Week Five | Alternate Dimensions
This week I have been dividing my time between two ways of looking into the idea of Alternate Dimensions in my Landscapes - the phosphorescent dots and the bleach drawings. Following discussions with Jonathan during my first tutorial here am revisiting the nature of the materials for expressing grief as a personal concept and collective experience.
Bleach - blotting out, eroding but not erasing speaks to me of a grief narrative. The use of indigo is well established in my artistic practice as a vehicle of personal grief processing and the bleach feels like an interesting avenue for further enquiry. Note to self: Alexis Soul-Gray, grief and bleach.
Phosphorescent paint - my first attempt at uncanny, gently uncomfortable displacement of belonging and loss. Eerie but also pretty. Comfortable and inured in the face of mass extinction.
I am aware that the various avenues of exploring personal and collective grief are too broad. Violent death, alternate dimensions, personal vessel making… I need to discern which aspects interest me or find a common theme to unify and develop.
Queries
what is the difference between painting and drawing in my practice
what is the definition of grief as interests me in my art
review procedure for Study Statement and create a workflow (kanban?) for weeks remaining.
Phosphorescent paintings
There are six of these paintings - the bottom four are acrylic on canvas 50x50cm heavily textured with vessels and paintings of grief. The top two are experimenting with glow in the dark elements with a back light.
Crit: I felt the crit was fairly useless. My own observations were that the black light feels possibly too gimmicky but I like the overall line of enquiry. These do not feel to me like resolved works for presentation but rather stepping stones in helping me to formulate a visual vocabulary for expression of grief and associated strategies.
Bleach Drawings
These drawings feel like really robust beginnings. The indigo feels personal, the landscape formation feels present and representative of belonging and loss. The bleach feels aggressive and universal but speaks to gentle discomfort, melancholy, sadness and grief.
Materiality of grief - these drawings might be continued to include gold, fragments of other physical remnants of grief processing in Christian thought. Note to self - revisit discussions with Rev. Pete about Four Horsemen, indeed Fifth Horseman/woman as a possible area of exploration. Coping strategies in Greek mythology - refer to resources from RCA course (saved in Bookmarks/RCA)