Blog 15

I had my painting session two weeks ago, mixing colour combinations of the primary colours to make new colours. Whilst it was fun at the time it left me more confused than ever. There is too much choice with colour. Which colours should I use? So many colour combinations, each with their own associations. A fellow artist at the centre said she has always worked with blue and orange, and is only now starting to explore other colours. I showed a selection of my finished artworks to the team and it was quite apparent that I am a monochrome artist who works in black and white, and the grey shades in between. I think I shall stick to my beloved black and white for the time being.

I helped the arts officer re hang the shop gallery on Thursday and now have four pieces of my work hung in the space for sale. It is really good to be exhibiting again.

In terms of practical work, I have been pinning (piercing holes) into a white canvas. An all over mass of  punctures which is making the material start to sag and warp. It is brilliant. I need to find a solution for suspending the cloth 'mound' within the space of the frame if anybody can advise please. I was thinking some sort of starch solution or glue? There is a three dimensionality to the work, with the material coming out of a two dimensional surface. The drawing is becoming an object and a debate about the canvas frame.

I have also been pinning into watercolour paper and tracing paper. Two very different textures with one being soft and the other crisp. I have graphite and charcoaled through the holes of each pinned paper, creating dot drawings from the pierced holes. One produces a soft image of marks whilst the other creates a fine mist of stippling. The malleability of each paper changes too, from hard to soft, and smooth to crisp.

I had a pencil drawing morning yesterday and drew into the graphite transferred dots, joining them up, like a child's dot to dot drawing. I then coloured the whole thing in, erasing the drawn lines. By colouring in each minute section, there was the trace of the line drawing underneath. I then rubbed the whole thing out. It reminded me of Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953).

Pinning seems to be happening more and more than embossing, and I'm working with more awareness of my materials. It is all about the medium and the process. There seems to be lots of opposites - black and white, in, out and through, negatives and positives, smooth and rough, hard and soft, pushing and pulling, adding and removing, 2D and 3D. I'm destructing or altering surfaces and passing one thing through another, leaving a trace.

In August, the arts centre are presenting an open submission group exhibition of postcard sized artworks calling the show "Poste Restante'.  Loosely themed around the notion of the post office where letters are kept until somebody comes to collect them, An Tobar arts centre will act as custodian of the postcard sized artworks until they sold or returned to the sender. This show is the perfect follow on for me, from Ashford Visual Artists group show 'Flights of Fancy' that took place in August 2010, when I presented my "letters or postcards from another journey". I need to get creating artwork for this show.

www.antobar.co.uk
www.ashfordvisualartists.co.uk