The Risk of Being Earnest

I have been salivating over images of paintings today, particularly those by Jenny Saville. I have been thinking about where I belong as a painter, and I am finding it increasingly difficult to not place myself in the figurative painting category. And yet it feels uncomfortable to be there. The thick and meaty brushstrokes in Saville and Freud's work seem loaded with aggression and impenetrability. It is hard to look at that work and not feel that my paint handling is timid in comparison. Their surfaces are scarred and overwrought. Mine are ethereal and dissolving.

So if my paintings are not going to evoke the visceral quality of flesh like the great figure painters, then where do my paintings belong? My use of mass media images suggest that I would fit easily in the company of pop artists, like Andy Warhol. But there is a jaded quality to the critique by these artists. I don't want to mock the images I use, I don't want to de-humanize or caricature those photographed, and I don't feel above the seduction of the fantasy such images are hawking.
 

I don't know why I am looking for what box I should fit in. Perhaps I am looking for reassurance that I am pursuing a legitimate track, or that I am part of the right conversation. Lately, I have been experiencing what I would describe as a crisis in confidence, an overwhelming desire to be BETTER. And yet I'm not sure what that means at this point for my work, and I'm not sure where to look to find the answer. Does it mean more paint, more distortion, more emotion? In a visual world dominated by slick, bold hits of instant gratification, my work's subtlety and fragility make it feel like the underdog, fighting to be heard amidst the din of so much aggressive visual bellowing.

Look. LOOK!!!!!

It's not about the body.   If I want you to see me, to really see ME, I want you to see my face.  The body can be revealing, but it is not the most insightful.  That isn't to say that the body cannot be expressive, but it's distracting.  The naked body is too wrapped up in sex, flesh, carnal pleasures and pain.  The clothed body reeks too much of status, style and costume.  As my studio fills with painted portraits, I realize I have systematically deleted the body.  All that remains of the original images is the face, painted larger than life, looking at the viewer with a certain yearning - to be looked at, to be seen.

Preparing to Paint

The last week has been back-breaking, boring, tedious labour - building stretchers, stretching canvas, gessoing coat after coat. I'm exhausted. But seeing the large white stretched canvases begin to multiply and crowd my space, I am beginning to envision the paintings that will come. It has got me thinking of paint again, the physical act of painting. My three go-to guys when I get in this mood is Velasquez, de Kooning, and Bacon. This week, I came across a great essay about Bacon and his "quest to capture and convey a sensual memory experience". Paint, not just the image, was essential in his pursuit. I can't get his words out of my head:

"Real imagination is technical imagination. It is the ways you think up to bring an event to life again. It is the search for the technique to trap an object at a given moment. Then the technique and object become inseparable. The object is the technique and the technique is the object. Art lies in the continual struggle to come near the sensory side of the objects."

Without Title

Once the paintings are completed and it is time to have them go out into the world, they must be given a name. Some artists keep it descriptive ("Man with Pipe"), others keep it clinical ("Untitled #33"). I have always loved finding the right title for my works. I think it is a great opportunity for me to sit with the work when it is finished and reflect on its character. Writers will tell you the power of naming. We name something to try to understand it, to be able to talk about the phenomena it represents, to declare its existence, or to transform or influence dated perceptions. Names are powerful. They mean something.

As a visual artist, I think the title of the work is one last chance to get it right. I guess it's also one last chance to get it wrong - to add something to the work that may detract or distract from the experience of the painting itself. But I love it when it works. Lots of artists have played with the role of the title: Kara Walker's extravagant, narrative titles, John Baldessari's photographed text, Cy Twombly's integration of poetry and haikus, Whistler's borrowing from the language of music. I love these approaches. It's like the artist has given you a key to unlock the secrets that lie before you. It's a little poetic tease, a clue, a declaration of intention.

Which leads me back to my current problem. It's a big responsibility to give paintings a name. And with my new work, I feel like there may be an approach to the titles that I haven't identified yet. So time to brainstorm. I have to hurry up though - the paintings are leaving the studio soon.

Stripped Down

I updated my website today. After much consideration, I decided to take down my old work from the site, and simplify my portfolio to include just my most recent works. I feel more focused than ever in my work, and my website was just not reflecting that. Presenting my new work has also made me reconsider whether the works I have been doing are diptychs, or whether the individual paintings are strong enough to stand on their own. I have decided that they should go it alone. As I've been composing new paintings these past couple weeks, I'm finding this approach makes much more sense. I could compose an entire exhibition's worth of paintings based on one image - it doesn't mean that they belong together, that the individual works are somehow incomplete or insufficient without the grouping. To the contrary, I think it's more interesting to try to be more economical. Sometimes more is just more, not better. In some cases, it may make sense to treat a pair or multiple as one painting, but I think the multiple fragments in my work sufficiently suggest the notion of multiplicity and metamorphosis that interests me.

So I feel cleansed. Leaner. And ready to rebuild.

Fromage

Sometimes I get a little over-zealous. I admit it. In my crazed efforts to create months-worth of new compositions to paint, this week I have overwhelmed myself with possibilities, printing more and more source materials and photographing more and more ink prints. I was just beginning to lose all perspective, drowning in liquid images, when this afternoon I decided to stop. I picked a few sets of ink prints and started composing. It made me feel like I was moving forward, although I can't say I was coming up with anything that was that earth-shattering. Until I started to work with one image that I have completely fallen in love with.

It is reminiscent of Fragonard's paintings (like the ones I've posted here from the Metropolitan Museum's collection in New York). I know, Fragonard is not exactly Velasquez, but personally I think Fragonard is highly underrated. In person, the paintings are lusciously painted, and while most people just see his images as over-romanticized cheese, they are so visually seductive, so totally over-the-top, they actually remind me of the visual excess in today's celebrity and fashion culture. To me, he seems more relevant today than ever. And now I'm dying to paint.

Living on the Edge

I don't consider myself a writer, but I find it hard to process any idea without putting words to paper. I keep a journal, I make lists, I prefer email to phone most of the time, and my sketchbook is more verbal ramblings than visual notes. I generally have a terrible memory. I can't recall very many childhood memories - not being very sentimental, I can't say it bothers me much. I like to think I have remembered the most important things in my life, although perhaps they are the things that have become important to me because I remember them. It's hard to say. And yet while I don't hold on to memories of the details, I have a strong and potent memory of sensation. I may not always remember names, faces, places or dates, but I always remember the emotional tenor of my experiences - whether I was afraid, thrilled, seduced or dismayed, whether I wanted the moment to last forever, or whether I was dying for it to end. My memory is visceral. In some ways, I guess it has made me a woman of extremes. I don't really feel things lightly. I either love it or hate it, trust it or fear it, crave it or dismiss it. And I'm fascinated by the emotional gray zones in between, when the decision is made to go one way or the other. I know a lot of people who prefer to stay in the gray zone, who curl up and wallow in it, who take comfort in its stability. But when I find myself stuck in a gray zone, I can't stay still. It's like giving up in the midst of a game of Hot and Cold. If someone says "Warm! You're getting warmer!", do you just stay there? How can Warm be good enough, when what they're really trying to tell you is that you're getting closer but you're not there yet? Maybe Warm feels Hot after a bout of being Cold, but once you've experienced Hot, there's no going back to being satisfied with just Warm. Trust me.

Alright, so the Hot and Cold thing may not be the most sophisticated of metaphors, but it's New Year's day, and I've been sitting here reflecting on the events of the past year and my hopes for the year that lies ahead. I like to think that so far I've lived my life with an intensity and passion that has served me pretty well. It has not been without trauma or heartache, lots of Hot and Cold, but I have few regrets. I have always said that I hope to have an interesting life. Pursuit of a happy life always seemed a little uninspiring to me, a little lacking in ambition. I certainly don't want to make art that people "like", that makes them "happy" - making art is too much of a struggle to be satisfied with such polite responses. I want my art to create visceral memories in others, to capture the prominence of sensation in the experience of life and memory, and to tempt others to live ever-increasingly outside of the gray zone.

So here's to a new year. A very interesting new year.

Speak for Yourself

I'm really proud of my new paintings. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. They're certainly not perfect, but for now they're the closest thing I've ever gotten to saying what I really want to say - or, should I say, seeing what I want to see.

But the closer my paintings get to expressing what I want, the more nervous I am of talking about them. It's just that I don't want them to be about me. But I also don't want to intellectualize them and drain them of their emotional content. Artists are always required to talk about their work, to explain their intentions - and I've certainly embraced those expectations so far, particularly in this blog. But over the last couple of months, my paintings have been making me grow more silent. They are more revealing than I expected them to be.

Back to the Blog

After weeks of marathon painting sessions, I am in the home stretch and should have my last painting of 2009 completed within the next couple of days. In a week, the masses (or hopefully at least a small mass) will descend upon my studio to check out my new work. It has taken all the willpower and patience I have to not post photos of the new work these past few weeks, but I am determined to have the first showing of these new works to be in the flesh. As always, I'm anxious about the response, but I'm hoping for some encouragement - some confirmation that I'm on the right track. It's been quite an experience to work for so many months without any feedback. It has forced me to focus more than ever on what I want my work to be, without fear of poor grades or poor reviews. But once the work is done, there is no question that I want people (not all people of course, but at least a passionate few) to respond to my work, to feel something, to reassure me that it speaks to more than just my own cravings.

Reflecting on the Image

In the last week, I've been to a couple of shows/events that have dealt with the relationship of painting to digital technologies (including photography): the show and panel discussion "Facing the Screen" at the University of Toronto, and the exhibition "Beautiful Fictions" at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

I should have blogged sooner about my response to these exhibitions, but painting has been (and is) consuming me these days. But I don't want to forget some of the key ideas that sparked my interest. So for today, I'll begin with a brief mish mash of some of the ideas from the "Facing the Screen" exhibition.

At the show's panel discussion, artist Michel Daigneault spoke of the screen as a "double skin" which can be penetrated through details of the image to expose the first skin, ie. the paint. My work has always emphasized the details of an image pictorially, and in my most recent work, the painterly details in the surface are taking on a new prominence. I like the metaphor of a "double skin" since in my work now, I am questioning the screen not only as a technological skin but also as a type of mask that conceals certain desires and vulnerabilities.

Metaphors of the screen often reference a type of reflection, as mentioned by Daigneault with respect to the work of Peter Doig (see photo posted above). I admit I have not looked at Doig's work in this light, but now it seems obvious. Certainly the association of the screen and reflections is a natural one, since the reflective surface multiplies the real by way of an image. Repetition of an image is commonly used to reference technological reproduction, and has always payed a critical role in my work. But now that the images I am working with focus on images of the body, the notion of reflection and references to the mirror is an important conceptual step backward for me (backward in the sense of moving from an emphasis on the digital reproduction to the mirror's crude reflection). An exploration of the digital screen's relationship to painting undoubtedly remains in my work, but the rich associations of the mirror (with vanity, beauty, solitude, confrontation, etc) are giving my work a more sensual, emotional resonance.