Saturday 28 July 2012

Change of Pace



Two things have happened forcing me to change things up a bit.

First, it has been the heat. We’ve been having a stretch of warm temperatures in the +30 to 33 or so degree C range. And often muggy. With the humid-ex it’s at times been like +44 degrees C! Now, I’m not complaining as I’m appreciative of every degree of warmth we can get. Winter is coming too soon. But it sure is tough on my plants. But I digress, with this kind of temperature it’s been very tough getting much of anything done in the studio. You see, it's on the second floor and no air conditioning! I’ve been able to spend not more than two hours at a time there these past 3 or 4 weeks. One time I arrived to discover one of our artists was firing something in the kiln! So much for doing anything that day!

So, what can one do if you cannot go to the studio?

The second thing that has happened is that I had already determined I needed to slow down and go through a more reflective and studied way of formulating ideas and creating my pieces. Due to the short time I’d had available to create a body of work for my first showing at the Mennonite Heritage Centre, (Seven months to be exact!) I’d been so focused on simply creating whatever came to my head in a big hurry. There were only a few pieces that I’d actually done a “study” of the idea before tackling the piece for the showing. For others there were some rough sketches at best, but for most of them I just began the piece and made adjustments, decisions and corrections as I went along. Well, now I had time to do exactly that, reflect on my future pieces. The pressure is off. I now have a body of work. I decided to make a list of works I want to do, prioritise them and begin thinking and working on them one by one.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, I went to see Norman Rockwell’s brother talk about Norman’s work and the process he went through to create his paintings. Let me put it this way. He was to create one painting per month, 12 per year. Of the 30 plus years he worked at this he managed it in only two of those years. Usually, he made only 8 or 9 paintings a year.

It is clear that I must pay much more respect to my subject, consider it carefully and give it all the creative consideration I can. I must feel that I’ve done my best at each level of the process and that I’m ready to go on to the next, till the piece is done. What I need to do and how long that takes will be different for each piece, but it must be “enough” for me in my thinking. Let me also say, this is still a learning process for me as I cannot even say today what the steps I should really do to create a piece.

For example, above you see a quick sketch of an idea. I have been asked to speak and show some pieces at a lecture series on “Forgiveness and Mental Health” in Oct. What kind of piece would I do for that event? As I considered this I could not help but of think about king Saul, the demonised king who "tutored" David showing him all the things you should not do to become a prince and a king. You may remember the series “Game of Thrones” on TV. I saw possibly one or two shows of that series, but I was very impressed with that throne made of swords. In thinking of this theme I remembered how Saul was unforgiving and how slowly the roots of anger and bitterness took over his mind. He became moody, depressed and angry. Remember David played the harp to sooth him during his fits. Once Saul threw a spear at him trying to pin him to the wall! Well, what if I did an example of “un-forgiveness” with Saul sitting on a throne, not of swords but of roots, roots of bitterness, which he’d made a throne of in his life. Meaning bitterness ruled his life and was the reason for his destruction. Just to hammer the point home, I though I'd also give him a satanic snake head, shades of the garden of Eden.

So, I already know I need to do more research and more sketches for this project. You see, I need to know what he should wear. So there is research to be done. Plus some other nuances, like the roots wrapping around his arms and legs would be interesting. 

Now, you know this is just the beginning of the process. When I know what I need to do next I will let you know.

“Desire without knowledge is not good-
          how much more will the hasty feet miss the way”
Proverbs 19:2 

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