About a year ago I came to decision that the painting degree pathway was not the right one for me. I withdrew as a degree student with the OCA with the intention of continuing as a leisure student.
I though that without the added pressure of the deadlines for assessment, I would enjoy the course much more and that relaxation would be more conducive to creativity. Unfortunately, what happened instead was that the reduction in urgency resulted in my studies becoming a lower priority. I essentially ground to a halt due to lack of both internal and external motivation to get it done.
Recently, the OCA has introduced two new degree pathways, namely the Fine Art and Drawing pathways. Since drawing is my passion, I have decided to re-enrol on one of these pathways as soon as the new level one drawing course is released.
In the meantime I will try to get as much as possible out of the remainder of this course in the next 4-5 months before my tuition expires.
My next few blog post relate to part two of the course which I had almost completed before I stopped but hadn't written up. I'll have to try to remember what my thought processes were all those months ago.
Oh well - onwards and upwards .......
Saturday 16 April 2016
Study Visit: Jerwood Drawing Prize Exhibition at The Tetley, Leeds. Saturday 21st February 2015
The catalogue for the 2014 Jerwood Drawing Prize can be viewed by clicking here
I thoroughly enjoyed the study visit to this exhibition - I have recently completed 'Drawing 1' with the OCA and, although I am now studying 'Practice of Painting' I feel that my work on Drawing 1 in info ring my current work so this exhibition although specifically a drawing exhibition does have relevance to my current studies. I have only selected a few of the works on display to talk about here.
We were accompanied on the visit by OCA tutor Bryan Eccleshall who posed a few questions, asked us to keep an open mind and helped us to try to articulate our thoughts on various works. I was particularly interested to listen to the prize winner which was a purely audio submission by Alison Carlier and to try to understand how an audio submission could be a drawing.
So I stood in the corner of one of the rooms in the gallery under a white triangle fitted with speakers listening to a description read in a very un-expressive and calm female voice. The description was of vessels. Roman pots I later learned from reading the catalogue - the descriptions were not created by the artist but were read aloud from a text cataloguing finds from an excavation of a Roman settlement. The voice had a relaxing effect such that I found it relatively easy to close my eyes in this public space and focus on the moment and the description.
So was it a drawing? I'm not sure. What I do know is that in listening to the description, a visual image formed in my mind. It was almost as though I was creating the drawing in my own mind and the process was quite absorbing. Drawing can have an essentially descriptive function which certainly these spoken words also had. Maybe this work only becomes a drawing in the visual sense through its interaction with a viewer/listener's mind? I was quite surprised by how vivid the images which formed in my mind were. Or maybe a drawing doesn't necessarily have to be visual at all?
Very close to this sound piece was a piece which could be related to the winning piece by the fact that it describes a vessel. In this case Medicine Bottle II by Shaun Dolan I found elegant in its simplicity. This is a blind drawing of the vessel in question created using a single continuous line without looking at the paper. I was astounded by the fact that this was a charcoal drawing as it was so clean and precise in its line with no smudging whatsoever that I had assumed that it was an ink drawing. Blind drawing is something I regularly like to do myself because I love the lack of hesitation it allows and therefore the quality of line produced.
At the other end of this same room were two charcoal drawings by Katie Sollohub viewed in the link via the 'We are OCA' Blog. These were observational drawings of everyday objects such as tables and chairs, but not pedantically drawn so tending towards abstraction. There was a smudgy messiness about them. Evidence of drawing and redrawing as well as drawing into the charcoal with an eraser. There was a great energy about these drawings. It looks as though they had been drawn very quickly in response to what the artist was looking at. It looked as though the artist had really attacked the paper with gusto. I lived the sensation that I could feel the artist's energy and almost see the artist's hand in the work. The erasures giving multiple lines gave a sort of vibration to these deceptively simple drawings.
One of the student awards was won by Ara Choi's drawing 'Mother 0' which is quite a simple drawing on squared graph paper made using pen and crayon. As such it looks child - like. It could be something drawn absent-mindedly in an exercise book during a boring maths lesson. However looking at it I felt great sadness and a creeping sense of unease. The strange wolf like creature brought to mind the nightmarish imagery of fairytales. Coupled with the solid brown object which I interpreted as a cupboard or a safe and the title of Mother brought to mind several interpretations. Was the wolf creature the mother? If so was she feared by the child or a fierce protector of the child? Was the child locked in the cupboard to protect her from the the big bad world outside? (the wolf) or as punishment? Or did the cupboard have no such significance. Was it a 'pandora's box'?. None of these interpretations may be anywhere close to what the artist intended but the drawing certainly had an emotional effect on me (which may speak to my relationship with my own mother rather than the work itself). I read the artist's statement in the catalogue :
"In my current practice, I question how an individual trauma can penetrate the levels of awareness within the structure of the unconscious. The condensation, displacement and organisation of psychical intensities occurs while dreaming. This process was described by Freud as ‘the dream work’. The dream work performs an obscure phenomenon with
the distortion of images captured when we experience horror and anxiety emotions. I am interested in how and why the individual traumas are related physically and psychically. My work aims to display a symbolized form of the visual language found in dreams and reality."
So it seems this work has a lot in common with other surrealist artists but it is intended to convey anxiety and trauma in a symbolic way - so in that sense I would say it is very successful.
Another work that I was drawn to was Breakdown by Jonathan Huxley. This was a small charcoal drawing. Not complex, but the few small shapes allow the viewer to construct a narrative in their own mind. I also liked the description of the way the drawing had evolved.
"Breakdown appeared after covering the marks of a previously botched drawing.
In hiding my mistakes I dragged a grey screen over the affair and continued to fumble about with
broken bits of charcoal and a rubber, waiting for something to happen.
First arrived a sort of oval white mark in the centre. It suggested an isolated vehicle. The hood popped open, or maybe the trunk. I say “trunk” because the vehicle had an American look but it was faint in the greyness. A slab of black for contrast became a figure. Somewhat lanky and bent. In attendance of what? A pick up? A drop off?
For counter balance another black mark revealed a second figure. Turned away. A break in communications?
A breakdown?"
One of the student awards was won by Ara Choi's drawing 'Mother 0' which is quite a simple drawing on squared graph paper made using pen and crayon. As such it looks child - like. It could be something drawn absent-mindedly in an exercise book during a boring maths lesson. However looking at it I felt great sadness and a creeping sense of unease. The strange wolf like creature brought to mind the nightmarish imagery of fairytales. Coupled with the solid brown object which I interpreted as a cupboard or a safe and the title of Mother brought to mind several interpretations. Was the wolf creature the mother? If so was she feared by the child or a fierce protector of the child? Was the child locked in the cupboard to protect her from the the big bad world outside? (the wolf) or as punishment? Or did the cupboard have no such significance. Was it a 'pandora's box'?. None of these interpretations may be anywhere close to what the artist intended but the drawing certainly had an emotional effect on me (which may speak to my relationship with my own mother rather than the work itself). I read the artist's statement in the catalogue :
"In my current practice, I question how an individual trauma can penetrate the levels of awareness within the structure of the unconscious. The condensation, displacement and organisation of psychical intensities occurs while dreaming. This process was described by Freud as ‘the dream work’. The dream work performs an obscure phenomenon with
the distortion of images captured when we experience horror and anxiety emotions. I am interested in how and why the individual traumas are related physically and psychically. My work aims to display a symbolized form of the visual language found in dreams and reality."
So it seems this work has a lot in common with other surrealist artists but it is intended to convey anxiety and trauma in a symbolic way - so in that sense I would say it is very successful.
Another work that I was drawn to was Breakdown by Jonathan Huxley. This was a small charcoal drawing. Not complex, but the few small shapes allow the viewer to construct a narrative in their own mind. I also liked the description of the way the drawing had evolved.
"Breakdown appeared after covering the marks of a previously botched drawing.
In hiding my mistakes I dragged a grey screen over the affair and continued to fumble about with
broken bits of charcoal and a rubber, waiting for something to happen.
First arrived a sort of oval white mark in the centre. It suggested an isolated vehicle. The hood popped open, or maybe the trunk. I say “trunk” because the vehicle had an American look but it was faint in the greyness. A slab of black for contrast became a figure. Somewhat lanky and bent. In attendance of what? A pick up? A drop off?
For counter balance another black mark revealed a second figure. Turned away. A break in communications?
A breakdown?"
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