Ideas, Plans and Practice
Some thoughts after our zoom meeting:
The outline was:
What’s your Cannon? Investigation of the what, why, how and the ‘so what?’ surrounding practice.
The session was fun and also a but daunting. A sense of vulnerability as you show your art and lay it all out there. The way I work if not necessarily the way I see myself working moving forward. I have a feeling that my methods will alter over the next two years.
It was fascinating to see the work of other students. I love that everyone is so different and I look forward to see how their work will evolve. I know that the input, critique and validation from fellow students will hone and prove very valuable as we go along.
This week’s discussion has definitely broadened and challenged my thinking in relation to my practice. I enjoyed the feedback everyone gave after I showed some of my work. I might have come across as a bit critical towards my realistic style of working. Lisa challenged me by asking why I would want to change the style that comes natural to me. That is certainly a question I have often asked myself. I find a looser style inspiring and even abstract work and I have tried to bring together a style that has elements of abstraction (in my mark making), looser brushwork together with areas that are more realistic. Even though I have perfectionistic tendencies, I don’t like perfection. I feel it represents life better when things are imperfect. I do however like representing people, emotions and scenarios that others can relate to and connect with. An element of abstraction might grow and be used more in my practice in the near future.
Another discussion that arose after I showed my work to the group was beauty vs serious work… Someone commented on my work as beautiful and almost apologised after doing so. She asked if it was ok to refer to my work as beautiful and does it take away from it perhaps also being serious? It was a discussion that we still have to continue in the future. Personally I believe that it is for the artist to decide what will take priority – whether if be that the work is visually pleasing or whether it is expressing what it needed to express, or both. To me the emphasis needs to me more on the artwork expressing what the artist intended to express than on a ’pretty/beautiful picture’.
Carol mentioned the artist, Cindy Sherman because my work made her think of Identity as a theme. I enjoyed looking at her work after the zoom session and I find them very thought provoking. My work finds inspiration in my role as mother and the many ’hats’ that I wear in order to fulfill that role successfully as well as to keep my sense of self in tact. Who am I in the midst of the busyness of parenthood… I would like to give this more thought together with the influence of Cindy Sherman. I enjoy how she challenges and cause you to question the stereotype that society ’tried’ to mold us into as mothers.
Here are the work’s that I talked about during out session. It was only in preparing for this session that I realised that most of my work tend to show a figure in the midst of deep thought and focussed on something, whether if be a thought or an object.
During the rest of our session we touched on New-Materialism as a more recent art movement and we were introduced to some artist that contribute to this movement. I particularly liked the work of Marcel Dzama for the honesty and non-pretentious qualities of his work. His ‘automatic drawings’ intrigues me. After having a look at some of these drawings, I can’t help but desire the liberating feeling he must have while doing them. Allowing the chaos of a page filled with of drawing puzzling with the next in free flow of thought or emotion. I would like to try this in the next couple of days and will add it to this post later.