Wow, time is flying! Onwards! Progress! has its private view on Friday (25th November 2011) at Milgi Warehouse on Northcote lane. The past few weeks has been running between the studio and the warehouse trying to get everything organised and leaving everyone with as little stress as possible. If you’re in and around the Cardiff area, come along, it would be great to see a lot of faces!
Adrian Ghenie is a Romanian painter whose work is dynamic and maintains a strong progressive narrative. Ghenie has a strong fascination with European history which is addressed through his ideas relating to memory, trauma and extremism in the twentieth century. Ghenie seems to suggest that history and memory are never fixed, but rather in flux.
see more of his work here.
This is a new painting I started yesterday. I have done another painting in between this one and the last black one I did but it’s not quite ready to photograph yet. This painting is currently being layered up. Again it’s a predominantly black painting but constantly trying to find new ways to deal with this subject matter. I’ve had a bit of a turbulent few weeks regarding my work, but its had a positive impact. Constantly searching, constantly fighting to improve.
Sort of did the blogging the wrong way around. This week I’m mostly tired. Seven day weeks are starting to take a hold of my ability to get up early. I will make a more in depth post this evening about the past week or so. I am attending an exhibition opening at Howard Gardens this evening 6-8pm. Titled ‘Two Sculptors’ I believe. It looks incredible.
‘Keep Clear…’ is nearly at an end. The varnish dried enough for me to put the text on and add some of the highlights to the snow and bring out the texture of the bottom half of the painting. There is still more glazing to do, but the white is far too wet, and being the longest colour to dry it will have to be left alone over the weekend. I’m really pleased with how this one has turned out on many levels. I’ve learnt a lot about my technique and developed some others that are completely new to me. I feel like it may turn into a small collection.
Poor quality photo, not helped by the strip lighting in the studio. This is how the painting was left yesterday (3rd November). I put in more of the fox and snow detail at the bottom of the painting, and added two glazes to the triangle areas. The bottom triangle is using a medium thickness glaze, and because of the ochre tint has made the many layers of coloured blacks turn slightly green, which is an unexpected but well received accident. The top triangle has a smooth glaze over the top, which is treacle like in texture. Again the glaze has given the blacks a greenish hue. Today I’ll be adjusting the snow with white glazes and highlighting the fox a little and then adding in the text. Aim is to be finished by today. Possible potential to start my other canvas too, or catch some life drawing.
Having deemed the last painting ‘finished’, I’ve started working on a new collage. The collage consists of two mainly black photographs so in essence I’m creating an almost all black painting. Initially I thought that this would be a simple task, of course, that was completely wrong. This endeavour has turned out to be far more complex than I imaged, and also much more fun. It’s been quite liberating being able to build up layers of colour washes, scratching and rubbing into them and then smearing old thick paint on top and rubbing or scratching into that. Most of my paintings in the past have been incredibly precise and require finesse - probably more so because of my desperate need to be a perfectionist. But in this painting I’ve become a lot more careless about the dribbling of the paint, or representing exactly what is there in the photograph and become more about representing texture and surface. I’ll post a further picture of how the image was left last night.
On Thursday (27th October), I took a trip to London with my university. The bus left (not so promptly) at around 8am, we each received our free entry tickets to the Degas show at the Royal Academy for our allotted time and finally arrived, after a slight mis-hap at 12pm. The Degas show was the second exhibition I looked at, after Ian Davenport in a gallery on Cork Street. The Degas show was expectedly busy, filled with young and old, british and foreign art goers, itching to see the beautiful ballet paintings and sketches hung from the surrounding walls. It was incredibly beautiful, though slightly crowded for my liking, there was a air of wonder as everyone gazed into the canvas’ and papers presenting the beautifully tactile ballerinas. For me, the sketches were the most spectacular. I have an unusual liking for sketches, I feel they are the images that hold the most emotion, between that of the dancer and the artist trying to capture her stance whilst she is in motion. The menial mistakes Degas made, and then corrected visible for all to see. I felt comforted that he seemed to struggle with feet in his sketches too, one of my many life drawing flaws. The exhibition also contained some of Degas sculptures of ballerinas, and some of E. Muybridge photographs - which were equally fascinating. This exhibition is in the Royal Academy until January 2012.
From there I headed back to Cork Street and caught Robert Motherwell’s exhibition. Cork Street is truly wonderful to those who love visiting exhibitions, so many beautiful galleries next door to one another makes for good convenience. I met Bob and we headed to Frith Street to look at Marlene Dumas’ exhibition. Her exhibition in Frith Street Gallery is a display of mostly monochrome works of her response to the Crucifixion. She has homed in on the isolation, loneliness and strong feeling of melancholy whilst Christ is facing his death, crying out “My Father, why art thou forsaken me?” - this moment in darkness has been represented through the monochromatic palette and emptiness of detail. In between a few of the pieces, Dumas has placed small portraits of the late Amy Winehouse, at first this feels strange but soon becomes a reminder of the reality of these emotions, and no matter what our stance on religion is, these feelings of isolation and loss of hope are something we will or have all experienced during our lifetime. I am not aware whether these paintings of Winehouse were created after her death, but none the less, the choice to display them amongst such a iconic image of Jesus makes a statement about the work whether the viewer finds it agreeable or not.
Next was Roy Arden back towards Cork Street. A humorous exhibition consisting mainly of collage and photomontage. Here Arden depicts a time during the industrial revolution and the disregard for homosexuals during this time. The exhibition also features some of his video and sculptural art which is a real treasure to see. I’d prompt anyone to visit this.
And finally, a trip to the V&A to see the Post-Modernist exhibition. For those of you that are students it is worth the £8 to see this fun filled exhibition. It consists of many artists from across the spectrum and I could talk forever about the wonderful layout. Though word of warning, you may need some sunglasses when you come out. The exhibition in the main is dark and filled with neon signs.
I completely ran out of time to visit Richter, so I’ll be heading back in a couple of weeks just to spend the day at the Tate.
So, I’ve currently deemed this painting finished. I’m not entirely sure if it is. More so on the white huts, I wonder if they need to be more detailed, to echo the realistic quality of the promenade and the parking lot. However, making that decision now could be crucial. So it’s sat amongst the canvas’ whilst I paint another.
The past week was spent writing my dissertation draft. It felt never ending and exhausted me so much so that I couldn’t paint or even draw. 4000 words and a hand in receipt later, I’m finally back in the studio painting. Where I am supposed to be.
The past two days have been spent concentrating on my dissertation. The four thousand word draft hand in is just a week away, and I for one want to ensure my work is as profound as possible. I’m currently writing the end of my daily word count on Picasso’s Blue Period. Some of my favourite Picasso paintings come from this time between 1901-04 so thought I would reflect my appreciation for the melencholic works on here.
‘The Old Guitarist”
1903
oil on canvas.
The National Gallery are doing a ‘Titian and Body Language’ life drawing class this Friday (21st October 2011). This is where I wish I studied in London. I’m hoping to attend either the Degas or Rubens life drawing class over the next couple of weeks. If you have access to these, I suggest you attend!
Yesterday was filled with organisation and positive vibes. In the morning I had a tutorial with James Green (artist). His reaction to my work and my progressive ideas was more than positive, and his feedback and developments towards those ideas were exciting and going down a completely different path to anything I could have thought of. Following from that, I organised a meeting for the exhibition myself and Bob Gelsthorpe are setting up. We selected 8 artists from our year whose work we feel is diverse, interesting and would work well together as part of an exhibition. Then we organised our exhibition timeline outlining everything we have to organise and plan. Following on from that, we sent the artists an email informing them of our plan in the hope they will respond well and get on board. The rest of the afternoon was spent buried beneath these books, doing yet more reading for my dissertation. I hit my daily word target around 7.30 and attempted to paint for an hour or two! This didn’t come off as great as expected, my brain was starved by the big D and my patience was increasingly slim! I still manage to achieve a small goal! All in all quite a positive day, and nearly 12 hrs spent in university definitely makes for good progress.
