Over September, I have contemplated the artwork I looked at in July, in the Sheffield Museums stores, and in the Graves Gallery. I have gathered them together, printed out, and pinned them on my studio wall.
I was fortunate enough to be awarded a ‘Looking Forward, New Dialogues’ Sheffield Museums commission, to produce work to be shown at the Graves next year. (My own ‘yes’ email, my own acceptance that took a while to land–I write by reflecting directly on my own experiences!)
Ordering the images on the wall by responding to the position of the shoulders, head, and eyes, I’ve created some image clusters. There are two lines of sitters, that I might merge into one continuous line through my drawing of them. By making the eye position a key compositional point, something of the gaze becomes enhanced or revealed. You can see the eyes look out–at something? The artist? The middle distance? Or disconnected from the outside and lost in thought? I think that I will render each artwork into a drawing of the figure isolated from the background, and sitting in a row, audience style.
Other artworks detail the full figure performing or involved in action, and I’m still thinking about how I handle those.
By clustering these figures together to put them in relation to one another, and disavow context or time, I wonder what happens? All of these figures have in common that they are the subject of an artwork. In terms of creating titles, there are a few phrases I’m sitting with: ‘the subject of art history’, ‘the muses are watching’/’the muses are watching you’, and ‘the muses’. I don’t know how these phrases will evolve yet.
September in the studio has been about gathering, reflecting, and seeing. Sitting with not-knowing. It’s delicate, the time of not-knowing, because it can invite in doubt. But not-knowing can also invite in inspiration, and fresh thoughts and research. For this new body of work, I’ve wanted to suspend what I know and think, I’ve resisted bringing in what I already think–which could be a convenient starting point. Instead, I’ve favoured not knowing, to see what washes up, to see what these new figures on my wall want to teach me. And next, in October, I’ll begin to make, and materialise, and I’m curious to see what that process brings.
Thanks for reading along. I often think that being an artist and being in a studio is such a rich experience. I enjoy slowing down and writing about these modest observations, feelings, and areas of growth that are all too easy to overlook.
Studio Stories, September