Week Twenty-Four | Land(e)scape
“The Landscape becomes reflective, human, and thinks itself though me.”
-Paul Cézanne
and
“I have sworn to die painting”
-Paul Cézanne
Things that go bump in the night now include my slow brain’s realisation that I know how to move forward. I should share a bed more often with my fidgety 9 year old, the duvet and sleep kleptomaniac, who forced me into some witching hour discussions with myself. Clunk. The realisation that it does actually all make perfect sense and for reasons known only to my therapist I have been resisting acceptance of this emergent clarity.
Things I see clearly:
I haven’t been into the studio enough since starting the MA, which has lead to difficulties in seeing
I do want to paint more than the other stuff. I can do both but I want to prioritise drawing and painting
My painting may become looser and more expressive if I allow it
I have all of the tools I just need to keep goals clear and focussed
I am also coming to the realisation that I want to move out of the ‘landscape’ and its anthropogenic gaze into a natural world where I can explore nature from the ‘inside’. I am exploring materials that speak to that: rock, sand, salt, water, fire.
The work
I think the academics and research elements are keeping me in the comfortable armchair of my brain and I need to be more physically in space. Making work. So an inventory of where I am up to:
Clear out the studio so I can breathe
I want to paint more freely - a new series of small works from scratch to help me work more freely - more colour, expressive marks
Ease up on the melancholy and grief for my own wellbeing
The video above - bleach drawings and pyrography
Artist book from bleach drawings
Compost drawings
Making paper and charcoal (feedback from U1A)
10m trace narrative
Paper installations (inspired by Val Britton’s work)
Painting branches, hanging branches - 3D compost heap sculpture/installation with shadows
“The Landscape becomes reflective, human, and thinks itself though me.
I make it an object, let it project itself and endure within my painting …
I become the subjective consciousness of the landscape,
and my painting becomes its objective consciousness.”
– Paul Cézanne 1839 – 1906 in the Poetics of Painting