Andy, your last post has got me thinking and has really helped clarify how best to approach my work.
I over analysis my work at points and this leads to a paralysis of output due to overly literal modes of construction. The reason I over analysis, however, is actually the answer to the way I should work. I over analysis because I have a desire and a tendency to seek meaning. I am fascinated by the way images are consrtucted and how this process creates meaning. As such I search for this meaning and attempt, in written form, to convey it. Without sounding arrogant I think the visual analysis of an image, in this style, is my strength.
My weakness is when I analysis my own work and then try and distill and concentrate my findings into a more considered and literal approach. I need to actually return to a more fluid mode of working which mataches my natural tendencies. These tendencies being evidenced in my mode of analysis. I hope this makes some form of sense.
It is perhaps clearer is I elaborate on how I see myself moving forward.
I consider my ideal method of practise to be a poetic one. By this I mean something which seeks for evocation and the intangible, not description and the literal. It is a painterly process if you like, one which looks to find meaning from the process rather than the process being subordinate to meaning.
I have discussed how a painterly history of artists found meaning and direction from the medium itself, and I certainly think I need to recentre my search for meaning in the medium.
However, my work is now also dealing with collage, imagery and a mass of ditritus which I look to bring together. I have some sense of what certain maps, certain marks and certain figures mean and suggest…but I need not search for more than this. Instead, as suggested by ANdy, I should try and put things together in a manner which feels right. Composing things so there is a harmony (or a purposeful discord) between the parts.
The manner in which assemblage artists like Raushenberg and Cornell do this is certainly another strain of potential influence. Having recently been iontroduced, and increasingly growing fond of, painters such as Neo Rausch and Matthis Weischer I tihnk this is something they also do.
With Rausch it seems to be that the parts and brought together in discord and united thorugh overall colour tones. With Matthias Weischer the actual process of visual analysis seems to be what unites his work.
In both cases i think the work is not about specific issues but general truths, allegories adn meta narratives. For Weischer there seems to be a direct link back to Analytical Cubism, perhaps through the gaze of Hockney?
Anyway…it has made me realise that my work is not about particular issues at the moment, however much certain themes repeat themselves. But it is actually more prosaic. They are images (however weak) which are looking to address how meaning is constructed. My desire, therefore, is to create images which hover between clarity and nonsense, so that any meaning remains elusive and intangible but seemingly there. I suppose it is back to the old cliche of being both about something and about nothing at the same time.
If this post seems a trifle lost then I am not to bothered. I am done with a need or desire to tie my work down to firmly.
Thank you very much Andy. A little light has come on.
ps Was interested to know what you thought of my new work when you saw it? Were you disapointed?
