Post Feedback Thoughts, Research and Drawings.

After a break from the studio over Christmas I have begun the new term with a more research-focused approach, partly due to the research based assignments I have been set, and partly as a starting point for my next body of work.

I have been researching some more philosophical approaches to landscape and perception, reading Landscape by John Wylie, particularly noting a phenomenological view on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970); the artwork changes the viewer’s perception of the landscape, when looking at the work, and also the perception of the land when looking at it whilst stood on the jetty. I had previously dismissed Spiral Jetty (1970) for its ‘American-ness’ and ‘artists’ signature on the land’ nature of it, however when described in such a way as in this book I could see its appeal and purpose as a piece of work.

I have also been reading some of Tim Ingold’s writing about lines (The Life of Lines (2015) and Lines: A Brief History (2007)) and how everything conceivable is made up of lines, causing me to think about this in relation to my own art practice; the walks I take into the landscape creates a line, the marks I make on paper or canvas consist of lines, my thought processes also follow lines and trails of thought, in a sense. I have been thinking more of my practice as a walking practice and as a study or exploration of the perception of a natural landscape in response to these readings.

The feedback I received on my last body of work was very coherent and picked up on many things that I had already begun to pick up on towards the end of last term, such as the idea to take a break from the stretched works I had been creating throughout the past several months due to the restricted that the stretcher could have on my work. Personally, I had been beginning to think of some of my stretched canvas work as potentially repetitive, and was really striving to ensure each work and the thought process behind it was original. To give myself some clarity on this issue I will take forward some non-stretched works to see where this takes me, I don’t have any intention of abandoning stretched canvas works, I just intend to take a break from them and see if they naturally resurface.

Landscape-esque Drawings with Rock

My first drawings of the term, though they were not created with any particular direction behind them, do contain some beautifully subtle hints at landscape. The drawings were done with a piece of soft, grey rock with some slightly ochre sediments in which transferred pigment to the paper very easily, the highlights of ochre suggesting depth of field in the images. One of the drawings was not inspired by landscape imagery, but touched on irony: I drew an image of the grey and ochre rock, using that same rock to draw with, causing the perspective and shape to be skewed, but perhaps this touches on the idea of perception and how my perception of the rock changed as I moved it to draw. Though they do not have much concept behind them, have effectively pushed me to explore drawing as a tool much further and much more thoroughly than I have previously.

Drawing the Rock I am Drawing With

Beginning the new term with a combination of these rock/landscape-esque drawings and my intentions of leaving the restrictions of traditional stretched canvas behind for a while, as well as my book research forming a backbone to my current practice, has pushed me to explore new ideas and approaches to my landscape-based practice. My practice is continually evolving, it is currently moving into more of a study of personal, human, perception and experience of the natural landscape and my portrayal of this, rather than its previous concept as an exploration of landscape and place.