Sketching and meditating

From doing my sketch a day I have come to the realisation that you can pretty much draw anything and make it look interesting.  The personality and drawing style of the artist creates interest.  It is also all about what you leave out, the palette you use, if you colour at all and the composition chosen.  

How you present a collection of drawing is also important, the collection should say something and you need to be clear what you are trying to say when grouping paintings.  If you take a look a my drawings a day I have begun to see groupings in subject matter, that could easily be taken out and a separate blog made.

Taking about the drawings blog, It has been a week since I have drawn anything, so will rectify that today.  Been feeling a bit low, and despite the fact that I know drawing will help with my mood, I avoid doing it.  I must muster some willpower when I feel like this and not think so much, just do!  Although saying that I have just started doing Zentangles.  These are a bit like a doodle but with more structure to them , they are a way of meditating throught drawing.  I have always been a bit rubbish mediating, as I cannot still my mind, it always goes wandering.  However with drawing I can focus on just that task and get lost in the moment.  See example below.

This is day 6

@ The British Museum

Collecting ideas for work on the woodwife.  Looking at ancient Britain and Roman Britain.  Pottery urns and amphoras are a great shape.  A lot of the items discovered were in burial sites , possessions sealed into a tomb or earth mound for the afterlife.  These groupings tell a story.

Questions to ask myself.  

Do I want to create representational 'vessels'

Or vessels/objects that would have been used.  

Think about the historical links to a vessel shapes.  Does not have to be ancient history.  Think Steven Dixon's oil can work - references political power.

An urn is linked with death.

Chalice, with religion.
Ceremonial vessels are a good area to follow for this projec.  Each vessel would demonstrate an area of power they had/represented.

Animal form is also a good area to explore.  There are links with shape shifters or spirit forms in certain cultures.  Hern the hunter, linked with the wood /green man.  Identify an animal that represents each form.  Could also look at one self and try to identify an animal form that could interact, placed with others..  For want of sounding new age hippy this idea is linked with spirituality.  

If one thing today has taught me is that, collections and how they are show is important.  

All that aside, I am sitting in the magnificent inner court if the British museum having a cuppa.  This place is magically.  So much history under one roof it is just overwhelming ,  but the modern architecture linked with old, is spectacular.

Before getting a cuppa I went into the Enlightenment gallery, which formed the basis of the BM collection.  A real cabinet of curiosity from around the globe, what a wonder to behold it must have been back in the 19th century.  Well it still is a wonder , even in this modern world we live in.  

At 5.30 the museum started to close, so went into the Contemporary Ceramic Centre which is literally across the road.  So many well known potters and ceramicists in here as well as people I have not heard off.  Such diversity.  I still love the painterly pots of ..... , so expressive.  

Food for thought.  The trouble is I have so many ideas that I want to try out I do not know where to begin, but that is why the research statement is so crucial and it proves the ground work and direction. 

For now though I want to explore simple large cylinder forms which allow me to draw on the outside, using my daily sketches as a starting point.  Or perhaps start sketching  journey's to get some narrative to the vessels.

Magnificent obsessions@ the Barbican

A very fascinating collection from a diverse group of artist.  It was worth coming just to see the small collection from Edmund da Waal and the Hare with the Amber eye.  Superb collection of Netsuke.

However one of the most thought provoking pieces for me, not from content, but by the fact an artist, Dano Wo, bought the life time collection of American kitch and chinese objects by the artist Martin Wong after Wong's death and turned it into a piece of art named I M U U U R 2 (2013) and exhibited it the Guggenhiem.  I have to confess that I was shocked by this because it is someone else's lifetime of effort and interest, presented as an art work by someone else.  This seems strange to me.  

I suppose when you think about a Collection, aren't they a grouping of objects made by other people and presented as the collectors own effort.  Certainly without Wo's intervention this collection of objects would undoubtably been lost forever and we would not get to see the influences the objects had on Martin Wong's work.  Dano Wo has also spent a considerable able amount of time cataloguing this work, but does that make it a piece of art?  This whole discussion leads to Grayson Perry's book, Playing to the Galley and what is art?  Is art what we say it is?  Further reading on this required.

Back to the exhibition itself, I felt some of the collections are a wonder to see,  and for me this is, in no small part, because of the way they are displayed and the singular nature of the collection.  Take the Pae White's collection of printed textiles they have focus and the common link which gives it merit to viewer.  Perhaps because as a viewer you can see a reason for the collection which may feed the work the artist, for others the collection is more obscure, it just looks like a you have walked into a charity shop.  The obsession for collecting was clearly the compulsion to acquire pieces that were liked but put it all together in a pile and it either looks like a cluttered room or junk.  So for me the way the work is displayed is important,  there needs to be a sense of order to see the collection in full.
 Circling back to the collection of Martin Wong, where it has been ordered this works as a collection me, ignoring my misgivings about who has 'presented' this to me.

It would be interesting to listen to the app to see what the artist themselves have to say about their collections, why and whether it has influenced there work.  However, I had trouble connecting to the app.   Will try at home and update post if I have any further thoughts.

Check out the Creative Review comments on this exhibition @ http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/february/magnificent-obsessions

Here is my sketch from the cafe at the Barbican.