Lost In translation
Key words: Strange landscape: Translation, Substrait.
I’m back on the paddles again, diluted ink on paper. On the MA I made an animation of different ink rendered paddles morfing together. It was very satisfying visually and conceptually worked with the research I was doing.
I am keen to progress, to move forward with the art work I am doing and don’t want to regress and fall back on ‘old tricks’, yet at the same time a lot of the work made on the MA feels untapped, barey explored, meriting more attention.
I want to find a different protagonist to the paddle. (for fear of being overly repititious and monotone). I can’t quite identify it yet some but some how it’s key to the narrative of this next work. The best way for me to discover work is to do work, explore the materials and not think too tough before I start.
Bleeding different inks across different media gives different results. No shock there. But as I work I am exploring in more minutia there’s minor details, trying to tease the narrative out of myself. Gauche doesn’t give good greys. Khadi doesn’t bleed well. But at least I’m making.
The paper matters too , well the background really, the first drawings had been made in a sketchbook with off white ivory paper, which I find I prefer to the stark bleached white of regular paper. The ink too has a significant role to play, how it bleeds the greys and it creates and the textures too.
I make a couple of hasty drawings and find qualities and flaws in both. Somewhere there is a beautiful drawing that carries more of me and less of me. That speaks in delicate tones and emphatic statements.
As I work, words come to mind.
Some strange landscape
Familiar yet foreboding
in its obscurity,
and troublesome in navigation
A land of deep/broad marshes
dense with reeds, vegetation,
brooding waterways and darker secrets.
Where the sun can be lost
in a cauldron of murky clouds,
born of midnight and memory.
Narrow paths lead to nought,
yet still trod..
Moisture hangs in the cool air,
breath of the land.
Birds ascend and descend
in the partial day.
I also wonder how these could become prints, what freedoms and control I have. Also should I paint a ground on the paper? To get the off white/cream or even a deep indigo to recieve a stark white drawing…now if only I could remember where I put that super white paint.
Other renderings that occur to me are to do this in aerosol, mystic black a translucent paint that applies thinly but can be built up in layers.
I need more paper to test on. Long narrow strips - that could be stitched together in sections. There is Something key about stitching the sheets together. I don’t know why but I like the break in drawings that the gutter of the sketch book gives. A breathe. A pause in the beat. A tangent of the substrait. How the ground and air can influence the passage. How the vertical leads the horizontal. Or the sacred influences the flesh.
Also ratios are important. White to grey to black on the paper. 1/5 white 2/5 grey 1/5 black.
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(((As a foot note I came back to this drawing the next day and found I liked it much more than the day I made it. What I had thought was the wrong paper and paint - has become a preference…for now))).