PART 1 ASSIGNMENT 1
Self assessment
As I begin writing this short self assessment, I find myself in the situation of virtually ‘flying solo’. My previous two courses, Major Project and Contextual Studies, have not been assessed because of lockdown and at this moment there is no date as to when that assessment will happen. The usual excellent guidelines from OCA in the course notes become irrelevant in finding exhibition spaces, as they concentrate on physical spaces, although much of the overall approach to curating an exhibition can always be appropriate, even during a pandemic. But I’m finding that these conditions are not inhibiting me at all. It simply begins the process of finding independence as a practising artist, understanding your work and where you want to take it. So ‘flying solo’ is here…!
My painting has continued to concentrate on ‘listening’ with the sonic landscape being the focus of development. There has been considerable experimentation during this period in my search for the soundscape of the garden – sculptural pieces using wire, fabric, paper. This departure into a different media has been significant, I feel, in the development of my painting. By spending time with a variety of new and different media, I’ve seen a greater depth evident in my painting. This has surprised me, I must admit, but it has revealed something important about the creative process. The exploration into 3D seems to have produced depth and dimension into the 2D image.
Further exploration has been happening in this search as I’ve been looking at abstraction as opposed to representation. Part of our garden has been left to grow wild and this year we have enjoyed a field full of buttercups and daisies and I couldn’t resist painting them. This raised the questions about the sonic landscape and whether abstraction left the viewer free to access the sound of the natural world, undistracted by the physical landscape.
So I can honestly feel that these months of lockdown have reflected and continue to demonstrate the words from the course notes “…the studio is a laboratory”.
Throughout this time I have continued to think about space for showing my work, trying to think ‘out of the box’ in these very strange times. I like to work from the positive always so I’ve been thinking around what ‘I have in the house’ and not what I don’t have. So I have:
- A lifetime of experience with children and education
- A very beautiful garden with space
- A virtual world for exhibiting paintings
- 12 years’ worth of work from the OCA course
- A growing connection with other creatives
I reckon this is not a bad starting point for developing an interesting and perhaps innovative final exhibition.