Happy new year and all that!!!!

One of the good things about the Yule Tide festival; - apart from all the kids being under one roof, pressies, murder mystery games and fun, is that all that prevented me from going in the studio. -it was full of boxes and bikes. But now its back to work... or the sort of idleness that I call work.
A quick update. After meeting Robert to go over my very embryonic performance plan, we drafted some thoughts, which I copied up when I got home...I  chatted  over them with Hudge, and let them mull and marinade over the holidays. Now I am to begin... eeeek! I am going on a pottery course. Hopefully I will create some of the 'eggs' I describe below.
Some of Roberts notes.
look at,    automatic writing Ron Athey ;- Gifts of the spirit

·         mind map

·     Questions

·         Tension between being a skilled expert, a ‘professional’

·         Need to develop an action plan, including how to develop project. (And maybe funding to feel validated.

·        

·         Q engaging work often comes from risk or urgency – what are you putting ‘at stake’

·         A “my painting, /I’ll fade away if I do not do it. Age/ not about body, - but my inside, /what makes me tick, not what you look like.

·         Q you said you make paintings that your kids and mum can see, but performance is a different medium. If we acknowledge they are not party to all the aspects of your life is it the same economy with the work? If yes why? And does it need to be yes?

·         And it does not need to be yes, /not about selling either. So this is wholly liberating,/ only me, (Annabel) questions if I am a painter, nobody else cares.

·         ‘Celebrating the small’

·         By the time we ‘receive’ trends or ideas often these have been mediated by a commercial force. We might therefore think this nullifies the original intent of the radical originator. (E.g. Vivian westward invents punk, which then becomes massively successful.) but possibly this makes those ideas accessible. If we acknowledged the ‘elephant in the room of commerce, wheres the issue?

·         Q what is your quality control?

·         Tenets from foundation, through a lifetime of self criticism/ measuring against shit work/ knowledge of experience.

·         Check out the work of ‘Suka- off’ in relation to stretched skin

To Do’s

·         Seeing work – performance space in hackney wick

·         Look up Sinead O’Donnell

·         Check up Ron Athey ‘gifts of the spirit’

·         Work out what own measures of success are

·         Sara Davies in reading

·         Think tank

·         Performance space

Suggestions

·         Set yourself some physically demanding tasks, (i.e.: stuff a pouch with heavy chains and wear until you reconnect with an existing body memory)

·         Set a deadline for a sharing before next April

·         Question and re question every matter and decision

 So here are my Under the skin thoughts  so far.
Drawing can be of other things that are then blotted out, rubbed, worked, as the piece is process the viewer will see this unfold.

·         Precious things

·         Chains

·         Gold chains

·         Gold bars

·         Egg shaped?

·         Hand held

·         One easyish

·         Two harder to work with

·         Three too hard

·         Baskets/bags to hold them in???

·         Decorate them

·         Glue

·         Glitter

·         Gold leaf

·         Can I leave them

·         Darkness

·         Not talked about

·         Vulnerable eggs

·         Detroux

·         Children trussed up

·         Hard to look at

·         Dark emotions

·         Leave eggs whilst drawing dark inner self that can be drawn over later

·         Elements of life that go to make up self do not have to be part of the face but other drawings that go to make up the layers.

·         Start with other lighter parts of life,

·         Real clothes from life

·         Drawing stops for a while to have eggs.

 

Drop in classes in the studio

Hi everyone,

So..... in January I am planning the following.  Please let me know what you are interested in so that I can firm up the plans.

Tuesday mornings from 10am:  We have a number of regulars and a few 'occasionals' so this should be good to continue, starting on 7 January.

Wednesday evenings 7pm - 9pm:  There are a few spaces that it would be good to fill.  Do please let me know if you plan to come regularly or even from time to time.

Life classes: The regular Tuesday session has not been viable, but I am planning a 5-week run on Tuesday evenings from 12 February to 12 March with a model. £75 per person for the full course.  (What a great Christmas Pressie!) I need 5 or more people to make it work - please let me know asap.

hope you have a lovely Christmas and New Year, and I hope to see some of you in 2014

I have been developing my performance piece 'Under the skin'

I have talked about 'Under the skin' here on my blog, but I have expanded it now. I am going to talk to Robert Pacitti at the http://www.pacitticompany.com/ about how to develop this further and where to go next with it. Here is my draft of my thoughts. 

'Under the skin' is a performance piece about the process of drawing the self, but incorporating the social events, both accidental ( ageing, pregnancy, illness) and imposed, (dress, hair, extending to suggested surgery) that layer our self image. –

This way of working (performance) is relatively new to me and so very exciting. It extends and incorporates my practise as a painter.

I am interested in process. A painting has its limitations and I find process an aspect impossible to show in static and trapped two dimensional images.

 I realise that the process of painting is often invisible to the viewer, but one they are interested in.
(I have found when giving demonstrations of portrait in charcoal to various groups, the watching of a drawing develop is an interesting, fascinating and absorbing activity. People want to take part and understand the process.) Perhaps I could perform the piece at a demo for local art groups. 

I have recently made some self portraits, with touch as the starting point. These paintings have developed in diverse fashions, but they just look like different pictures. It’s the process that is the nub.

So…

I am thinking about combining demonstrations of portrait painting/ drawing incorporating the exploring and drawing with touch as the starting point. I would start by making some sketches, from touch (not the mirror), which blinded, I rub, smear, add delicate trace of line, paint, perhaps I could draw/ tattoo on pigs skin, as I am interested in tattooing.  This could be used instead of paper or canvas. I could use a side of pig, or stretched skin, which can be cut, flayed, worn, etc. (perhaps vellum, drawing with sanguine conte)

 The audience watch.

I begin with an exercise of feeling my face and drawing what I feel, not looking at the paper.

Then using big close up mirrors and paint etc I work on the paintings further. I paint what I feet under my fingertips, but looking at the canvas. I then use a mirror and adapt the image.

I do this more times, trying to explore different emotions and styles; they are a progression and an exploration.

There could be easels, drawing boards, pallets, paints, music, and all the stuff of the studio. The audience would be a voyeur into the private place, the work place, under the skin. Or perhaps there could be projections of the studio which change as time changes.

The sound-scape could be a clock, a speeded up world of life, overlaid with the music, I work to. Then of course, there will be the sounds I make when working. Perhaps I could have a dialogue with the audience. Perhaps a presentation…

So the audience is drawn in and then I can add layers. So they see and understand, not only the simplistic ‘how does the drawing develop’, but also a more complex one. How does a painting, develop over the backdrop of life and time;

As I work, I walk away, to turn and regard the developing pictures, return, change them, wipe my hands on my clothes, walk away some more, stretch, make coffee, go for a wee, work, walk, work, walk.

The time charges on relentlessly. Each time I walk away subtle changes happen to my person, which I control, to show outer changes. The old layers of persona's, discarded, thrown away... the possibilities are endless. I can hang one from a nail on the wall in the studio. Prufrocks moth pinned to a board, that hanging skin in Michelangelo's last judgement in the Sistine chapel. -

This could evolve into and be punctuated with a sort of fashion show, wearing the used paper suits from Gina Maria Casetta 's forensic work. The suits are paper, the material of the artist, and can be painted, cut, sewn, and moulded.

I could wear a basic nothing suit; close fitting, with a drawn pubis and breasts.

Others could be drawn on and adapted, discarded and hung up as a representation of both,  enforced change, internal and external...e.g. age, pregnancy, illness and our change of choice, i.e., hair, or hair growth, removal, make up, surgery, and simply taste and fashion. I envisaged layers like an onion,
 Perhaps there could be projections onto the altered white costumes.

 Who am I who can I be. The layers of person, who you are, what role you play, and that changing role as you grow older, is part of the human condition... Mother, daughter, Father and son. I friend I met up with recently has lost his son and his father within the space of a few months. Suddenly, his identity has changed. How does he relate to himself now?

Do I stuff the suits into the body to make the pregnancy, potent expectancy, do I give birth to the alternative, potential versions of myself.

When I was young I picked a new look every now and then, trying them on, seeing how this and that fitted. As I grew older this seemed to stop, life imposed a style on me. Now I am playing again. As I looked at my ageing self, I thought, who is that? I don't want to compare this woman of 50 in the mirror with the woman of 30, 40. So I grew my hair, put on some makeup, lost some weight. Now a new woman looks back at me, with a new dynamic. I have found a new sexuality... and it’s fun, but interesting and complex also.

The fashion show and drawing progresses.

The high heel platform shoes stumble, the You Tube compilation, models who stumble on the cat walk. Mad, crazy, high shoes, making the already tall girls; who usually wear flats, now become giantesses.

The shoes resonate with the performers in the Greek tragedy, stereotypes, archetypes, as we flay, try to see underneath the skin. Perhaps masks too… tall tall tall….

Scrape, gouge, and stumble across a version of the truth. As Patrick Whites character Hurtle Duffield scrawls upon the dunny wall, - god the vivisector, the artist the vivisector.

The projections of the studio change as time changes.

But when I return to the canvas the work continues as it evolves, randomly, sometimes I turn the canvas, sometimes I cannot work, and sometimes I work in frenzy. We will see where the work takes us. Always the studio projection develops, changes, time relentlessly progresses.

But through the years the secret self, the heart of the onion remains constant.

Exhibition coming up

At the Frame Workshop Gallery in Ipswich.

I am exhibiting with Photographer Rhea Williams, fab, moody, shadowy, lovely photos.

As well as a couple of my big domestic interiors, I am showing the Landguard Fort paintings. Landguard Fort is an abandoned military base in Felixstowe, tons of history, last used in the second world war. http://www.landguard.com/
The empty rooms are evocative and eerie and sort of romantic, the light is fantastic, and the peeling paint and faded plaster beautiful. (I'm gonna try and add a link thing to the earlier posts with the images.)

I'm also showing the new small, rock and roll paintings. After struggling to push the paintings forward in a looser, more expressive direction, (I think they look almost like the paintings I made years ago. )  I am pleased with the results. I am excited and have started work on big ones again. (hopefully one will be ready in time to show.) The little red ones are 10 ins  and the others 50 cm

I Hope you can get along to see the show. It runs from 1st November - 30th, but The P.V. is Friday, 8th November 7. - 9.p.m.

 as long as I'm moovin

 

 get with the jive

 

gotta lotta rhythm

 rock around with Olli Vee

 cat called domino

You Tube post by secret Italian person!

While uploading a couple of songs on You Tube, I found this video f.fiorellin has made of my paintings.
have a look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7d8TPsV6OE
thank you f.fiorellin, its lovely.

Flyers ordered!

Flyers, business cards and labels all ordered. Ready for the exhibition at the Frame Workshop in November.
 I'm actually enjoying being in the studio at the moment, I have some air drying clay..(not Das but other stuff, from Amazon, @ £17 for 12.5 kilos) cheap enough to experiment with. I  made little sculptures from the life model the other week at asylum studio drawing day ...

 Can't wait to go tomorrow and make more. This is the first batch, I  coloured them too. Then I made more, both from life and from some of the quick  drawings  I have sketched over the years. I sorted though all the old drawings and chucked hundreds, so cathartic. I'm gonna try using the wire from the sketchbooks as a sculpting thing too.... go with the flow!

Demo Time

I did a demo in charcoal for Lavernam art group last night.

This is Roy who posed for me.
Drawing from life in front of people is like an extreme sport, you feel so anxious. But its exciting, challenging and demanding too. Ooh I must do more of them