Yellow flowers shoot out by the creek, floral neutrinos spewing forth in circular whizzes.
Approx: 6x10"
Pen and watercolor on tracing paper on watercolor paper.
We cannot look back or we will dissolve with it like so many pillars of salt on the breathy air.
Approx: 5x7"
Graphite, pen, watercolor and acrylic on vellum on watercolor paper.
what I have been thinking about:
direction, position.
T.S. Eliot's phrase "undisciplined squads of emotion.
names-naming and being named.
circles, whirls-neutrinos, flowers that swirl towards the sun.
water. breathing.
trees, seeds, flowers-how they relate to people, sex, relationships, emotion.
repetition of natural shape and form in human invention.
making work about people while in a removed environment-where the two mix.
6 comments:
Systems and Memory.
I really like these. They look the way a memory feels in that they are layered, have no specific beginning or ending, and are hushed or muted. Crits online are difficult because not having the thing in front of you can really make the work fall flat (I gave Syd a hard time about that an now I'm thinking that was kind of rough). What I was going to say is that I wish I could see more variation in the pen work on the top layer however, we know what happens when images are scanned or photographed.
I think that this is an excellent direction to be headed post your Sr. show. I adore that double arrow on the top right of the one of you and your bro. yay. good.
What if these were super thick? like 50 layers? What if they were a book...not to rip off lauren too much. I feel as though they stand as snap shots of memory or even (in the case of the flowers) a snapshot of a thought process... I would like to see more of the thought, more of the memory. I feel like it's lacking a narrative or something. Right now I'm looking at the orange painting from your show; it has a narrative. It's grounded in the figure painting narrative (which I don't know...that's not super important but it's a starting point for the viewer) then it gives clues: a house, a crossroads...I know that this painting is about the history of that person in the painting. you do this a bit in the drawing of you and your bro, the arrows are the best indicators as well as super interesting...there is an arrow connecting him and you and then a bunch of arrows swirling in his skull...all the other major angles are pointing to his head as well. Perhaps I'm wrong...I just dictated the intro to a mini narrative just by looking at the systematic nature of your arrows. Keep giving us clues Elly, we'll catch up.
"know what happens when images are scanned or photographed."
I'm not saying that there is no way around this, a good photographer might know how to fix all of this... but the only photographer we know is out getting drunk at the moment.
i definitely concur with jamie in that these are a nice segway from the thesis exhibition-more intimate-which aids in the nostalgia/memory concept. and now that she mentioned in i am pretty much obsessed with the idea of making them 50 pages or so. yeah. the layered portions are what suck me in-i go past the initial/top layer of drawings-though i do love all the arrows.
these are very nice-keep going and don't pressure yourself-just let them flow.
HA! Ok, we need to divorce the words "Eleanor" and "Memory."
That said, thanks. Let us converse. The piece with the familiar images, of Owen and I, of that dripping pattern, the compass is more formal that anything though I am interested in composing by breaking things apart, using parts of wholes.
I am more interested in the other piece. Hard to see, I know! One of the layers is a figure, a re-drawing I did of a friend two years ago and again, those directional arrows aligned with the body and the flowers. This is the piece I am working to further...what are your thoughts?
carry on! I mean they do seem memory like to me (because of all the stuff I said before) so if you really wan to break away from that...uh... how?
Well, funny enough,Jamie's comments were right in line with what I was thinking, and then I read your response about memory and your push/pull relationship with it and your work... oh well, it's true though, these pieces, due to their layering, the obscuring, the fogging... it all does speak of memory. Or, perhaps, depth and complexity, more than memory... simply the idea that one moment has a lot of layered depth to it, a lot of past that builds up behind it.... or is it the other way around? are we looking at a past moment and looking forward, through the layers, to other elements that are yet to come? hmmm I like that. I'll drink to that. Your consistent use of arrows tends to propel this reading of movement forward or backward in time, or in depth.
And I definitely agree about the difficulty of critting work like yours, or Sydney's, in an online format, simply because both of you are working with 2-D layering that is difficult to depict in photographs. Yes, there are ways to light this kind of work for documentation, but it's labor intensive and probably not worth doing until you are ready to archive and exhibit the finished work.
That said, there are a lot of things I'd want to say only after seeing these in person, because I'd want to experience how the layers actually "work" in person-- does the opacity/visibility fluxuate with breeze? Or are they framed and pressed to a certain opacity? For instance, I didn't even see the figure in the first piece until you mentioned it was there, and now I'm really intrigued with how much you would want to "allow" us to see that figure... how do you control visibility between the layers? (via framing, or via taping or gluing certain areas closer together than other areas? or using spacers to stretch visibility in certain parts?) You're familiar with Zach Kleyn's multi-layerd pieces, I'm assuming? I don't know much about how he constructed those, but seeing them again might give you some ideas.
I am really drawn to the sense of quiet and a little current of sadness that goes on in your work. Of course I would be drawn to that, that is how my work is often described, but I think it gives the viewer an emotional tone and a space to approach the work within. I don't know all the backstory about you and Owen (just what you told me during your show crit), and I don't know anything about the figure depicted in the first one, but the work gives me a lot of emotional cues to understand the tone of the backstory / content.
I love the list of things you're thinking about... swirling, breathing, circulating, the relationship of those kind of movement patterns in nature with those kind of movement patterns within our bodies physiologically and emotionally... that comes across quite strongly in both pieces so keep working with those themes.
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