Notes from sketchbook - September 17

I've been keeping an artwork diary... something of the tonne of different ideas that go through my head while I'm working and notes of stuff I've seen & read. I've been working on several different artworks but the Improbable Structures are the most problematic, deliberately so, and therefore more interesting to me.

10.9 "White paper performing as both foreground + background in some of them, which needs fixing. In 'Homes for Some - Summer in Glass Houses' & 'Summer Camp' the white (paper) is frame and it's quite effective when the darkness (which is pushed back) creeps onto the frame. Lost some of that with the frameless ones. Orange (might call it Helicopter??) needs more, and currently working on the clearing.

Auerbach and Uglow drawings. Destruction of surface / texture and erasure.

Terry Greene's Just Another Painter blog.

Occurs to me that I'm breaking down elements of a painting into different layers of action. First colour, then texture, then illusion of form with b&w charcoal / chalk / paint. First layer(s) are textural, abstract, the second layer architectural elevations. I ignore obvious paths to form new lines. The 3rd layer is form, imaginative, illusory.

Making art and sharing art are entirely different actions and involve different brain processes. This is SO obvious.

Playing with perspective and hidden. Got a comment from Kev, when I showed him the Peter Doig painting of Briey, that I've got a layers and hidden things in my work too. He put one palm in front of him and then another a hand's width behind it - beyond the surface. Happy with that.

26.9
Meeting at Telford, a foggy start but drove back down the M6 noticing the turning foliage almost matched the orange of the TMS signs. Mossy green and pale cerulean sky. Motorway lamps cascading into the distance. Very banal and very beautiful at the same time. Autumn sun on the side of the office building where my meeting was.

A couple of recent sketchbook pages:

The Clearing walks, farts and scampers off into the distance. 

Thoughts on new work

Note: from earlier in the year - possibly March. I should really do these things in order. ;-)

To recollect some possibly useful thoughts while I was painting last week.

I rearranged my tree forms work and I can see four main threads of work. One I'm concentrating on and at least three well-hidden tangents! So that was quite a useful exercise.

Thread one: my main one, is abstracting the tree forms which has made three pieces of larger work all around the theme of the first signs of spring. The trunks and branches are really dark blues, browns and purples, then there are little flashes of oddly shaped green. I think the shapes are key and colours second. So I think I need to set up a few canvases and have a go at making a set in watercolour / ink / acrylics.

Thread two: is sort of a zoomed out version of the above, and I'm going to abandon it because it's too much about the shape of the tree, too obvious and sort of too easy to get a satisfactory image from, which sounds silly, but means I'm not learning anything from it.

Thread three: has a looser, wider brushstroke and turns the tree forms pretty much unrecognisable, pretty much into landscapes and I feel I can work into them with pen / pencil without having to conform to the original sketch - which I'm doing with thread one. So I'll keep hold of that one.

Thread four: sort of a cheat because it's from a different trip, is more surreal, more of a doodle in ink. I like this but I haven't worked out a way, yet, of harnessing it into something I can sustain and make understandable/communicate. It's definitely 'mine' but it's also a bit weird, which is how many of my doodles turn out. However, I can see interesting abstract forms emerging and perhaps combined with the colours I've identified could form something else...

Oh, and another boats in the city at night painting emerged by itself the other day. I think it's a memory of London. I tend to forget that it's a city on water, but many times I've worked there in the last ten years have been in buildings next to water; quays or canals.

Final year Fine Art & Contemporary Cultures BAhons #2

Week 1

First day on the course included having to make a presentation (eek!) and have a feast (yay!). This is a photo of the feast to bear evidence of everyone's generosity in bringing food.

The presentation was about our influences and likes. Titled 5x5, we had to choose 5 songs, 5 books, 5 artists, 5 materials, 5 films. Not everyone presented back but those who did made it interesting and we all did it differently. Mine was a drawing & a list, but there were also sketchbooks, diagrams, a wonderful video and a filled up day pack.

I'm the only part-time course member at this level so my experience will be a bit different to the others. I suspect I will experience the whole, but in a drawn out way, and I hope to agree with my tutors in thinking part-time is a good deal because you get very similar access to studio and facilities, although tutor time is more spread out, as are the assessments. And that may be a good thing, as this week we were introduced to our learning goals regarding practical work, and also got to discuss initial proposals for the critical thinking dissertation (dun dun der) or case study (aura of slight bewilderment now thankfully dispersed) which is the option I've picked. I will come back to that one.

Final year Fine Art & Contemporary Cultures BAhons #1

Notes on picking up where I left off. Aka 'Why choose to do a degree here'.

I hope to achieve two things with this blog. Firstly I want to document my progression through the last year of my Fine Art & Contemporary Cultures BA Hons degree with the hope that diarising my experience will feed into other writing and understanding of what I'm trying to achieve with my work.

Secondly, I want to document my study at Warwickshire College, Leamington Spa campus to give people thinking about becoming a student here a clearer idea about what it's like.

My connection with the Fine Art & Contemporary Cultures course began in 2007 when I did the first 2 years (level 4 & 5) full time to achieve a diploma. I regretted not studying my passion straight out of school, instead I let myself to be talked into what my family considered to be a more employable option. When I was given the opportunity to fulfil my dream of studying art at this level I leapt at the chance. I fully participated in and enjoyed my two years at Leamington College.

Back then the dipHE course at Leamington was affiliated with Birmingham Institute of Art & Design at St Margaret's School of Art, where one more year's study would have given me my degree. I found the transition to the institute very difficult. I found the travel too much, the tutorial times too inflexible to mix with work, I failed to 'gel' with my tutor. I missed my old studio space and the tutors at Leamington, and moreover I couldn't find myself at home in the dark, untouchable spaces within Margaret St. I was making architectural intervention with electrical tape at the time and found myself at odds with the institution's need to preserve the fabric of the building. So I gave it 4 months, tried out a few things but didn't learn much, then dropped out with relief. So when I found out from another artist that Leamington was now able to offer a final degree year I jumped at the opportunity.

There is a question over choosing to study Higher Education at a college because they sit at the bottom of the educational hierarchy. However, as a former student here, and one who has experienced studying at a much larger university (3 yrs at Wolverhampton University straight after 6th form studying History of Art, English and Media & Communications) I can say that there are some clear advantages, and disadvantages.

I've already mentioned some of the reasons I failed to find study satisfactory at a larger, metropolitan college; time to travel, lack of dedicated studio space, inflexibility of tutorials because the sheer number of students a tutor has to get through makes it impossible to get through everyone. I think Leamington has a max. 30 students over all three year groups, including part-time students. At a larger art colleges only final year undergraduates generally get much of a tutor's time, but such small numbers give greater access to the tutor expertise, and they are all working artists. Visiting artists also have time to get round most students. Alongside division of available studio space into larger portions per undergraduate, greater apportioning of tuition is, I believe, a great advantage.

Definitely there are advantages to a larger course, and I believe that some miss the stimulus of other students around them, and although I don't particularly now, I am sure I would have if I was younger. Here I was glad to see that there was a good mix of students ages. In 2007 it was roughly half and half (I was in the older half at 35), and all the younger ones had left early for a variety of reasons which changed the dynamic of the course.

However, having a famous art college on your CV is undeniably helpful. The need to stand out of the throng is greater on large courses and probably drives ambition. You can get swept along with outstanding groups of developing artists, and there is more likelihood of influential persons and collectors turning up the the your end-of-term show simply because they get to see more in one place.

Despite the comparative obscurity of colleges such successes happen here too, particularly when a student takes marketing themselves into their own hands and reaches out further than the confines of their course. What has become clearer to me is that an art career is what you make it whatever background you happen to have.

My next blog will be more about my art over the first few weeks of the course. With photos, hopefully.

Links.
Warwickshire college, Royal Leamington Spa College website
https://www.wcg.ac.uk/page/93/royal-leamington-spa-college