Spectrum

A long train journey back from London tonight.

I am glad that I made the trip down. I could have posted the paintings, or asked Jonathan to print them for me, but I was lucky enough to have the time available to go in person. I am trying to take every opportunity to learn something from this course, and this felt like one of those occasions where just being physically present was useful. It was good to continue the dynamic of building the work in the space, which I tried out in the interim show. Thanks are due to Daniella for creating a really generous opportunity, and I hope that I can return the favour at some point. I also think the work I presented has moved my thinking along, and I am happy about that. I feel as though I am getting a bit of momentum at the moment, and I want to harness that going into the summer. I should be able to get a decent amount of studio time over the next few months, and I want to make the most of it.

I took my little pile of paintings as planned and arrived in time to play around with the arrangement. I really didn’t have a fixed idea of how to put them up and was always going to be dependent on the space allocated. Jonathan was kind to me, and I ended up with enough room to try hanging them all. I think, if I do a version of this again, I need to make more work than can realistically be hung because, like most people, I will fill any amount of space made available to me. Disappointing, but (let’s be honest) true. Like most artists, I would probably put up my fuzzy-felt pictures from 1977 just to fill the wall if someone gave me enough room. There is probably something useful in recognising that tendency, though. The installation needs to be edited as much as the paintings do.

That said, I don’t think the end result was too bad. I did hang the work pretty quickly, and (again, let’s be honest) without properly testing things. Betty was entirely correct to say that I should have laid everything out and tried some ideas first, but I had a bit of a ‘get it done’ head on. Also, that space was quite hectic. I genuinely thought that somebody might step on my work.

I had laid the paintings out in a grid at home and was quite surprised by how much I liked the idea. However, as soon as I got into the space, I wanted something more free form. I think the final result was quite interesting, although it didn’t seem to photograph particularly well. It looked a bit underpowered in the images, and I am not sure why. That feels worth paying attention to. The camera sees things without emotion and investment. It also has no memory of the process, which is maybe part of the problem. It only sees the result, stripped of all the decisions, hesitations, and small bits of pressure that produced it.

I have been around a lot of the commercial London galleries over the last few days (I will make some separate entries about the shows I particularly enjoyed), and I am always struck by how far away I feel from the standard of these exhibitions (well, the good ones anyway). I just need to try not to worry about this too much and keep making work. There is no shortcut around that, however bothersome that fact may be. It is useful to look at strong work, but it can also be a little flattening if I let comparison do too much of the looking for me.

The learnings from this week were helpful and interesting. Betty made two suggestions that had genuinely already occurred to me but hearing them from someone else was really useful. The first was that I could have painted on the wall before hanging the canvases. This could be a great idea. I was looking admiringly at the France-Lise McGurn mural on the ceiling of the Tate café only last week, and this is something that she does brilliantly. It could allow the paintings to sit inside a larger field, rather than simply being individual objects arranged on a wall. It might also give the work a way to behave more like an environment, or at least like a temporary interruption of one. I have quickly mocked up an idea of how that might look:

The other idea was that the canvases might be overlapped. Again, this could be really interesting. I would need to think about the mechanics of it, but I’m sure it’s not beyond the wit of man. It might also help the work feel less polite, less neatly separated, and more like a temporary arrangement or accumulation. I like the idea that the paintings might press against one another a bit more, or that the installation might carry some of the same jostling, drifting, and partial obstruction that I am interested in within the images themselves.

Much to think about.