Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Feeling sick, but anxious to get to work!

So I'm sick today, been feeling under the weather the past few days, catching all those sniffles and coughs from my peers is always the best. I had a meeting with Jim Cogswell yesterday and honestly it helped me a lot to feel confident and really understand that my work is all experimentation and there are no rules or boundaries. I don't know why, but talking to him really motivated me to continue with my process and push myself to see the possibilities. I think I am just going to focus the rest of my time this year on working on multiple pieces at once, and simply trying to techniques throughout each of them. I want them all to be different, I want them to be chaotic but a beautiful sense of the word. I have a lot of work to do, but I like the direction in which they are going and hearing his feedback really helped. He told me to focus a bit more on my shapes and the way in which I place them on the canvas. I think after my critique at the semester I got a little discouraged and stopped really caring about the way in which I was placing paint on the canvas and just sort of was doing these ovular pieces just to do them. I really think they are obsessive little gems that I enjoy doing, and I don't know why but I don't think that I need to know why. They take different meanings in each of the pieces and I think that this new way in which I am going back into the painting and not being afraid to cover, and lose or gain new perspectives in the work is good. I don't want to get boggled down to one central painting and have them all look alike, I want them each to be their own individual canvases which just so happen to speak to one another within a space. I am having trouble writing my thesis but I think that is because it is all a discovery and I'm not exactly sure how it will all turn out in the end, so writing something so final is a bit difficult for me to do at this point. I understand we need to have a thesis written, but I am just not sure what direction my work is taking and what I am going to keep or what I am going to lose at this point and what exactly is important to me is an end product, I'm just not sure what that will be at this point besides 6-8 large scale abstract oil paintings on canvas. We'll see where it all ends up :) I'm excited and anxious to continue working and hope to be working on 6 pieces as once within the next few days.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Just going with the Anger

I went into my studio yesterday and really decided I absolutely hated the green and orange piece, so I went into with with my palette knife with a completely separate maroon color and started just scrapping it in different places throughout the canvas. This not only got out my anger, but the change in edge relationship was refreshing. I also went back in with a paper towel and rubbed out places so the under painting could show through which are the parts I really enjoy. I'm thinking about doing a wash like this over one complete painting and seeing how that turns out. For me, they all just feel a little too similar in the way in which I execute them and I think that may be why I am getting so bored and frustrated so I've decided to just go with my anger and impulse and just completely regenerate my focus. Hopefully this works.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Frustrations

I'm having such a hard time with my IP and thesis in general. I know that it is "normal" to feel this way, but honestly I'm not used to not knowing what I am going to do or figuring out a solution. I get bored very easily and tend to just go and start a new project but with this I can't do that so I am beginning to feel very trapped and stuck. Part of me just wants to splatter all over these paintings and just completely go off the charts with them and stop thinking all together... then the other part of me realizes that that is a bit crazy and not what IP is all about. I'm getting so frustrated with myself and this lack of confidence and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I want these colors and painting techniques to wow people, and make them come up to the works and be like "I love it, how was it done, ohh ahhh" But I'm not even getting that vibe so how do I expect others to? I am just very emotionally drained and honestly can't even stand the pieces anymore... I don't know what to do. I thought I had everything all figured out but now I am completely lost and wondering if any of these pieces are even worth showing. Today colin said that she talked to an artist who said they threw away 80 percent of their work... 80 percent would leave me with one painting at the end of all of this, and the space I'm showing for sure does not allot for that... I don't know what to do. I think I'm going to honestly just begin painting colors that I love on top of these paintings and seeing where that goes because at this point I'm just trying to have different variations of colors for each piece and it's just not working for me.
Who knows. Here are some new pictures of the current works. Bllllaaaahhhh!