photos and walking

today i went walking around my hood again. It was curious to work out that the plastic sheeting in the rubbish tip areas are actually tent like structures that people sleep in. Found taking photos okay. People were generally friendly and i didn't feel threatened - people are really nice.

I like the hand made structures for drying clothes. like how things are tied. Like how they unintentionally make abstract paintings of layers of found board or tape over holes. purpose - where i just see abstract art.

Got confused again;

I wanted to paint or draw representationally again
maybe just draw bits that i like - like the repeated patterns of lamp post things, or the weave of the baskets, of observational drawings of tied things, like the elastic that they use.

Wanted to make things myself - but also want to draw stuff in a traditionally way - like colour and like mixing paint - but not sure if I should be painting of just taking photos??

I think way too much - and should be reading what other people say when they think about their practice.

I don't care that re looking at modernism is done to death. - there is more for me to do and that's all that counts.

interested in humanism - but I'm sort of a hypocrit - i don't like people really their mental space is too heavy on my brain, i like thinking about what they have left behind - their objects.

reading

Just reading Myth: A very short introduction by Robert A. Segal.

On page 41 he talks about I - it and I - thou distinctions. As how we currently see the world as an 'it' not a person, but how in the past we saw the external world as a person. How interesting to think about this in the currently climate of using up the earths resources and pollution. Maybe we should start again to think or  consider the world as a person that has needs and something we should respect, perhaps be fearful of as our negligence may cause the world to react negatively to us.

also linking to the French philosopher whos name I've totally forgotten who wrote about the modern city and how we conduct ourselves in the city scrificing our freedom for this imagined 'other' - this myth of the city as a person.

Big things or Small things

Been thinking about big gestures. The grand colour field paintings of abstract expressionism. Can't do it, tried it just doesn't fit with what I like. Feel like my works should be big but with pieces of paper and small lines they don't look right, they look tried to hard or pictures of pictures.

feel freer about making at the moment.

liking non functional things that look like they have a sort of purpose.

I like agnes martin but not the big paintings.

Feel like I should look at Richard tuttle again. - i like paint and I like paper, and wood and bits of string.

I don't to be avantgarde but backwards. Something old and reused - something stayed. I like rusted things. Everything is new - everybody is buying new reusable bags. I don't see old bags - just new reusable ones.

bits from today and bits from yesterday

this one was drawing a large square then drawing a smaller square inside then rubbing out the larger square. 

it's too light and not interesting enough - too much field

I like this 

but there to still two ideas in it and I want one 

like the way the lines of the curved ones don't quite meet - this is another work 

still not sure - don't like the circles maybe too distracting from the lines

i can't see this image - but think it is the black one - i like it - but it's too field and not enough diagram 

basically this is made by sticker a white piece of paper down then going over with pen 

i was interested in the bit when the pen went off the edge of the paper 

this one i prefer especially for the little corner at the bottom of right does so much so simply 

need to do more with lines around the white paper 

levels 

this one i really like 

but isn't a diagram so not sure about it 

lines look like something else but not sure what at the moment 

drawing / photography / internet

photography cuts rectangular shaped holes from the world

drawing floats in a space that isn't of this world - our cerebral space - a space that believes that acts as if it is untouchable by the physical world

the internet is the same as the drawing - images float on pages - in a space that is protected by screens (we look at it through computer screens - inside this protected infinite heaven space - a space where we believe we can live forever - that's why facebook accounts of people who have died are so strange so incomprehensible - i don't want to see them because it confirms my mortality even in this space where life appears to be infinite.

practice

just thinking about making 

so many things to cut down on

into fleshy crapness of paint at the moment 

diagrams rock 

trying to do one idea at a time 

some of them are still too many things going on 

but trying to maintain the agency of the diagram and not just be purely formalist though i am interested in the formalism of it - but there has to be the possibility of change - of it causing something 

still so many things to figure out 

i feel as if i am trying to bring the disparate bits of my practice together 

feeling positive about it 

some drawings seem pretty - i'm really unhappy about this 

still got to figure out about border - edges 

i like photography's crop - and like how drawings float in space - but want to try out some lines where they reach the edge of the paper 

this also allows me to bring in the photographic abstracts too - 

how could i make them real? physical? 

reading about modernism or new modernism - not sure what i think - 

i'm happy with how my practice is going so that is the main thing

i'm not interested in being perpetually avant garde - if this has already happened (new modernism)- oh well - I'm not a following fashion 

thought about - what work would i like on my walls - tried to make work for my walls 

I just tried to make modernist infinite fields - interesting as it made me realise that this isn't my practice

created a small book of lines - i'm trying to record as many different lines and arrangement of lines 

keep thinking about statements like "ideas abandon too soon" "lacks rigor" - these are motivational and help reflection 

lines

interested in the diagram being an agent of change 

modernist abstracts just be 

like building sites as there is change - temporarility about them 

like the whiteing out of lines as disrupts space of the picture, adds depth but is also on a surface above the line 

like the dotted line as this is something provisional, something that will happen in the future

was trying to get a system with the lines, drawn with a ruler and had to have corner and not touch the other lines

added more broken lines but they looked better whited out 

really like the grey 

reminds me of concrete 

many buildings in the old town have their windows and doors filled in with grey concrete so no one can live in them - to prepare them for demolition

wanted to add red as important 

want to do one with just grey lines - like the fleshy crappiness of the painted lines

think this one as too much going on in it - not sure - may get trashed. 

been looking at blinky palermo and there is a red rectangles on white that he made this sort of relates to that and some other diagrams that i saw

interested in how the dotted lines could be more independent of the red circles 

pleased with the simplicity of this one

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these works are very small 

tried doing some vVERY big ones but this was not right 

have to do them a big bigger but maintain the delicacy of them - the fineness of the line 

pleased with the ones i did when i just left space on the paper instead of filling up the space - made the same work on the big paper but didn't enlarge the lines

interested in complexity but don't want to make fields 

arrow diagrams

  

i like the energy, dyanmism of the arrows - reminds me of deluge by da vinci and gordan matta clarks arrow drawings. 

Can't decided about the "visual pleasure" of them. But, I think too much and now is not a time to reflect or contextualise too much but a time to make. 

they are all very small but may make them bigger - do larger ones with greater range of detail and with some thick and thin lines and lines of different colour or tone. 

Warhol might like it

cut lines instead of drawn lines - getting away from the trace of the human gesture, but still unable to escape from it as the real trace is the cut and the placement.

with the first one I was just exploring cutting and layering. I like how the light made the lines.
with the second I wanted to lift off the surface by adding a different tone - not sure about it here but another avenue to explore.
the third one i like. I like the sparseness but need to have some longer lines - too many of the lines are all the same
with the 4th I wanted to explore density and a bit more energy - prefer in real life holding as you can move it in the light creating different amounts of shadow. In this one it was interesting to cut off the lines that extended beyond the frame [photography's influence]

capitalism and being an artist

Couple of days ago started thinking about selling artwork - why do it?

Throughout history the artist has by and large been subservient to wealthy patrons e.g. Medici. The artist has created artworks that are now collateral in our banks. These banks exist not for the safe keeping of our money but to maintain the status quo, a status quo where the gap between rich and poor is increasing. To take another slant, we proport that life is freer 'the free west' but we at every corner relinquish our freedom, for example the right to demonstrate. I can demonstrate but face possibly deportation, loss of earnings, and none coverage of any medical inquiry arising from demonstrating. I am labelled with many different numbers. My ability to live outside of society is near impossible. It is possible, many we regard as drunks, or drop outs, do live to a large degree outside the regulations of society. A society that is increasingly fitting into the model of a city life. The city with many regulations that control people to a much greater degree than in the countryside.

Now the artist is ever increasingly emulating the business man, or the corporate culture; web site, resume, corporate clients. Public Art, another slant, on how artists serve business. The site on which public art is placed increases in value. Artists themselves move into studios where they are a property developers dream, they again increase the property value and get kicked out for higher paying businesses to move in. Artists again another cog of the capitalist business model.

Even now after the financial crisis, governments are ineffectual in transforming the system to benefit the majority of the populous. There are many compelling reasons to support the financial industry but on a true playing field business that fail should be allowed to fail, (not thrown money at), therefore allowing better perhaps more cautious business to come to the forefront in the situation.

The artist a willing participant in this game of commercialism. I hate private views of my own work. I wait around chat to people, the power is not in my hands. Waiting around for someone to snap up my work. I will know nothing of this rich person who can do whatever they like with my cared for artistic babies. Should i now continue to sell my artwork? Let it be possible colateral in a bank vault? No, maybe I should just give them away to whoever I consider should have them. A real connection. A real exchange.