Entanglements - dance performance

This is from a performance that was done in June 2009 at Archway Gallery. Jhon Stronks created a dance in conversation with my paintings.

Reflection 1

These are some of the sketches I've done since last class. I've realized in doing these exercises and previous work in the class that my tension when confronted with the "blank paper" eases if I don't worry about where to start, if I use any part as the point of entry: the nose, the lips, the eyes, the contour of the face. Also, I feel freer now about appreciating the self-portrait sketches for what they are, rather than looking for the likeness in them. It'd be nice if I could sketch a face rapidly and have it look like the model, but this may be too premature or may never happen. The most important insight to me so far has been realizing that beautiful and ugly are such imaginary and interchangeable concepts, as drawings that were supposed to represent beauty, ended up being less original, less strong, than those that were supposed to be less attractive.

July 29, 2009

Materials

Hi everybody - I hope you are all inspired with materials to bring to meeting tomorrow. I thouhgt it will be helpful also to make a list of things to consider as materials -

Family photographs, news photographs, other photographs you like, photos of spaces you go through during your everyday rutine, magazines, newspapaers, drawings/paintings/other work you made and would like to incorporate into something bigger, small objects in the places you live/work/spend time in, prints from books, texts that influence you, materials from work, also - glue, dirt, sand, food. images from movies and tv..

Look around you - what will you add?

quick art 21s

these are quick videos about artists from the art 21 series:

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

a couple minutes from the documentary Donna posted about

Big Show Slide Show

This is one of my photo collages which is in the Big Show at Lawndale Art Center. Its title is Piano Parts: The Mechanics of Love. It's 12" x 12".

The Big Slide Show is this Wednesday and Thursday at 6:00. Artists in the show will have 5 minutes to talk about their work. I'll be speaking Wednesday night. Everyone is invited.

donna e perkins

I'm posting the image I brought to class.

This evening I watched a documentary Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. Of course she is a photographer, but I found it very interesting to be thinking about portraits and watching this. It's available through Netflix.

Francis Bacon on accidents

This is part of an interview with Francis Bacon by Davis Sylvester, from "Interviews With Francis Bacon" by Davis Sylvester

FB I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I tend to destroy all the better paintings.
DS Can you never get it back once it’s gone over the top?
FB Not now, and less and less. As the way I work is totally, now, accidental, and becomes more and more accidental, and doesn’t seem to behave, as it were, unless it is accidental, how can I recreate an accident? It’s almost an impossible thing to do.
DS But you might get another accident on the same canvas.
FB One might get another accident, bit it would never be quite the same. This is the thing that can probably happen only in oil paint, because it is so subtle that one tone, one piece of paint, that moves one thing into another completely chances the implications of the image.
DS you wouldn’t get back what you’d lost but you might get something else. Why, then, do you tend to destroy rather than work on? Why do you prefer to begin again on another canvas?
FB Because sometimes it disappears completely and the canvas becomes completely clogged, and there’s too much paint on it – just a technical thing, too much paint, and one just can’t go on.
DS Is it because of the particular texture of the paint?
FB I work between thick and thin paint. Parts of it are very thin and parts of it are very thick. And it just becomes clogged, and then you start to put on illustrational paint.
DS What makes you do that?
FB Can you analyze the difference, in fact, between paint which conveys directly and paint which conveys through illustration? This is a very, very difficult problem to put into words. It is something to do with instinct. It’s a very close and difficult thing to know why some paint comes across directly onto the nervous system and other paint tells you a story in a long diatribe through the brain.
DS Have you managed to paint any pictures in which you did go on and the paint got thick and you still pulled them through?
FB I have, yes. There was one early one of head against curtains…
DS But you don’t often manage to work on a painting as long as that?
FB No. But now I find I can work more on paintings. And I hope to be able to have the first instinctive kind of basic thing and then to be able to be able to work on almost directly, as though one was painting a new picture. I’ve been trying to work that way recently. And I think there are all sorts of possibilities in working directly first and then afterwards bringing this thing that has happened by accident to a much further point by will.

If this is helpful for you - check out the audio recording of Bacon on the element of chance in his work in this page on the BBC website.

Self Portraiture Intro for Blog