Tiffin

Working in the medium of painting, writing and video I am interested in learning new processes of formation through a constellation of influences and application. Understanding how to arrange form through different mediums allows for an enhancement of specificity, and at the same time, ambiguity.

Derrida proposes that “(writing=violence=difference) [thus] writing is not a static ‘script’ rather, it is a process, a movement, which institutes difference while at the same time, holding it in reserve, deferring its presentation or operation”(Johnson 41). Text is used in my work is in the form of a fictional correspondence; the writing of Letters. Typed by hand on a manual typewriter, these Letters contain the evidence of their making through visible editing and decoration. The correspondence is punctuated with hand drawn redactions that enhance and extend the text to what can thought of as ‘abstract’ forms or representational reference. These compositional devices serve not to negate pre-existing interpretations of written language, but rather as means to further extend comparison to abstract forms found in painting, picture and otherwise. This alludes to the inherent continuity of the written to the form. The signs within the work “are endowed with familiarity that makes them more than tools at [the viewers] disposal or a text subject to [their] decoding; they are in- habitants of our world, characters that make up a world for us.(Ranciere35)

When working with paint I am seeking to transfer an intent to the viewer that is un-fixed in meaning, however specific in nature. The space of painting can be complementary to the written when focusing on the elusiveness of form portraying content. What is shown to the viewer in undeniable and present, yet continuously unobtainable and negotiable. I see a painting as something that is in constant need of subject matter and this is precisely why I am drawn to it as a medium.

The boarders of a painting are conceptually small due to limitations inherent to the medium, yet philosophically expansive when negotiating the projections that can be placed upon the work. Painting can be used as a tool for thought that can be extremely varied depending on how the work is activated.

One of my recent works consists of thirty six ink portraits measuring 8 x 14 cm. This is an exercise in removed portraiture. Removed meaning that each has been made from memory or the imagined, rather than a live model. In this way of working what develops is a prototype of person; a specific set of characteristics that are set and stable while functioning as allusions to more specified political associations.
 Executed with thick line over top of layers of greyscale washes, the works connect to a cartooned or comic status in rendering; while also maintaining an allegiance to what can be seen as a more painterly handling of material - a ‘looseness‘.
! The gaze of each person, levels of saturation and compositional format all contribute to a way of creating directional pulls within the work that enable this piece to be seen as one large format painting (orientated in portrait position ). The push and pull of the greyscale creates relationships of composition that proceed to map routes of connection between certain characters and their given traits. Every painting within the display consists of a written word and representation of a human face or anthropomorphic characteristic i.e. haircut, mouth, eyes or $ex. The textual component within the work makes use of a name, noun or adjective written on top of each figurative component to function as a way of elaborating or titling each portrait. “Jimmy” is one title while “Focus” is another name. What develops through the relationships of these characters is a landscaping of mood, composition and fictive space.

The oblique method of the naming of these characters can be used as an open door for the viewer to compose and elaborate the relationships the characters have to one another, while also being a way for them to manipulate the overall space within the image. The composition is set through forms and yet unstable through character.

Similar to the way I approach writing and painting, these ink works are an act of deferring a set meaning, while enabling a specific organization and composition of form that can be approached from many angles. I have discovered this work to be a certain node of connection and consideration that shifts between some of the parameters I use in my painting and writing. Borges describes hexagonal galleries filled with shelves of books that go on endlessly and we can begin to see that the construction of ‘the hexagonal rooms are a necessary form of absolute space or, at least, of our intuition of space.”(Borges11).

       So that we may have tangibility and resting points in the spaces our bodies inhabit, we make use in the arrangement of signs to indicate meanings, although we also know that “for every sensible line or straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherencies. My work  attempts to reveal the potentiality through miscommunication and the gaps in attempts at ‘knowing’. What is known becomes constantly undermined by that which is absent or unknown, and perhaps what is ultimately proposed is the potential of creation, with a certain disregard for failure.

       While practicing, in writing or painting , I take my my whole surroundings as aspects that are put into the formation of the work.  Books that I am reading become a tool for me to draw connections to a painter that I am interested in and vice versa.  Through working I am able to further extend a historical constellation for myself and in this sense I am using my practice as a learning device. If I am reading William Blake and looking at Romantic paintings - I start to focus the relationship of Romanticism to the French Revolution, however - I do not prescribe the connections that arise to the status of the work.  

Works Cited:

Borges, Jorge Luis, The Library of Babel Borges, http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/babel.htm

Johnson, Christopher, Derrida , Routledge 1999, New York

Ranciere, Jacques, The Future of the Image, Verso , London 2007

Gertrude Stein

John Barth

William Blake