Contents

Reflections

I’ll admit that I’ve never really spent much time considering assemblage vs combine vs ready-made.  I’ve always struggled moving my thinking off the surface of the painting, even when I was going mixed media (with my embroidery experiments).  Moving into three dimensions just hasn’t really been a part of my practice, except at the most tangential level.  

I think I’m seeing a separation in “category” between the three, now, in terms of what they’re trying to do.  Assemblage seems to be sculpture, or moving away from Painting.  They may have painted components, but they aren’t paintings.   Ready-made are firmly on the sculpture side.    Combines, rather, seem to be taking elements from sculpture and bringing them into the painting.  So, combines are paintings even when they invade (or discard) the idea of the picture plane.

Something in Assemblage, and how I’ve got it bucketed, is bothering me around the edges.  Is collage a flat assemblage?  Does this make assemblage a mechanism rather than a medium?  I don’t know.

In the video, Robert Rauschenberg Retrospective, the artist mentions “I wanted to know what not-painting would look like”.  What an evocative line.  I’ll need to think on this.

In the 1998 interview, he says “This is the first piece to move painting away from the wall” (paraphrased).   To my eye, the box and its painted sides, wouldn’t have been a painting to me.  Though as I sit back and look at the paused frame, I could see how you could bend/fold a painting into this shape.   But that seems post-factual, rather than how the artist approached the work.

back

On Rabbit-Ducks and Duck Rabbits

I find it easy to switch back and forth between which animal is shown.  When I let my eyes relax, there is definitely an oscillation as my brain picks up the hints of the other animal and switches focus, but I can also intentionally direct which I’m seeing — so long as I hold my attention, that animal remains in place.

But, is the painting of one or the other? no, its definitely of both regardless of whether both can be present at once.

Thingliness

Throwing some observations down

  • Exercise 1 asks a couple direct questions around a painted/unpainted surface.
    • Spatial differentiation? Yes, in my notes below I see depth of a far wall, and a ceiling above/floor below.  maybe not the landscape/horizon/sky, but not far apart.
    • Is the oil stripe part of the painting? yes.  it changes the texture, the gloss, and creates difference even against the unchanged surface.  I feel like by painting the oiled stripe both it and the untreated section become painting via interaction/difference.
    • And therefore, yes, the unpainted section has become integrated by becoming a distinct ‘thing’ within the work.
  • Exercise 3, or my approach to it, raises a question for me.  When I have painted both sides of a piece, what is the result?   I think I’m back in a rabbit-duck world, where although you can generally see only one side at a time (barring the use of mirrors), the work is the sum total of the sides and the absence of one side is a presence in its own right?  I’m not sure how to word this.
  • Regarding Personal Practice, looking at “Another Theseus…”(see below) through the lens of the exercises from this module, I’m finding direct linkage.  The layered glazes that I’m building on the wall aren’t purely pictorial.  Their point is that the wall is participating in the narrative. I want the wall in the painting to feel like it has history: dirty, maybe peeling, the plaster beneath showing through. The wall as a surface that echoes the emotional distress of the figure in front of it. The material and the story become the same thing.   I think this is what this module is speaking to: when does object and pictorial nature collide and combine (or preclude)?

Gallerist Conversations: Impell Gallery

https://www.instagram.com/impellgallery

The owner of Impell Gallery (Palm Springs) visited my studio yesterday. We spent an hour talking through the work, the Toronto scene, and what’s happening in Palm Springs. It was a useful and grounding conversation.  He was here on the occasion of The Artist Project, a yearly spring show, and looking for new talent to showcase — definitely pleased he chose to visit me!

His feedback was very useful and aligned with where I already want to go: lean further into narrative, and continue developing my use of colour. On the question of subject matter, he noted he’s exhausted by artists who treat figure drawing studies as finished works.  I feel similar, though I do a lot of figure studies, and while people occasionally want to buy them, I find them creatively unsatisfying for exactly this reason. A study is a study; it asks different questions than a painting and it lacks an underlying story of its own.

He responded well to the larger works in progress “Another Theseus, again. Today”(see Personal Practice, below)  and its planned companion piece “Theseus unbothered”.  In particular he was happy to see me working bigger beyond what he has seen of my work prior. Something to hold onto, though I have to take care as I have very limited time to paint and larger works will slow down my ability to build a body of work.   

I have to be careful of comparison and ego, but he specifically said that he loved how I’ve leveraged colour, layering and blending, to create interest in my works.  He finds many queer artists in Toronto have a sameness to them, in terms of their colour choices and repetition, and stated that my work was refreshing against that pattern.

He also pointed me towards a few Toronto, queer centric group show events such as Nuite Rose, and suggested I’m well within the skill level they’d consider.

Reading

Assigned

  • Diana Newall and Grante Pooke (eds) (2012) Fifty Key Texts in Art History. (1st edn) (s.l.): Tayler & Francis Group. [pages 233-238]
  • Animated Theories of Michael Fried (2013) Directed by AVokes97. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f-yny8tVyY (Accessed 08/03/2026).

Self-directed

Other Research Tasks

Artists to follow up on for reasons of course work, or reasons of touching on aspects of my personal practice.   I’ll pick away at these over the next couple weeks.

Critical Review Notes - Notes for later/Pre-planning

In Idea Lab, I followed along an idea of representation in art conveyed class/status/membership via the presentation of the subjects.

I’m wandering around the idea of continuing with ‘gaze’ as a topic.   I’ve pulled a bunch of googling notes together, which may or may not inform the direction I go but are probably useful.    This came about from the “Female gaze provocation” article, as well as episode 750 of modern art notes (https://manpodcast.com/portfolio/no-750-jo-ann-callis/).     Once read through, anything kept will be referenced properly.  Right now, this is  more of a post-it note for myself.

Podcasts

  • https://manpodcast.com/portfolio/no-750-jo-ann-callis/
  • https://talkartpodcast.komi.io/podcast/e5c7af42-9e82-545f-8da1-708aea3d869b

Authors

Artists

Articles

Exercises

Exercise 1: Here and There

I have a hundred photos, like the one of the right, on my phone.   Photos of random spots in the Toronto subway system that catch my interest.  The space defined by rails, and ceiling and dirty wall forms this triple horizontal band.

I’m reminded of these as I look at the canvas in this exercise.  I suppose this is my way of saying I still see landscape.  Yes, I can see the distance forming by the subtle tone shifts and the horizontal transitions.  But, more, I see ceiling, floor and far wall.

Also, the sequential contrasts are interesting in the piece of canvas.  When I look at one section I can clearly see the warm/coolness of its neighbor.  When I step back, it blends together.

 

Exercise 2: Grain Weave and Surface

  • Paints: black liquid charcoal (watercolour), blue acrylic, purple oil paint (direct from tube, and mixed with cold wax)
  • Surfaces: cardboard, linen, thick paper, newspaper (untreated, and sealed with clear acrylic), cork and weather sealing strip
  • Tools: brushes, fingers, palette knives, spatula, pieces of thick paper, fingers
There are definitely a variety of textures here as the materials interact with each other.   I particularly like the blue swirl on the sealed paper, where the brush strokes of the acrylic sealant come through.  Also, how the acrylic caused the cardboard to pucker up like seersucker fabric.   The purple and the left side sunk into the gaps of that texture and made for interesting effects

Exercise 3: Shaped Supports

I’m not one for op art, or abstraction.  This is something I know about myself, but its important to occasionally check in and see what the brushes do after a while.

The outcome I liked the most from this exercise was where I cut out an advertisement from a magazine.  Carefully extracted the model from its background, glued the paper to strong stuff, sealed it and painted.

Here, I painted on the reverse side — I intend to do both sides, as I think that is an interesting dialogue.  First painting on the blank side, then on the printed side.  here, I’m on the blank side.

I wonder what will happen when I have the image underneath and how that will affect my painting.

Thinking about texture and impasto, as well, from this module.  I decided to use thicker paint, and impasto medium.  For some of the paint, I mixed in some sand.  

I struggle with impasto, and I think it is because I’m trying to dive in too big too soon.  Little pieces like this feel like a bridge towards building comfort.  I like the sand effect.

I chose wild colours here, because I neverr paint this intensely.   perhaps I should?

Personal Practice

Continuing on the painting I started during the last project.  Layering in some glazes to manipulate depth, then roughing in my lights.  Lots of work left to do, but I’m enjoying the process.

I’m enjoying the hard spaces in this painting, and the disregard for correct perspective.

Titles will become important later, and I’m starting to take notes around where I want to go with the ‘story’.  “Transformation requires endurance” — which is a quote I overheard, and I need to track down.  “A moment of silence”.

I also got on to thinking about mythological reference, and inparticular the myth of Ariadne.   Following htat theme, this painting is gravitating towards “Another Theseus, again.  Today”.  

There is a companion piece I’m currently planning through, which is seen from the other side of this composition.   “Theseus Unbothered” shows the departing figure as the subject, looking onto the next quest, conquest or what have you.  Still figuring out the details, but I like the conversation it sets up between the two paintings.

Social Media Mutuals

My socials are filled with crazy, creative people.   Much of personal practice resolves around painting my mutuals, and otherwise rendering images that get sent to me.

One of my local mutuals runs a event where he digs up cult classic or indie movies, and hosts them at a local theatre.  It involves costumes, musical sing alongs, drag shows and other insanity.  Anyway, he created a costume for his latest showing of “100s of Beavers” — I don’t think I could describe the movie even if I tried.   

The costume was ridiculous, and his selfies had me laughing.  So I had to paint him.

As I look at this after, it touches on a theme in a lot of my personal works, though in a much more direct/abrupt way: the adoption of identity and the becoming of different versions of ourselves.