A Mind Divided Within Itself Stands to Reason

My painting subjects have seemed to split a little in the past couple months.  I've noticed that some seem to be more typically landscape-ish in their composition while others are more, umm, meditative and without reference to their specific place.  I have to say that I am a little worried that the landscape-ish ones might be considered too typical.  Yet with the meditative ones, I don't want to end up being 'the girl who paints those shadows.'  I've decided to explore both of these paths for a bit to really consider each.

From Waterloo Bridge, 4' x 5'

The more traditional landscapes still aren't totally traditional, and I am still questioning the substantialness of objects and space, but what I like about them is the way I'm depicting space.  I am thinking of the space more like screens - like the sets in a play that go in front of one another.  Perspective is still a part of it, but the painting is not dependent on it as the only means to allow the viewer to understand or explore the work.

From the Avon River, 4' x 4.5'

These others are paintings of non-places.  Not to say that they don't exist, but they are of the places we glance at on our way to somewhere else.  I don't want to use the term banal to describe them because A; that is such an art buzz word, and B; banal is a word that derives its definition from a conventional mindset out of a desire place judgement classifications on things and places unnecessarily.  I simply refuse to incorporate this way of thinking.  But the places I paint might be easy to overlook.  I like that they infer a journey perhaps, or a moment of epiphany or maybe they are just a place where one stood and spaced out.

I would love feed back, or if you know of any artists that might be of interest, please send them my way!      

  

Art, Life, Context

It has been months since I've updated this blog.  Moving to England, and finding my footing here takes quite a while, and I also wanted to wait till I had some footing in my work as well.  But since I'm coming up on assessment week, and have images and thoughts to share, I figured that this would be the perfect opportunity to show what I've done since I've been here at school in Bath.  Below are 4 of the 5 paintings I've done in the past 3 1/2 months.  They are in order of latest work to earliest, as I experiment with a balancing act between the physical surface presence of paint alongside the painted image.  Below, after the images, I am going to copy and paste the contextual presentation of my work that I have to give next Tuesday.  For the artsy-fartsy among us, you might enjoy the read, but since I'm not going to include images of the other artists I'm talking about, some might find it hard to follow without the visual references.  Either way, I hope everyone enjoys the work, and like always, leave comments!  

From Marlbourough Lane, Oil, 5' x 3.5'

From Near Everett Port, Oil, 4' x 4'

From Railway Bike Path, Oil, 3.5' x 2.75'

From Sion Hill, Oil, 1.5' x 3'

Erin Letterman

Presentation Notes...

[Image of my Daytime Moon painting]

This is my first real painting, called Daytime Moon. I've done plenty of others before this, but those functioned more as illustrations of some very specific ideas. But this was the first painting where I used the physicality of paint itself as a way to express something much deeper. It was here that I started to explore ideas about paradox – or things that are conventionally thought of as polarities. In this painting you can just make out the subtle, tissue-like moon. I was thinking about substance – the actual physical presence of an object... life, real experienced life. I equated the physical paint with being. Yet this life and how we perceive it, really pales in comparison to the much more substantial negations of before-birth and after death. In the same way in this painting, our very solid moon appears translucent during the day, while the blue negative 'space' around it is overwhelming, thick and palpable. This questioning of the substantial, and the subversion of the density of positive and negative space, from this point on becomes a bit of an obsession for me.

[Image of my Cyprus Landscape painting]

In this work, I am exploring painterly density and it's relation to the temporality of the space we occupy and displace. Here, I started experimenting with using a ground color to highlight this slipping through space and time, as expressed in the different densities of my paint.

[Image of Chinese and Japanese Landscape Paintings]

I've been really influenced Chinese and Japanese landscapes. They use so few brushstrokes yet infer so much atmosphere and space. I loved how, by placing a few hints around a plain piece of paper, the paper itself became the substance and atmosphere.

[Poem by Gary Snyder

This present moment:

That lives on,

To become

Long ago]

I think that Asian philosophy and art have been quite influential to many West Coast Artists. Zen thoughts have inspired many of my favorite Beat Poets on the West Coast like William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsburg, and Gary Snyder, who currently lives in the Northwest. This Asian influence stayed through the 60's and 70's hippie generations, and is still very strong today. It is one of my indirect background influences, but also supports why artists like Robert Irwin and Ed Ruscha are direct theoretical influences for me. Their work is grounded in the idea of 'just seeing'. The mindset of their work is quintessentially West Coast.

[Irwin Image]

Artist Robert Irwin said of his work, “The interaction between so-called figure and ground, between so-called object and space, revealed itself as being simply a scale of different degrees of corporeality such that they slide right past each other... the whole issue of figure and ground took an interesting step further in my mind; where the main issue became this continuum, having nothing to do with content but rather purely with its own physicalness and how that physicalness was experienced perceptually.”

[Rusca Photo and Painting]

This questioning of density took hold in my mind as a way to express paradox, not as opposites but as ends of the same spectrum. The works of Ruscha and Irwin are quintessentially West Coast in the relaxed, cool mindset. Their work doesn't validate itself in esoteric academic references because the point of the work is the physical presence of the object, the 'just seeing', the just being, cool.

[Diebenkorn Images, Theibauld Images along my works that relate]

I wanted to include these images of some other California artists because of the influence they've had on my work in terms of color sensibility and their pleasure in the density and thickness of paint.

[Images of Matisse, Chagall along my works that relate]

I think a lot of people would relate my work to painters like Matisse and Chagall. While I have liked both painters since high school, and I am influenced by their colors and imagery in an indirect way, I think my work is about the density of the paint and the subversion of space and object. Meaning and narrative are secondary if they are present. In each of my paintings I am struggling to find balance in the paradox of imagery to physical, material presence while questioning and subverting ideas about positive and negative space - about what is substantial.

[From Forgotten Creek painting]

In this painting I am reintroducing the pervasive ground-color again, but with a much more neutral subject matter than my earlier figure paintings. The narrative is intentionally minimal unless the viewer wanted to explore it in their own imagination. I am choosing imagery that is based from photos and drawings of my direct experiences. I am using places I've been – as opposed to media-based images because that would be adding a different and unintentional significance to the image. My images are totally devoid of any message other than a sense place I've experienced. If any narrative or meaning is derived from them then it is on the part of the viewer, and taken from their own knowledge and experience, their habitus.

[detail]

In this painting I am beginning to work with translucency as a tool to highlight the questioning of objects, of density, and of importance.

[Magill Images]

These next two are paintings from artist Elizabeth Magill.

Her simultaneous tendency towards abstracted mark-making and figuration sets up an immediate friction in her work. The different sorts of marks on her canvas form an image that refers to itself as a painting and as representation... There is type of relationship that is set up between the painting as a self-reflexive object and a picture as a depictive sign. Her work exists on its own terms.

[“these are paintings of landscapes that are also landscapes of painting.” --Andrew Wilson about Elizabeth Magill]

[From Sion Hill and From Railway Bike Path paintings plus detail]

After reading about Magill's process, and her similar interest in the painting as an object and an image, I began to create my color grounds by pouring paint in washes, keeping the irregularities because they insisted on themselves as paint as well as atmosphere. The paradox of image and paint is more clearly being questioned. I have always found this as an unnecessary, didactic construction. I want my paintings to be both – to speak in different languages and hold both in a balanced tension.

[Celmins Image]

Vija Celmins is an artist whose work infers movement and stillness, flatness and depth. Her work is similarly focused on topographical surface concerns – in seeing the material density as a horizon of the surface of the work. Her patterned subjects seem to function like visual white noise, complicating a clear reading of intent even though the subject couldn't be clearer.

[“I believe that if there is any meaning in art it resides in the physical presence of a work. I have no messages in my work.” –Vija Celmins]

[Doig Image]

Artist Peter Doig's work is a constant push and pull between image and paint. His colors emote, at times singing, at times, wailing. He utilizes spacial depth without perspectival spacial logic... The viewer's focus roams without a definite aim. Like Robert Irwin and Vija Celmins, Doig is interested in breaking up and pulling apart the traditional object/ground duality relationship, and like Magill, his work is about the physicality of paint functioning at the same time as the image, revealing that a painting can be both.

[From Near Everett Port painting plus detail]

I want my paintings to have it both ways. They welcomingly embrace paradox.

[Richter Image]

Daniel Richter is another painter whose work straddles the traditional dichotomy of image and abstraction. By moving beyond polarities, Richter's works, like Doig's, are lyrical. His paintings are, like music, cultural expressions that exist on their own without needing further explanations. You can simply 'listen' to them.

[“the dichotomy between abstract and figurative painting is a constructed fiction, since the problems of color and composition remain constant.” - Daniel Richter]

[Modest Mouse Quote]

I'm the same as I was when I was 6 years old
And oh my God I feel so damn old
I don't really feel anything
...
Oh my God, I've gotta gotta gotta gotta move on
Where do you move when what you're moving from
Is yourself?

The universe works on a math equation
that never even ever really even ends in the end
Infinity spirals out creation...

My paintings are, like the music of the West Coast, cultural expressions. They envelop both figurative and abstract. They exist on their own, devoid of meaning but full of atmosphere for the viewer to 'just see', to simply be 'listened to.'

[From Marlbourough Lane and details]

This is the latest of my paintings. It incorporates rhythm and pattern, high tones and low tones. Here I am using paint in a much less subtle way to insist on itself as paint. While appearing near explosion, there is balance in the tension between paint and image. The viewer can consider the sensuality and physical presence of the painting as an object, or respond to the atmosphere of the image, the feeling of place – or both. The painting allows for, and insists on both.

To conclude, it is artists who are responsible for shaping the debate that they see themselves operating in. My work is multi- lingual in this debate.

space between

my lovely sister just informed me that my blogs can be a bit informationally dense, so feel free to just follow my blog in order to check out the growth of my work.  don't feel obligated to read unless you are really interested in art.  you have been forewarned...  :)

i've been drawing a lot lately.  i'm really trying to investigate a few specific aspects through these drawings.  these aspects have been points of interest for the past few years for me, and i can follow these threads of interest through my body of work, despite whatever subject matter i was painting.  currently my subject matter are simply various landscapes i see during my walks around everett.  i'm interested in trying to capture a sense of place in them, but that is a secondary focus to my other threads of interest that i am trying to tease out in a much more deliberate fashion than my paintings of the past few years.  i thought i'd take the time here to define what those interests are, as a way of defining for myself some of what i intend to focus on in the coming year that i will spend on a master's course in bath, uk.

i have been interested in positive and negative space in my work for quite a while.  it is a very basic concept of subject and the space around a subject in a painting or drawing.  i started questioning this definition in my sky paintings of 2007/8, where i was only painting the sky, and therefore my paintings had no subject/ figure, so therefore, became the entire subject/ object (yet not in the same fashion as minimalism, due to the fact that i had no intension of my painting simply functioning as an object itself, which is why i painted the sky.  i wanted it to keep its meaning and keep that other experienced world that painters can create).  from these paintings, i moved onto painting the figure while removing parts of the figure and parts of the background, creating holes. the success of these attempts to question what is positive space and what is negative space were certainly not entirely successful, as i am still working on becoming a better painter.  but the drive i have at investigating this question in my work has increased.  aside from the aesthetically interesting possible outcomes, i also attach a metaphorical meaning to this idea, thinking of negative space as more substantial than the integrity of a subject/ object in my work.  this is similar to the idea of life being this ephemeral, illusionary thing we experience, while the only solid, sure things that define a life are its beginning and its end - two un-graspable sureties that are like negative space - at least in my strange mind.

i feel like my work has come back around to a similar place as it was before i left for cyprus.  i am finding myself drawn again to working on toned surfaces.  i like the ability of adding strong light as well as adding darker shades.  it also forces me to focus on tone within the color i add.  but in these drawings (above), as well as some of the figure paintings i did in cyprus, i am using the toned ground as an abstract empty space where the viewer can fill in what they want to exist without me detailing everything.  there is simply the tonal information of the ground and whatever negative shapes that surround and define it's edges.

in my work i try using various ideas to infer objects that are not actually pictured.  i like inferring objects in the viewer's space, as well as places where objects are, yet they simply are not pictured.  i think inference is an interesting way to engage the viewer, as well as myself.

finally, i am interested in using light as an abstracting device as opposed to a way to define and describe form.  i am trying to use light in a way that describes scattered natural patterns and negative space shape.  i am also interested in how strong, direct light can obscure an image, and reflected light can add such intense color to an image.

well, i'd love to hear from anyone on anything i've said, or on the success, or lack thereof, of the drawings above.  a number of people have been unable to post comments for some reason, so if you can't, then just email them to me.  thanks for reading!

Metaphor and Metamorphosis

Well, I'm putting this painting up here, but, like I seem to say about all my work, it isn't done.  But this one really isn't done because there are specific things that bug me about it.  I am putting it up just to get it out there - and if there are any suggestions I would love to hear them! 

 In it, I am playing with how to break up the image - to divide it, and in doing so, hopefully try and break down the inherent hierarchy of importance of 'figure in a random space'.  I guess I am experimenting with how to disintegrate the hierarchy without giving into the obscurity and scholarly disengagement of abstraction.  I've been looking a lot at Peter Doig, a painter who has also attempted this in some of his paintings.  He chooses images that don't necessarily have any personal meaning though, so while they convey meaning to an audience, they are not loaded with meaning for him.  I think I may try this tact next because my work of late has started to come off a bit... 'emo', if you will.             

     So, I also wanted to talk about one of my random ideas that crossed my mind, mostly to get some responses.  I recently watched this lecture on the brain, synæsthesia, and art.  (The full lecture can be seen at   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzShMiqKgQ).  The lecture was a bit scattered, but there were some very interesting bits.  Synæsthesia is the condition in some people's brains to experience one sensory experience simultaneously with another, ie.  seeing colors when you hear particular sounds or reading the number seven as blue.  He goes on to say that there are many degrees to which people experience this, and that some great artists, poets, and scientists are actually synesthetes (Kandinsky and Hockney to name some painters).  But from there he goes on to discuss what he calls 'metaphorical thinkers'.  I believe many artists think in terms of metaphors.  They might not be synesthetes, but they strongly feel the correspondence of different senses and use it to help them understand the world.  While I don't physically see colors that correspond to sounds, I can certainly empathize with what it must be like, and while I don't involuntarily attach personalities to numbers or colors, I can see how one could.  Sounds definitely can have shapes, stormy weather is angry, and the light on a late summer's afternoon can taste like honey.  In my mind at least.   When you have a good metaphor in your mind to correspond with a feeling or an idea, it seems like a very earnest way to express your thought without using out and out narrative or simply using art to illustrate your concept.  The art actually becomes your idea.  There is a trans-formative experience (as Michael Paraskos might say).   

          So now I've been wondering about everyone else.  I know I've had conversations touching on this with a few close friends, but I'm wondering how many people out there -- if not synesthetes -- would consider themselves metaphorical thinkers, and if so, do you use this way of thinking in your art making?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences!   

over-thinking the idea of the concept and other neurotic ramblings

FINALLY!  i have some new paintings up.  its taken way too long, but, they're here now.  as always, i invite all your comments.  if this is the first time you've seen my pseudo-website, check out some of my older posts to see more of my work.  thanks!

biding time  4'x3'

here are a couple of paintings i've done over winter.  i'm not done with them but am loosing steam.  i'll fiddle with them more in the next few weeks.  but they are nearing completion so i included them now anyway.

decision  18"x3'

landscape 3'x18"

i recently came across an interesting passage in a book i was reading, called Zen and the Birds of Appetite, by thomas merton.  it got me thinking...   it reads as follows:

"In our evaluation of the modern consciousness, we have to take into account the still overwhelming importance of the Cartesian cogito ["I think, therefore I am"].   Modern man, in so far as he is still Cartesian (he is of course going far beyond Descartes in many respects), is a subject for whom his own self-awareness as a thinking, observing, measuring and estimating "self" is absolutely primary.  It is for him the one indubitable "reality," and all truth starts here.  The more he is able to develop his consciousness as a subject over against objects, the more he can understand things in their relation to him and one another, the more he can manipulate these objects for his own interests, but also, at the same time, the more he tends to isolate himself in his own subjective prison, to become a detached observer cut off from everything else in a kind of impenetrable alienated and transparent bubble which contains all reality in the form of purely subjective experience.  Modern consciousness then tends to create this solipsistic bubble of awareness -- an ego-self imprisoned in its own consciousness, isolated and out of touch with other such selves in so far as they are all "things" rather than persons."

it struck me how this mode of thinking was reflected in the art world (as well as the world at large, especially the scientific and scholarly/academic worlds, but since i am interested in the art world in this blog, i'll stick to that).
it seems that the idea of the concept (thats redundant! how appropriate..) has become a preeminent concern in the art world today.  the main concern of many artists is not how they will make their next piece or what it will look like, or even if it will transmit a feeling or idea, but it is about the validity of the idea itself.  how will they explain their idea and what will they say if someone disagrees with it.  the artwork becomes secondary to the idea, and in many cases, merely illustrates the artist's explanation.
what does this all have to do with Cartesian consciousness? well, in my experience, it seems that the hyper self-conscious empirical ego, who constantly affirms itself ("I am"), is also in constant need of validation.  while this is secondary to our Cartesian mode of thinking, it seems to go hand in hand with it.  my ego is first self aware and then asks for that observation to be validated.  in this same way, the artist now seems to construct his/ her idea first, feeling a need to form a complete concept, with a defense of their idea, how it should resonate with contemporary society, how he/she will manipulate the references (like objects) they want to make, etc.. -- in a nutshell, you have the hyper self aware "contemporary" artist!  then there is the need for validity in work too, where the artist asks the viewer, critic, and historian to validate them through acceptance of their idea, and not through aesthetic criticism of their work.  this, many times, has led to the artist having talked themselves out of making work because they feel they can't validate their idea, as if the actual activity of art making isn't valid in and of itself.
now obviously im not talking about all artists.  and im also not saying that conceptual art is illegitimate.  im not prone to extremes.  but what i am saying is that perhaps the pervasiveness of conceptual art, as the now-institutionalized mainstream for the (arguably) past 60- 100 years is because it is reflective of our own societal Cartesian neurosis.
so how, as artists, do we then move past the alienating, self-obsessed self-awareness and just make honest genuine work free of self-conscious agendas, and also free ourselves from idea-negating thoughts that eventually cause us to stop working?  well, here is what i've come up with, and it is the reason im still going out into my studio right now and dare to paint figurative, nostalgic-looking paintings.  my conclusion is to focus on art making as a valid contemplative experience -- art making as thought process.  but not just as a metaphor, but truly as an actual way to think.  i am not talking about the other random thoughts that go through my head while i am working, but the actual physical process of working from the initial sketches and images, the color choices, the very act of and engagement with my materials in order to transform them into something more.  how is this a thought process?  well, because i am engaged in it.  i am simply doing -- sometimes struggling and sometimes thinking and always engaged when i am working, and i am making intuitive decisions, and i am following a process that is set out for me but it is never the same twice.  it is a thought process like dreaming or intuition are thought processes.  it isn't necessarily pre-planned and logical, but that is the point -- to rid myself of the hyper self aware, self questioning ego in constant need of validation of what it is doing as worth while and acceptable.  while this may or may not help produce great work (that judgement is left to the viewers), it does help me get myself out to the studio each day, because my priority in making work is not the idea, but the thought process itself.  
there is no point to life; it is found in the living.  perhaps for artists, there shouldn't be a point to the work.  the point lies in the making of the work instead.  and the viewer can then find their own function for it after it has been made.

Process and Production

Fractured, Oil and Graphite, 36" x 24"

Another month, another painting.  I think that this one is nearly complete.  I might go back into the shadow on the face and decrease the contrast between it and the light a little..  But part of me likes the heightened confusion too.

 

I'm concerned that I don't make enough work.  I know if I were ever to reach a more professional level, I would need to produce work more quickly, but I don't know how to speed up my process.  My ideas just take a lot of time to consider because the initial images I start with are much more complex and full of superfluous forms, relationships, etc..  I have to pare those ideas down to only keep the essentials that support the feel of the painting as a whole.  It takes a while for me to decide what is essential, and to let go of anything I might have initially had my heart set on.

Any ideas?  I know this is just shop talk for artists, but I'm curious if anyone has any artistic process time savers or other ways of upping production without compromising genuine intent in their work.

As always, feel free to leave your comments.  I welcome anything! 

thought provoking ideas and other redundancies

i have "finished" another painting that i wanted to share with everyone.  i think i'll call it timeline.  i welcome any comments, or criticisms of course.
  

appx. 4' x 3'

detail

on a different note, i wanted to share some interesting ideas and quotes that i have come across in the past month.  for me they relate to my own insecurities as an artist.  these insecurities manifest themselves in the constant dialog in my head, where i find myself repeatedly trying to validate what i am working on to myself.  but i found these quotes from louise bourgeois helpful in their dismissive manner and unwillingness to have other agendas imposed on her through insinuation.  i came across these quotes while reading a compilation of interviews and writings called destruction of the father, reconstruction of the father:

          on materials being the subject of the work --  "the material itself, stone or wood, does not interest me as such.  it is a means; it is not the end.  you do not make sculpture because you like wood.  that is absurd.  you make sculpture because the wood allows you to express something that another material does not allow you to."

          on art history --  "i am not interested in art history, in the academies of styles, a succession of fads.  art is not about art.  art is about life, and that sums it up.  this remark is made to the whole academy of artists who have attempted to derive the art of the late 1980's, to try to relate it to the study of the history of art, which has nothing to do with art.  it has to do with appropriation.  it has to do with the attempt to prove that you can do better than the next one, and that a famous art history teacher is better than the common artist."

          i think i like these words because it helps me to feel like it's okay to simply explore materials, images, and composition intuitively without feeling the need to justify what i'm doing with reasoning based on what i anticipate others are looking to hear.  it's ok to simply work on art as my own means of dealing with being human.  to borrow an idea from contemporary art historian michael paraskos, who, while i don't fully subscribe to his contemporary art movement (due mainly to my objection to art historians, critics, and curators attempting to artificially co-opt starting art movements to bolster their scholarly kudos in the art world) put forth an idea that i find a satisfactory way to describe art and art making.   

           

             One last point, I would also want people to recognise what I mean by the word aesthetic. I do not mean the popular definition of the term as meaning 'beauty' (which is a misunderstanding of Kant). I always take aesthetics back to its Greek origin, where it meant to experience through the senses. To me this suggests a material and physical engagement with the world by the artist, which results in a material and physical response in the production of the art work, which is then experienced as a material and physical phenomenon by the viewer. That is an extreme simplification, but I would always base aesthetic art on this at least as a starting point.    (this quote is taken from a discussion thread on his review of damien hirst's recent painting exhibition.  to read the full thread, http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2497595668&topic=13527#topic_top)

              It shouldn't be necessary to point out that art must be material and transformative. It never illustrates ideas or holds a mirror to the world. But these concerns are now offered as art, whereas in fact they belong to the disciplines of politics or philosophy or anthropology. Such dialogue may be of interest but it should never be confused with art.

Art offers an alternative to this dialogue on the actual world. Through a creative process of thinking through the manipulation of material, the artist makes a new world governed solely by an aesthetic totality. The world on the other side of the picture plane is not subject to the rules of our world. It may remind us of our reality, but re-presents it in terms that are unique to art. To make art and to view art requires faith in this alternative reality. Without this faith we would read the work of art as a narrative on our world. In this, there is no greater purpose in art than any other form of social dialogue in which we enter on a daily basis. If art is just about communicating an opinion, we could all be artists and everything could be an artwork.   (from artist clive head on the same thread listed above)

           i think this is a good way to go about looking at and understanding art.  at least for me, this makes sense and seems very inclusive.  let me know what you think about any of the quotes above, if you agree, disagree, or just have something more to add.