Arial views
Mapping routes
Where I'm at now (Nov 23)
I'm focussing on a couple of places as I think about building the aesthetic of maps into my work. The woodland burial ground close to us is full of trees and wildlife (and looking far more established than these slightly outdated google images). How do we reconcile such a place with feelings of loss? The trees growing here are from the soil where people are buried. How does this impact our experience of the place?
I'm thinking about this place aesthetically in terms of what it looks like specifically from the air, where we can see the lines carved through it. It reminds me of veins and vessels not just in plants but also in the human body. Lines that connect different parts and send and receive messages. I'm also thinking about it conceptually, as a representation of the conflicted and dual emotions experienced when in a place like this- travelling in all directions and punctuated at different points, mirroring how we can feel when it comes to life and loss - and how we visit this physically and psychologically.
I haven't fully worked with burial site on paper yet, but I want to build on the experiment below. I like the implication of both an arial view as well as viewing something from ground level.
The route to and from Fulbourn
Something my dad did tirelessly for years, visiting my mum every day while she is was sectioned and in psychiatric hospital. It's only now as an adult that I struggle to shake off how soul destroying this much have been for him and what thoughts he had as he traced and re traced that journey every day until he became ill himself with cancer and later died. I think about what his experience must have been often.
My reading and research into memory, journeys and subconscious image making has landed at this point. It's daunting to acknowledge or face something emotionally difficult. It's also quite empowering to feel I have something solid to capture within the context of a painting.
I've arrived at an idea I want to refine - BUT am also closely guarding it because it's so personal and I feel explosed even mentioning it. And yet, it's only through doing this course that I've more consciously contemplated things, and it's been an awakening experience to see how making art can be an expression of self, feeling and experience on a more conscious level. I've discovered that it's not necessarily a decisive, 'defined outset' thing, but more about becoming open to the possibility of it.
The questions is, how can I refine and present this idea in a way that feels right? Personal but not too personal. Reflective but not introspective. Autobiographical but not indulgent. Conceptual but not inaccessible. This balance is something I'll have to figure out over the coming months - but with an understanding that it may not be fully resolved and that new shapes will appear once the course is finished too.
In one of our group crits recently, I was asked 'would you say your work is conceptual?' and 'would you say your work was abstract?' - and it really made me think... is it?? I've never really considered it to be (and it especially wasn't when I was working in illustration). But the more I move through ideas, and allow them to sit and ruminate, the more I can see ways in which what I'm doing is essentially conceptualising an idea. Yet I still feel quite distracted/held back/attached to the idea of technical skill being important. Drawing is no doubt central to my work, and experimenting with ways of drawing is exciting and motivating - but I still find myself assessing the success or quality of what I produce based on quite conservative ideas of what makes a 'good' drawing.
I can begin to feel this ebbing slightly though. Maybe I can find a way to apply technical skill in a way that feels successful, just perhaps in a slightly different way. I think the experiments I'm doing on automatic/projected painting related to held memory, maps and paths is opening up this possibility to me and it's a great feeling to begin to see a way through.
