In my last post, I talked about the use of a studio journal and the idea of dialogue or conversation between the practice and the artist. In my teaching, in the studio, I will often refer to particular pieces of work, or series of works, being 'in conversation' or 'having a dialogue' with each other. But what do I actually mean by this?
Whenever I look at the work that people produce, when we are together in the studio, I am always interested to look for the relationships between the various pieces. Sometimes the work can be very varied - perhaps responding to a particular brief, or a series of exercises, or due to differing stylistic or material interventions. Nevertheless, it is worthy of note that even though the work may vary, pretty much without exception it is tied to itself by common threads. Stylistic congruences - for example the way marks are executed and placed on the surface, choices of colour, compositional decisions, the narratives that the paintings play out, the approach to the subject matter, the overall look of the work, and so on - all of these are unique to each individual painter. I would liken these characteristics to a singing voice, or a handwriting style, though obviously in painting the variables are much greater.
Naturally, as you would expect, I find a similar set of relations when I come to look at my own practice. This is about more than being just an interesting observation, however. Being able to to look at the work in this way, and by learning to observe and understand the conversations that are taking place within and between the work, is a really useful way of working out what might be missing from a particular piece, or how one might resolve a tricky issue within a new painting in progress. In a series of works this may seem to be more obvious, but it can also be useful to put a single work in progress in and amongst other completed or partly completed works, and to see how the suggested relationships between them might affect our thinking about the current piece.
By practising this discipline regularly, I believe that it is possible to become aware of, and familiar with, our own techniques, devices, and decision making, within our own practice, and to use this information to guide us through the difficulties within a particular painting or piece of work. The more intimate our knowledge of our own working methods, motivations, and preferences, through this kind of self-reflective practice, the better equipped we are, in the studio, to make successful paintings.
Exercise:
Take a piece of your own work (unfinished or still 'in progress') that you are unhappy with or that you are struggling to resolve. Put it in and amongst a number of your other succesful/finished paintings and spend some time, over a number of days, observing and reflecting on these pieces of work together. What can they tell you about themselves and each other? Write these observations in your journal - no matter how banal/fanciful/obvious/ridiculous they may seem. Allow the paintings to 'speak' to you and be openminded about how they might inform each other. Make time for this reflective practice, take it seriously and value it, and do this at a time when you can be without distractions or interuptions. What do you learn from this? If you were asked to discuss with someone else what you are finding out about your work, by looking at it in this way, what would you tell them?
Do this over several days and go back to it a number of times - how do your observations change over this period? In a week or so, go back and read these observations in the context of the work you are making then - what are your reflections on these observations in relation to this new work?
