This semester was a time of further
developing my ideas from last semester and experimenting with many new
techniques and materials. The subject of my work, my children, has remained the
same; however, I have spent the semester working on many new ways to help
express my ideas for how I want my relationship with my children to be seen by
the viewer. While my primary medium continues to be oil, I have, with the
guidance of my mentor, spent much time experimenting with new mediums, work
surfaces and techniques for applying the paint. I followed several of the
suggestions that I received during this past residency, but also chose which
suggestions to ignore in order to get my work to where I want it to be. Overall, I am very pleased with the direction
that my work took over this semester and I feel that I am much closer to my
goals.
At the very start of the semester I
knew that the biggest changes I needed to make were with the space around my
figures and the surface I was working on. Changing the surface was the easy
part. I switched from working on canvas to working on wood panel, which I have
found to be far more durable and it allows for much more freedom with sizes. As
for the background, I was told by numerous people at the residency that the
backgrounds of my paintings were very empty and uninteresting. I needed to stop
simply filling up the extra space with a series of uniform marks and instead
get just as interested in the background spaces as I am with the figures. I
quickly made the decision that in order to do this I needed to step back, away
from the figures, and focus more energy and attention to the surrounding space.
This is why, for my first painting, I jumped into a large vertical piece in which
my children would become just very small, undefined figures further back in the
picture plane. I did not want to completely eliminate my children from the
picture, but just make the surrounding scene equally as important. I had the
idea for what I wanted the final product to look like; however during my first
attempt I struggled with making the space appear visually interesting through
mark-making. I had a great deal going on in the background and also a great
deal of depth, but my mark-making remained similar throughout the painting.
Up until last semester I had always
painted with only brushes and stuck with the same medium. Last semester my
mentor encouraged me to use the palette knife and then that became my primary
method of getting paint on the canvas. During my first mentor meeting this
semester, my new mentor, Jim Peters, introduced me to so many more mediums and
techniques that really helped me with my first painting and each painting after
that. I was very fortunate this semester to be able to work with someone who
will use just about any method in existence to get paint on the surface. He
introduced me to several new mediums and glosses, as well as glazing techniques.
He also shared my love of black and helped me find ways to use black without
deadening the space. I feel that my paintings are now much more visually
interesting due to the variety of ways I apply the paint. I am now using more
than one medium, brushes, palette knives of different sizes, charcoal, and rags
for glazing and wiping in each of my paintings. I feel that this variety also
helps add to the feeling of chaos that I am trying to achieve through my work
and it adds the level of energy that I needed in order to keep the spaces
surrounding the figures interesting.
Besides helping me with varying my
painting techniques, my mentor also helped with creating believable spaces and
figures within those spaces. My paintings this semester were mostly done either
from life or from memory, which is the case with most of the images of my
children. I would previously work from a photo or collaged group of photos, so
this was a big change for me. I have also been working with interior spaces,
which is again something very new to me. In many of my paintings this semester
I would purposely exaggerate the space in order to show what I wanted. However,
with my exaggerations sometimes I would lose essential parts of the space. A
few times over the semester I would show my mentor an in-progress painting and
he would help me rework the painting so that it would feel as though the viewer
could actually step into the space, despite the exaggerations. It is amazing
how sometimes just the slightest angle adjustment can change the feel of the
entire space. His advice was extremely helpful for all of the technical issues
that I was previously struggling with.
At this past residency I had a few
larger paintings and several small paintings. Over the semester I chose to do
the opposite. While I do have a few small paintings, most of my paintings are
larger than the paintings I brought to the residency. I received mixed feedback
about these different sizes, but it came down to what I decided that I prefer.
Little paintings may be good to help generate ideas or to show a close-up of some
of the traces left behind by my children, but overall I prefer to work large. A
few of my paintings this semester have been as large as 2’x4’. I believe that
one of the main reasons people were encouraging me to work smaller was because
my smaller paintings had less empty, uninteresting spaces. This was of course
due to the need to fit everything into such a small space. However, as said
before, I believe that I have now solved that problem by ensuring that there is
just as much attention put into the background as the figures.
As with last semester, I have been purposely
avoiding making my painting appear too realistic. I would rather my figures and
the surrounding spaces be slightly abstracted. This semester my figures have
actually become more abstracted, as they become part of the scene and not the
central focus of the painting. I have been intentionally leaving out details
that would identify the figures as specific people. Although I am painting my
children, and to me these are paintings of my children, I want them to appear
more generalized to the viewer so that they could be of any child. Since my
goal for my work is to discuss the mother and child, or parent and child
relationship, I do not want it to be strictly about my own relationship with my
children. That is why I have spent this semester painting everyday scenes of
children in interior spaces that would be familiar to most parents. Again, in
order to accomplish this goal, the scene in the background became so much more
important in getting my ideas across. My goal was to create paintings that
showed the chaos of motherhood, which was is something I began toughing on this
last semester but up until now it was not something that came across easily to
the viewers.
I looked at the work of many
different artists this semester but a few of them stand out as being the most
helpful. Some were helpful in terms of ideas and other in terms of techniques.
Two of the artists whose ideas I found the most helpful were Mary Kelly and
Jenny Saville. Both of these artists are mothers who are dealing with the same
ideas about motherhood that I am dealing with through my work. Neither of their
work is very similar to my work in terms of style, but both of them are able to
show a realistic and un-idealized version of motherhood. Just a few of the
other artists who I looked at the semester included Marlene Dumas, Philip
Guston, Wilhelm Sasnal, Walter Sickert, Balthus, and Giacometti. I have been especially
interested in looking at the work of artists who paint slightly abstracted
figures and who use black in their paintings, because this is similar to my own
work.
Many of my paintings this semester
have included doorways and other openings into rooms. This looking through
doorways at the scenes within has become a theme for my work and it is an idea
that I would like to continue to develop further in the future. I also plan on
continuing to experiment with other types of mark-making and techniques as
there were many mediums introduced to me by my mentor this semester that I have
not have a chance to experience with yet. I also would like to continue to work
large, possibly even larger than I have been. As for subject of my work, the
mother and child relationship, this is not something that I feel I will be
giving up any time soon. As long as my children are young I will continue to
have a constant stream of inspiration for my work and it is something that I
need to continue to express.
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