I’ve recently had this painting, Edgescape #8, selected for the annual Artsway Open Exhibition. If you go to see this exhibition, do drop by again to tell me what you think of the show.
Artsway Open 05 exhibition. Edgescape #8 is hanging (darkly) by the archway.
The exhibition runs from 3 December 2005, at Artsway, Sway, Hants, until 19 February 2006 (closed from 19 December to 5 January 2006).
I’ve found this painting very difficult to photograph. The colours are quite muted from dark, earthy browns to ochre and grey, and the surface is quite textured and glistening in places, throwing the light off in different angles. It’s been over a year in the making and now when I look at it, I can see it is only a small vision of something much bigger. If only I had more space (and resources) in which to work much bigger.
I also received a generic rejection letter from an arts organisation in which it was decided that your submission was not as strong as others in terms of quality. All artists have to deal with rejection, but on this occasion I am disgruntled with their use of the term quality since it is so subjective. I would rather they were more diplomatic by saying my application was not what the selection panel were looking for and then perhaps elucidate on their selection criteria.
Does quality mean sophisticated materials or techniques, high-brow concepts, ground-breaking visual outcomes? Or is it deliberately elusive, subject to contemporary styles and tastes.
Much of contemporary art is rooted in ideology or concept using very sophisticated methods of delivery, but I am concerned with the very nature of crude materials – basic, humble, unsophisticated. I hope to produce in the process of engagement, visual outcomes which question notions of quality or aesthetic in this material sense. White cube installations with video projections, light shows, sound loops or satellite links do not always convey the artist’s personal reasoning behind the art, since the materials used are so, well.. impersonal – I have to read the catalogue to fully relate to the work, and even then the blurb is cloaked in hyberbole and curatorial art speak - but I’m wooed by the engagement with seemingly global issues in an often highly elaborate way.
Is this an artform born out of a “virtual” needy generation, which relies on the abstracted reality of TV to give a true picture of the way we do or should live? Are we relying on technology to enable a fresh view of our world?
My causal drips, erased traces and material scars provide physical evidence of a more discreet thought process- in response to a mixture of emotions and senses of a particular place or time. It is only made complicated by my own interaction with the processes, no more, no less.
What am I trying to say? That my perception of the environment is not yet definite or resolved, but organic and open to change? Some research is in order, and I think perhaps less philosophical ramblings and more dogmatic realism would help me on my journey, but I can take some comfort from Dear Artist using a capital A…
