#or annoyed with movement on the canvas. surely i can adapt and learn to use a software i downloaded specifically to animate stuff

[fee-phy-fo-fum]

suddenly rmbred that i do have an uh. animatic-ish wip??? and that i should get around to working on it.

so! a couple frames i got done today. or like. yesterday. bc time is not real. anyway. just realised that bc two halves of this were worked on two months apart, things are inconsistent. like eyelashes. which is mildly annoying. and a problem for a me thats not awake at 4am.

[zuziasuchor]

Evaluation 10.04.20

I painted with oil paint for the first time in quite a while. I now remember why I’ve been avoiding it; fumes, uncooperative, sticky, annoying, time consuming and never quite doing what I want it to. Headache inducing stuff. Today was my second attempt, I sat in the garden and painted onto canvas, but I struggled to work with it and managed to paint for only an hour. It's usually the medium I’d turn to, but for the last couple of months I’ve been heavily dependent on a mixture of gouache and charcoal. It’s mainly about ease, as a medium I’ve found gouache to be very responsive and instantaneous; it doesn’t constrain me when working gesturally, but also enables me to work slowly and obtain meditative gestures. Oil demands patience and technical skill, which is all fine and I think from my previous experience with it the technical knowledge is there, but that knowledge is fruitless when it comes to more gestural, abstract and expressive work. Simply put, oil paint won’t bend at my will, forcing me to alter my painting patterns when working with it, which results in paintings that feel a bit foreign (as ridiculous as that may sound). 

I’ve been thinking about colour lately, and how heavily I’ve used black. It's quite defining, distinct and acts as foreground as well as background in most of my work. It's strong but also weak, there’s a funny contrast within black that I’ve been trying to explore. As for the form or contents of a painting, I’ve realised that I’m driven more by the pure gestural movement than the substance, context or symbolism that is within it. It’s more about finding that state of mind, than representing or trying to portray something. At the moment it’s finding that meditative place in the mind, where the state is led by emotion and there is a complex denial of any conscious reasoning. I think black allows me to strip back to the bare essentials, to be thinking about form and mark making, and really engross myself in what I’m doing. Colour involves choice, and I’ve realised that it can be quite liberating to have this choice taken away. It sounds a bit pretentious to say, but I found it to be true for myself. I ran out of paint, and all I had was graphite, charcoal, and black gouache. It wasn’t until then had I realised how much I had overlooked the potential of black, and how much I favoured it to the previous paintings that had been in colour. I now realise that it was due to the colour, not the composition, that I abandoned certain paintings. I just prefer working in black, or darker shades of colour, and then later on going back to the black paintings and adding subtle bits of vivid colour when it feels right.

So there’s that side to it, and then there’s a longing for a physical object that represents this. It's so interesting to see how much we value painting, and the preciousness these marked vertical surfaces are treated with, but I can sort of understand it, we all value the things we’ve made with our own hands. But then I find myself holding more value in the things I’ve made myself that have a daily function, that live within the home often overlooked due to their utilitarian purpose. So I think that is another reason for my struggling relationship with painting: it can’t be overlooked or humble. It’s quite the statement to have a large piece hanging in the home, and for some bizarre reason I want to make something that would do the opposite of a statement, I want it to adapt to its environment and live with people rather than act as a decorative bulletin. I also believe I get carried away at times, analysing and trying to find the ground on these complex issues far too much. For me that’s not an issue though, it’s a very necessary conversation for me to have, mainly because I enjoy learning about these weird and wonderful things that constitute art. 

I know one thing for sure though: I never truly understand what I’m making until some time has passed, paintings become clearer as they age.