January Show and tell

There were six of us at today’s meeting and most of us had pieces of work brought in for various reasons, such as advice, guidance and appraisal within a positive critique setting. The commentary, discussion and interaction flowed easily and naturally leading to constructive ideas for our techniques and practice. One of the noticeable aspects of the presented works was the variety of styles ranging from, townscapes, gardenscapes and abstract landscapes to life drawing and pure abstract.

Vivien was searching for a way to represent a wide ranging view of hillside and town in a semi abstract fashion without losing its identity. Similarly Catherine was considering ways of making her already abstract local landscapes more abstract while still recognisably a landscape of her Pennine foothills.

Jane also had the same aims of merging abstract and realistic images for her life drawings and will elaborate on this along with Christine, who is on the same mission, at a further session of show and tell.

Sumi brought in her garden drawings which she had simplified into several smaller squares, using a viewpoint finder, then reassembled in different combinations. The aim was to disassociate the original and look for marks, contrasts and possibilities offered by improbable/probable pairings.

I submitted my scribble sketchbook and referring to photos on my iPad found that, whilst explaining how my abstracts evolved, I clarified and unscrambled my practice as much to myself as to others.

The common theme to take away from today and clearly emerging from our discussions was that we should keep doing what we are doing and keep developing our works in progress. In short “Stick with it”. I have found that a useful quote from the book “Art and Fear” which seems to sum up this message is “Expectations based on the work itself are the most useful tool the artist possesses. What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece….. The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work, you only need to look at the work clearly without judgement”.

My feeling is that this advice works at its optimum strength when we have dialogue, input and work within a group of other like minded and also diverse artists as we do.

Post Scriptum:- Then I found another quote which seemed fitting from Rick Rubin,

“A work of art is not an end point in itself.

It’s a station on a journey.

A chapter in our lives

We acknowledge these transitions by documenting each of them".