Following talk week I took a small break and didn’t quite know what to do next. In a strange way, the Level 4 lockdown was exactly what I needed. In my optimistic arrogance I only brought home my coloured pencils, thinking the lockdown would only last a week. I had just done a large purge of all my old art supplies and all that remained was a series of more coloured pencils and a small Pebeo travel watercolour set with the standard 1/2 pans, and a large wad of wet-strength paper.
This forced limitation of materials was exactly what I needed to tell me what my next series’ of works would consist of, but it left me with the big question of what my work was actually gonna look like. In a project inherently based in the commute, what does suddenly not being able to go anywhere do to it. After sitting down and messing around with the watercolours to remember how they work, i made a series of small works that I hated. After getting absorbed in the Dnd stream that I was watching (fantasy high for future Becks reading this) i found myself subconsciously drawing the diamond pattern that ive been obsessed with, and i made this.
Then i decided to scale up to A4(ish) on an A3 Page. I used the lid of my DND starter set as a stencil for the size of all of the below works because i really liked the dimensions. Jeena pointed out in our supervision call that my work already has an element of Games and play.
After making this set of slow and meditative works that were really soothing to make, I felt like they needed another layer/ the illusion of another layer. I was missing my figure ground fun. Unfortunately these watercolours were too cheap to layer or mix, so i was really limited to the colours in the palette. However, the light murky purple was the only one i was able to mix that i actually liked.
Ingrid loved “cinnabon” the brown one with the coloured lines (i call them sprinkles) because it creates an energy or movement with the similar but different placement of the sprinkles. As well as the fact that it isnt immediately obvious how it was made.
I remembered last lockdown Jeena had mentioned using a piece of A4 paper and folding it arbitrarily as a shape generation tool. I really liked the idea of the folding of the paper as a sort of “twiddling my thumbs” waiting for the lockdown to end and for me to be able to commute again.
After calling with Ingrid we talked about the possibilities of the figure/ground relationship, and how because I have to paint around the forms because to keep the colours pure the watercolour has to be on white, sometimes i lose the ‘correct’ pattern of the background. Like in the yellow and purple the checkered background gets warped. Ingrid said that “The purple shapes have an agency of manifesting change in the ground” which i really liked. I had been thinking about the ‘backgrounds’ as solid surfaces, but I really love the idea that they’re more like mesh or nets that move and warp as the forms fall on them. More like cloth than a table. I really do think about the pattern grounds as tablecloths but in a cool way not a kitsch way.
Both Ingrid and Jeena like the red paper and mustard and green background one because the lines between figure and ground get distorted. The paper form has a sympathetic similarity with the diamond ground.
These works for me hold wobbly logics – the backgrounds feel warm and organic but without losing the integrity of their structure. Jeena said the works were about “Everyday experiences transmuted through colour and repetitive forms” which i think is a better overarching description of my project than before.
These works let me get immersed in my own head and help draw a divide between my mental and my physical being. Making these works is actually doing for me the same thing that the commutes did. The nature of watercolours and the painterly outcomes is more reminiscent of the subconscious. Spiritually the subconscious is connected to water and I feel that these works are more effectively communicating that connection between my materials and my ideas.
Moving forward I’m going to be further exploiting the borders and the frame within the frame exploration I was doing in my previous works, and I’ve ordered higher quality watercolours so I can get a better colour payoff and bring the bright colour back into my work.
Other things im going to be thinking more about:
- Internal Speed vs External Speed
- Games and Play
- Edges and Borders
- Shape
becks ireland 