A jumble of objects and shapes, some floating, some resting upright and some perhaps laying flat and seen from above? Or maybe they too are floating. A jacket or coat presents the largest mass, and its position suggests it is being worn, perhaps it is in motion? The arms are positioned as if they hold a purple, faceted rock, though no hands are seen. A mask hangs behind the jacket, where a person’s face might be. It regards the viewer, confronts them, staring blankly towards them. The disks — plates? — behind the mask suggest eyelids in the face behind the mask. A box floats to the right, flung open, and circles spill outward. coins?

The painting suggests the memory of objects. Not a still life, but an array of objects occupying a space in the mind, and recalled in no particular order as memory moves from one to the next and back again.

Table of Contents

• Reflection
• Inspirations
• Process
• Reading

Reflections

This is completely unlike how I would “normally” paint. Enjoyed the process, as it forced me to step back, and be thoughtful and intentional. I find watercolour to be very unforgiving, and this work required me to negotiate with the medium in a very different way than oil or acrylic.

I’m not ‘sold’ on the disks. They descend into decorative, though I think the repetition of the circular motif between them and the ‘coins’ gives a balance to the whole. Before stamping in the coins, the painting felt off.

The amethyst chunk was challenging, and feels a bit out of place — its level of detail is higher than the rest of the painting, perhaps?

Pulling on the thread from the Surrealists was a lot of fun and very freeing. I am reminded of tutor feedback for my drawing Symbols of Office from Drawing Skills, where they pointed out a surrealist bent in some of my work. I’m also reminded of Flat Packed Scissors from Practice of Painting, though this new painting is more successful I think?

Inspirations

The inciting idea for the assignment occurred very quickly at the start of this section, and I rolled it around in my mind as I was working on the other exercises. The idea is a straightforward one: I have a collection of objects, independent of each other, but collectively are things I’ve had with me for decades.

• My grandfather’s RCMP peacoat came to me when he died.
• A piece of amethyst I picked up from a mine in Thunderbay when I was ten or eleven.
• A plaster mask I made when I was twenty
• Plates my mother bought in some china town somewhere, in the early eighties, and then gifted to me when I moved out.
• A collection of bottles my husband dug out of the floor of his old home and brought with him when we moved in together.
• A decorated wooden box my mother’s grandmother gave her, and then she passed on to me.

I’ve been reading André Breton — a painful exercise for this Software Engineering brain — but this got me in mind of pushing away from a realistic rendition of the objects. Using line, and big paint brushes, letting my wobbling lines stay put. Drawing/redrawing overtop, etc.

Following on from the reading in the syllabus from Freud, I got to thinking of how personal effects inform something of a portrait.

Could I blend the above in a fictive portrait using the objects? I do not want to create a cold, frozen still life. I want the objects to come together as something; something surreal; something personal.

Following on from my reading, I spent time looking at Surrealist/Surrealist-adjacent artists. I particularly liked Rita Kernn-Larson’s depiction of objects in Den væltede skuffe and related works. I think I can draw a line rather directly between these works and my painting. But more broadly, I found many works where subject matter was “piled together” in overlapping, and perspective-defying ways, reminding me of dream imagery and recall.

Process

Sketchbook

Medium and Pigments

• Watercolour
  • I am trying to lean in on this unit’s message and allow the paint to guide me. My natural habit is to get very close and tighten up. I need to break this. To this end, I chose watercolour & liquid charcoal as my medium of choice.
  • I’m working on paper which will buckle, so I went with stretching the paper on a frame. I’ve never done this before, and had some mishaps: Torn paper, warped stretchers, etc., until I got the hang of it. Good learning here.
  • Purchasing a roll of cold press paper was a smart move, as it was way cheaper than working per sheet and destroying multiple before getting things framed properly.
• Stone-based, and ochre pigments
  • I began my art journey, years ago, with the idea of writing/drawing/hand-painting a comic or graphic novel. Part of that plan was to use stone-based paints in certain parts of the story, echoing story items — though the reader would never know. I want to echo at least part of that here as it, too, is something I carry with me (even if just an idea)
  • Barring charcoal and chalk, all the pigments are natural. I used a mix of commercial and handmade pigments:
    • Daniel Smith Primatek: Amethyst, Blue Apatite, Garnet, and Lapis Lazuli.
    • Rublev dry pigments: Verona Green Earth, Ercolano Red, Blue Ridge Violet Hematite
    • My hand-ground pigments: Australian Vivianite, hand-foraged yellow, red and brown ochres,
  • Dry pigments were mixed with gum arabic to make paint

Support

Stretched Paper: Something I haven’t done before. Stretching paper over stretcher bars. I messed up a lot, but got there in the end. Very happy I purchased a roll of paper, instead of individual sheets. Saved a chunk of money there.

Failed Attempts

Rules

I find my creativity comes together in the constraints I put on myself.

• As mentioned, pigments must be powdered ochres, crushed stone, charcoal or chalk. My palette is heavily restricted. for practicality, allow stone-based paints can be commercially bought — the rest must be dry pigments I mix myself.
• After the initial shape outlines, objects are not allowed in my presence while painting. Everything from memory, calling back to my workshop with Misha.
• Big chunk brushes, to stop me from getting too precious too soon with my brushwork. Smallest brush used: #8 round synthetic bristle.

Intermediate States

I did a bad job of capturing my intermediate states.

• I used my actual jacket to rough in where I wanted pieces to be shown on the support
• In light pencil, I drew each component very lightly.
• The charcoal black of the jacket went on first and stared at the effect for a week.
• I painted in a flat base colour for every object, except the bottles.
• Laying the painting flat, I began working glazes and lines onto the surface, building up the complexity and getting finer detail as I worked further.
• I reached “first stopping point” (below) and further took a bit of space to let the image settle in my mind and to give me a bit of distance.
  • This helped me see that the box was disconnected from the whole.
  • I took another look at the physical box and was reminded of the coins my great-grandmother had put in the box, and that my mother had added to. They are still there. So I went back in with my hand-made yellow and brown ochres, and a plastic bottle top, to make the ‘coins’ scatter onto the surface.
  • I thickened some lines and came back in with the charcoal to create drop shadows, particularly around the mask and amethyst.

Close Ups

Reading

• André Breton (1962) Manifestos of Surrealism. Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane Paris, France: Jean-Jacques Pauvert.
• Sigmund Freud (1909) ‘Family Romances’ In: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud IX pp.235–242.
• Ouellette, J. (2024) What dendritic painting has in common with “tears of wine” phenomenon. At: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/physicists-explored-the-fluid-dynamics-behind-fractal-like-dendritic-paintings/ (Accessed 10/03/2024).