Reflecting and thinking

Research both NOSTALGIA and ONTOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Ideas: Laura Owens finding an image, add colours onto the computer, alters the image, screen prints onto canvas, adds textured paints to the surface. 

I just want to talk quickly about Laura Owens... now there are many aspects of how she physically paints that I appreciate aesthetically and I find her work compositionally pleasing. But watching many films about her I don't find her inspiring. When I have listened to many other artists I take something from how they go about their job and the thought processes behind it, but I find Owens misses this. I can't find the depth, there is something, but maybe not enough. She produces so much work and it does, to me, look good, but it doesn't say things. To help me understand why I am going to do a bit of reading around this. For balance a positive essay by the artist David Salle (also nostalgic) and a criticism on this essay and Laura Owens' work.

-> David Salle's article is peculiar because it in some respects critiques the work, and also appreciates it, but even as someone who seems to enjoy it and take Owens seriously he actually states that he is 'left feeling hollow' after seeing her work...

->  Carl Kandutsch finds this support enough for his dismissal of the essay, there are many other reasons too.  But also that if even someone who purports to like the work but considers it childish and leaving him with a feeling of emptiness then surely this is not good art. 

I guess, does art need to fill us up? Or maybe because this isn't what Owen intends it is failing. But I would definitely have one of her paintings hanging in my house, and it does ping of my nostalgia. And is my generation nostalgic because things seemed to be getting so good, and then it didn't....

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/02/08/laura-owens-art-free-fall/

https://abcrit.org/2018/02/07/95-carl-kandutsch-writes-on-terms-of-criticism-for-contemporary-painting-a-note-on-david-salle-on-laura-owens/

Seems to be tricky to use modern pop culture and nostalgia and be taken seriously? What makes her nostalgia less meaningful that another's, maybe she isn't referencing her own things so you don't feel a warmth?

Thinking:

No reason why I cannot screen-digitally print images onto a surface before I paint. 

e.g the solidarity banner, and the palm of hand banner.

Blend patchwork and digi+print or patchwork digitally, like an instagram feed...

Linen - poetry about linen, use of linen, GOLDEN THREAD BOOK, 

Oil on linen - paint with literal oil, oil mixed with spices etc that stain

Tech and craft mix

- scan in table linen or drawings or text

+ experiment with paint on cotton

- what is the subject matter, what is the painting doing

- palette knife painting table linens

See McArthur Binnion - painting over text/documents

Find Descartes Ontology of Everyday Life (I first heard this phrase when someone described the work of Liz Magor, a sculptor whom I admire)

Online visit to her exhibition

'Her art investigates the culture of production and value and the associated ambivalent relationship humans have with consumer goods. '

'Composed of found everyday objects, her allegorical tableaus question idealized notions of nature embedded in modern culture and penetrate the psychology of desire and addiction.'

'Magor’s creative practice starts with forays into thrift stores and second-hand shops. Timeworn and sentimental objects that once made someone’s life more comfortable, added a decorative touch, or served as personal mementos resurface in these stores as anonymous and disparate flotsam.'

'Magor articulates her own take on this culturally ingrained nostalgia by employing targeted material interventions to invent new relationships between things.'

 (http://www.andrewkreps.com/outside-exhibitions/liz-magor?view=slider#2)

(http://www.andrewkreps.com/attachment/en/59bff84cdca83743488b4567/TextOneColumnWithFile/59dfc08facd7504b6efcf811)

https://renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/535/liz-magor-blowout/

ONTOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Drawing of a fragment of plaster with old bamboo illustrated wallpaper which we found under the floor in our house. 

NOSTALGIA

I have also had this idea on the back burner for a while, and I have been investigating this alongside the table linen work, and actually this has taken over somewhat. Trying to understand why I have kept these items from my teenage years, what they mean to me and how they make me feel. Why specifically are they from this time period, rather than say, early childhood. Also thinking about how potentially the effect of both 9/11, 7/7, and then the financial crash '08 have effected how I feel about this time. There was such a feeling of 'the potential' in 97-01, but has this potential gone or was/is it just postponed. 

Nostalgic for objects? For culture? For colour? For painting?

Struggling to find my feet painting, I am worried I might embarrass myself, so I have written down techniques I used to use back in 2002-08 or thereabouts, that I enjoyed using and also I enjoy the works I made then visually. Considering this methods I am working in my sketchbook with paint, making nostalgic references to this time. 

Keeping a digital sketchbook of the items I have retained, or collected. Which in themselves could be compositional ideas.

 

A finished canvas, referencing an image drawn in this period and utilising paint techniques I would have used and 'text-talk'. Text talk arose with the use of mobile phones and in a way because of lack of credit, word count and  typing with your thumbs. The infamous Nokia 3210 came out in 1999 (when I was 13) and it was lifechanging. Of course, I wasn't allowed one...

What makes this non-vacuous, nostalgic pop-culture, or is it just this? What feelings/emotional encounters are there from the use of text language. A time of possibility and positivity, benefits of the internet and forging a path with technology. Being a millennial.

Quilt? Memory quilt, as people make with baby clothes etc. 

It is important to think about memories as fabrication, it is the way we choose to recall information and how we lose this or exaggerate it over time. Things are brought into a new context within current/contemporary settings.

Is it personal exploration or is it for other people?

HOW DOES THE RIGH NOW AFFECT HOW I RECALL BACK THEN?

Current; brexit which has paled into insignificance in light of the pandemic. Trump is out? And replaced with a 78 year old? But we could gain the first black female Vice President.