This is part of a new series of work. It’s not that far off from what I’ve been doing over the last several years. What I needed to find was a way to keep the work challenging. I had reached a place that the work was so easy to do that it felt almost formulaic. I tend to run when things get that easy and have at times changed my entire visual vocabulary to avoid it.
I’ve been getting lots of shit from my good friend Mark Zimmermann among others, that I was onto something important. Here I was seemingly walking away from work that had been well received. I had been experimenting and was in danger of completely changing up again. The bad part of doing that is that as an artist you seem inconsistent, with such wide swings of visual change. In my mind it’s clear as day why I go from one side of visual space to another. Mark wasn’t wrong when he said that I had to be consistent, but I still needed to find a way to keep myself challenged. I need to feel good about the work. Those experiments were a journey that allowed me back to this work. It feels familiar but with in the way a new place feels familiar.
By breaking out of single image, I’ve found my frustration threshold again. It takes a number of iterations to get to the final destination. So, after a couple of years of both not having a proper studio and searching for the challenge I’ve landed on my feet once again. These pieces seem to take much longer to make, but the reward is fully there. That makes it worth it.
I know that feeling of needing to be challenged and yet consistent. Interested here by your choice of “breaking” the format of the canvas , is this to relate more to the subject/scene or to be more a reference to the works on paper? Also would love to know what scale these are?
Looking forward to the next chance I have to see you and the new work in person as I know digital while great lacks in translating the works to their fullest potential.
-Tamara