Last week I visited Tennessee USA, to carryout business for my employer. On my rest and travel day I was taken on a tour of Nashville and naturally sought out the art and culture areas. I’m not such a fan of music venues, being from London we get a lot of those around here. Instead I was more intrigued by Belmont and Vanderbilt campus area and the lovely community around there. I went to the Parthenon where they had an artist on show that I have begun to admire because I feel a sense of affinity.
This week I was doing the final varnish and layering on of skins for my artwork while making sense of what the series should be called and the concept behind it.
This first series has taken me over a year to make and there are over 30 mixed media 7” x 5” (178 x 127cm) pieces in the series. I thought of all kinds of names to acknowledge that the pieces express the underlying complexity and tensions I see in organisational life, as I’ve gone about helping workers with changing the corporate landscape. There is an overall name for the series which is abstract botanicals. But..that would be the more appealing acceptable name.
I was encouraged to hear another artist speak of her work conveying the horror and disgust that she experiences with another phenomena. And I realised that this is what my art is conveying too. Thus although this first series shows bright and colourful, botanical patterns of barely recognisable trees, plants and flowers (apparently I’m good at transubstantiation, necessary for abstract work), it sure ain’t pretty.
I had a few days of annual leave from my 9 to 5 this week. With this time I managed to make a few skins in preparation for bigger paintings and to help finish the smaller pieces.
Experimenting and playing with making skins
I managed to meet up with old friends for lunches and suppers. It was at these events where I later became struck at how much my social world influences or at least threatens to shape what I do with my art.
Cultural references
London Pearly Queen’s 👑 outfit seen while visiting Sommer Town Museum, this week. Triggered our conversations about class, place spaces belonging. It made me think about aesthetic traditions and whose aesthetic is most dominant in the art world and why. I also considered occasions when the aesthetic of the less dominant is allowed to shine and be expressed. I concluded that there is a virtuous story to tell about duty, goodness and working hard that I discovered my art was at risk of being embroiled in.
As I write ✍️, it is the first interval at Sadlers Wells on Saturday 16th September. We just finished watching the first act of The Alvin Ailey dance Roy’s Joys.
Mesmerising clouds 🌨️ on train from Birmingham to London
I got a chance to do some blue sky thinking 🤔 this week on a train ride from Birmingham.
The journey gave me an opportunity to plan some new artwork based on these pictures I took. I was also able to make connections to the paint skins I was creating.
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