This month I was really looking forward to the opportunity for a freer session for a change, less constrained by attending to the specifics of the latest collaborative project, which we completed last month. I wasn’t disappointed! Though I have enjoyed the collaborations, both participating in them and being part of the discussions they generated, it was really refreshing to get ‘back to the roots’ of the group and just spend a couple of hours sharing and talking about recent work and ideas. It was good to see Colin Binns again, who fresh from a drawing session with Manchester Urban Sketchers, brought his sketchbook along.
The sketching meetings occur every three to four weeks and are connected with a worldwide network of similar groups aiming to connect and share places. They fix a location for an afternoon and get together to spend time drawing in the urban environment, sharing and discussing the outcomes at the end. Today the group met at the Manchester Museum, where many people focussed on drawing objects and artefacts, however Colin found he was looking out of the museum to the street scenes and other local buildings. He felt this was related to his architectural background and connecting back to previous practice, instead of some of his more recent painting work. When Colin had mentioned to me what he was doing in the afternoon, I decided to bring along my own recent sketches from the museum. It was interesting to compare styles and approaches, especially as we had both had very different purposes for the drawings.
The sketching meetings occur every three to four weeks and are connected with a worldwide network of similar groups aiming to connect and share places. They fix a location for an afternoon and get together to spend time drawing in the urban environment, sharing and discussing the outcomes at the end. Today the group met at the Manchester Museum, where many people focussed on drawing objects and artefacts, however Colin found he was looking out of the museum to the street scenes and other local buildings. He felt this was related to his architectural background and connecting back to previous practice, instead of some of his more recent painting work. When Colin had mentioned to me what he was doing in the afternoon, I decided to bring along my own recent sketches from the museum. It was interesting to compare styles and approaches, especially as we had both had very different purposes for the drawings.
Resident CRITter Kevin Linnane and Dave Wilkinson, who has been on our mailing list for some time now but for whom this was a first meeting, were especially interested as photographers in the relationship between sketching and accuracy (or lack) of detail. This led us on to a discussion about the role of the visual arts in interpreting and depicting reality as well as the artist’s decisions in emphasising certain features. It was agreed that though this might be less apparent in photography, the expressive is still present, especially when considering that the photograph is not the subject (think Magritte’s Treachery of Images). We discussed how this is sometimes achieved in post-production in photography as opposed to directly during the sketching process, which led us on to the comparative immediacy of film and digital photography, planning images and editing en situ as well as back in the studio.
Colin identified that his drawings are a method of investigating how to develop a balance between an architecturally accurate drawing style and his abstract paintings. Comparing his drawings with my own sketchbook work (completed partly as a demonstration to students and partly as ongoing research development), we agreed that though the outcomes are very different in style and approach, they exist for essentially the same reason. Colin will be using his sketches in moving towards mixed media work involving silkscreen.
Colin identified that his drawings are a method of investigating how to develop a balance between an architecturally accurate drawing style and his abstract paintings. Comparing his drawings with my own sketchbook work (completed partly as a demonstration to students and partly as ongoing research development), we agreed that though the outcomes are very different in style and approach, they exist for essentially the same reason. Colin will be using his sketches in moving towards mixed media work involving silkscreen.
As we had been looking at my sketchbook as a playground for new ideas, it was natural then to turn the discussion to my own recent, if unexpected, developments. Last week, I was delighted to hang the Peaceful Places prints at the Earth Café and I shared the selected prints with the group. I explained that as much of my work recently has been focussed on participatory events displayed (mostly) in online galleries, I had almost forgotten just how enjoyable it can be to get work out physically into a public display and that in the short time I was in the café hanging the work, I received very positive feedback which had been refreshingly welcome. This changed my thoughts around the project too; though the Peaceful Places series has been something of a tangent from my recent practice, I have enjoyed working with the images so much that I had already begun to consider making some paintings from them, and having experienced this response at the café I had been motivated to start a new piece.
The painting is a reasonably direct representation of a lotus in a Japanese Buddhist temple and I have been exploring the ‘peace’ theme further through the application of paint by employing calm, soft, almost meditative brushstrokes. I went on however, to question my motivations for this work, worrying that it was bordering on the therapeutic and explaining that I felt self-indulgent in producing it largely for personal pleasure. Though I feel strongly that I don’t want to put this new ‘tangent’ down and am enjoying making for makings sake, I also find myself questioning the purpose of it, uncertain of what it could be achieving in a wider context. Having said that, I am not able to explain why this matters and fully appreciate that the purpose of visual art is not easy to qualify, nor is it always appropriate to do so. Despite this, I seem to be challenged in applying this to my own practice. Kevin suggested that this may be partly due to education though I suspect a lot of it has to do with my wider aspirations and self-expectations as well as it being quite a shift from my other recent work.
The painting is a reasonably direct representation of a lotus in a Japanese Buddhist temple and I have been exploring the ‘peace’ theme further through the application of paint by employing calm, soft, almost meditative brushstrokes. I went on however, to question my motivations for this work, worrying that it was bordering on the therapeutic and explaining that I felt self-indulgent in producing it largely for personal pleasure. Though I feel strongly that I don’t want to put this new ‘tangent’ down and am enjoying making for makings sake, I also find myself questioning the purpose of it, uncertain of what it could be achieving in a wider context. Having said that, I am not able to explain why this matters and fully appreciate that the purpose of visual art is not easy to qualify, nor is it always appropriate to do so. Despite this, I seem to be challenged in applying this to my own practice. Kevin suggested that this may be partly due to education though I suspect a lot of it has to do with my wider aspirations and self-expectations as well as it being quite a shift from my other recent work.
Kevin also commented that he noticed a similarity between my recent ‘discovery’ of a new element of work within an existing theme (funnily enough, also concerned with the concept of place) and his own recognition of a previously unarticulated key thread in his work. The group all felt that there were examples present in our work of deviations occurring before we returned to a core subject. Kevin described this as being part of a process of finding out what it is you do, a recognition of things clicking into place, feeling right and thinking ‘I can just get on and do it now’.
He has recently been looking at issues relating to place and space but after looking back through some older projects has realised an ongoing interest in rituals. This is especially apparent in two projects he shared with us exploring acts of pilgrimage and performance . He is now working collaboratively on a series of photos of pillboxes in Bury St Edmonds and is currently working out the relationship between the new and old work. The pillboxes are positioned in defensive lines along the railway and I commented that this seemed to relate back to Kevin’s previous interest in ley lines while it was also noted that there were links to military rituals. Kevin hopes to open the work up following this rediscovered direction and plans to look at military bands.
He has recently been looking at issues relating to place and space but after looking back through some older projects has realised an ongoing interest in rituals. This is especially apparent in two projects he shared with us exploring acts of pilgrimage and performance . He is now working collaboratively on a series of photos of pillboxes in Bury St Edmonds and is currently working out the relationship between the new and old work. The pillboxes are positioned in defensive lines along the railway and I commented that this seemed to relate back to Kevin’s previous interest in ley lines while it was also noted that there were links to military rituals. Kevin hopes to open the work up following this rediscovered direction and plans to look at military bands.
 Dave also discussed the recognition of key themes in relation to his own portfolio of work. Though he has been taking photos for years he is now starting to wonder what to do with them all! He showed us a range of images, most, if not all of which could be broadly categorised under many themes; Architectural, Sports, Nature, Travel, Astronomy, Landscape and Music Performance to name but a few possible headings! Despite these, Dave said he had not actually sorted through them all, which came as something of a surprise to me at least. He voiced some uncertainties around his work; having listened to other members in the group talking about projects and themes, yet the rest of us agreed that despite some apparent fragmentation, the key theme was in recording his visual experiences of the world. | Kevin made the very practical suggestion of sorting them into categories and looking at selling them through picture libraries, stating that as a photographers Dave has a very commercial eye. I thought it might be quite interesting to physicalising some of the images by printing them and seeing where that might develop and also suggested the possibility of setting a mini-project of something like a photo-diary, if this was a direction he felt motivated to follow. Dave went on to say that he had recently recognised something of an ongoing theme in his more abstract compositions and that he was primarily interested in shape and colour, with much of his recent work containing botanical references, employing macro work, saturated colour and use of the vignette device. Kevin underlined the importance of such basic principles in photography and that a photograph isn’t always about the subject. The group felt that Dave was in the middle of his own learning journey and that certainly seemed to be a common theme tonight! |
In summary, February 2014 wasn't our biggest gathering, especially with the notable absence of a few familiar faces but the content of the discussion more than made up for this and it definitely felt good to get back to the CRITgroup roots in an open and meandering discussion inspired by the new work of those involved! I am certainly looking forward to seconds in March!
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