours per consonant.titling art [paintings] can be a tricky and solitary task - well, if i could say it in words...i also had to write some other words to go with the title words. i thought about it all day on sunday. some thoughts completely take over your headspace, the more you try to refine them the less sense they seem to make. incorrigible.a weekend lost in my own world of translation. wordblock. grasping at floating fragments of thoughts, ideas, words, sounds, meanings, coaxing them out of retreat, trying to make them perfect...the 'show & tell' with Artworks was helpful, and always fascinating and exciting to see what the other artists have done. it was suggested i read some Pablo Neruda poetry, which subsequently got me thinking about the issues in reading poems in translation.i found this archived article, The Poetry of Neruda [october 1974] on The New York Review of Books website an interesting read....Para que tú me oigasmis palabrasse adelgazan a vecescomo las huellas de las gaviotas en las playas.So that you will hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.*that's the beginning of the poem Para que tú me oigas [So that You Will Hear Me] by Pablo Neruda, translation by W S Merwin in 'Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair' [Penguin Classics 2004]* interestingly, Google Translate translated it as this:For you to hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.
the waves
i've been reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf (a vintage Penguin paperback). it's weird how books seem to find me at certain times, they just turn up (or i happen to be more receptive to them), i never go out intentionally to buy them… by all accounts, this is one of Woolf's most accomplished and complex works of fiction, although it's not really a novel, but a slowly unravelling, rambling prose on the passage of life.there are some beautiful descriptions of everyday things and clever turns of phrase, stream-of-consciousness thoughts, acute sensory experiences, all the wonder, anxiety, hope, doubt - all human feelings and responses, really… the use of language is very poetic, rhythmic and performative, and Woolf at the time referred to it as a play-poem.
i am finding it quite difficult to differentiate between the characters' 'voices' [or Woolf's voices], their thoughts and interactions with others (a group of six friends as they pass through life from childhood to old age, together and apart). the punctuation and paragraph structure is quite confusing, and i lose a sense of 'place' and narrative continuity, to the extent that i want to mark their passages with highlighter pens. it was never going to be easy...perhaps this is an intentional paradox or conflict in the book, that true life never runs smooth, there are always situations and events, conversations or encounters, that will change things...