WHAT?
I made the decision to work in water mixable oil paints for this Part and to learn about their properties and nature, and wanted my assignment work to reflect this.
I re-read Woolf, V. (1925) Mrs Dalloway right at the start of this Part, and was struck by this passage: “The hall of the house was cool as a vault. Mrs. Dalloway raised her hand to her eyes, and, as the maid shut the door to, and she heard the swish of Lucy’s skirts, she felt like a nun who has left the world and feels fold round her the familiar veils and the response to old devotions. The cook whistled in the kitchen. She heard the click of the typewriter. It was her life, and, bending her head over the hall table, she bowed beneath the influence, felt blessed and purified…”.
I began by intending to show my house in this spirit. However I found that, each time I chose an image to paint it was of the garden or the exterior of the house – and I believe that’s because I’m not actually loving my house much just at the moment – it’s all upside down, furniture out of place, full of builders, gasmen, carers, physiotherapists, plumbers, hospital beds, wheelchairs and commodes….so my art has shown me that, in fact, I feel the exact opposite to Mrs Dalloway about my own environment.
SO WHAT?
So, the images are all of the garden and exterior. I have experimented with various techniques using the water-mixable oils (see other blog posts in this assignment section) and have selected all except for the first, the eucalyptus, which I felt turned out to be unattractive to look at and tonally uninteresting.
Having selected my paintings, I turned to James Putnam’s Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium (2nd edition, 2009, London: Thames & Hudson). I was drawn to the Wunderkammer idea (pages 10-12) and in particular the curation of the following (in this order):
- Louise Lawler (Pollock and Tureen, 1984) – page 98
- Joao Penalva (The Ormsson Collection, 1997) – page 89
- Nikolaus Lang (To the Gotte Brothers and Sisters, 1973/4) – page 83
- Mark Dion Cabinet of Curiosities for the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1997) – page 74
I decided to curate my paintings on bookshelves, much in the style of Mark Dion, surrounded by other objects which bore no particular relation to them.
I played about with the arrangement, going for a fairly cluttered effect so that the viewer almost “happened” upon the paintings in the course of exploring the whole image. I have left the piles of books still tied up in string as an indication of the continuing disorder in the house – I’ve deliberately gone for a higgledy-piggledy effect to reflect the state of the house (not to mention my mental state in trying to deal with it all).
NOW WHAT?
- I learned a lot about using water-mixable oils through this Part:
- How to get to grips with the possibilities and limitations of the particular colours I have by making colour cards
- How to build up very dilute layers (learned as a possibility from my tutor)
- Impasto is not as easy as it looks
- Filberts are my current favourite brushes
- Oil does not get on well with PVA glue (even though water-mixable)
- I have experimented with the use of gesso as part of a painting (which I learned from Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis) and would like to develop this further.
- I have tried hard to improve my colour choices, working with limited palettes and with somewhat muted colours with pops of bright pure colour (as learned from, amongst others, Sickert) and more subtle use of complementaries.
- I enjoyed considering the curation of my work, researching all the possibilities and making my mini-Wunderkammer, which greatly suited my “collecting” nature. I have not particularly thought before about making paintings that go together (except when making series) and it has been beneficial to be asked to consider that.
Finally, I have learned about self-analysis via painting; what the organising brain wants to do is not always the way the creative heart decides to go. Not quite sure why I was surprised by this, but I was.
Sue J's blog 