Thursday, January 25, 2007

Thoughts on my ARt making for today

Yesterday I spent the first solid uninterrupted day, minus a blog post during my lunch break, in the studio from 10:30 am till 10:30 pm, in a long time. I got so many highs and lows and bites of inspiration and then losing the vision and then getting something altogether different. Time passed painfully slow and then there was no awareness of time. I need me a 12 hour stretch to get real headway and enter that unbridled anything can happen zone of experimentation.

I've been preparing work for the "Girly Show" in L.A. which will be not only fun to take a little trip down South, but to meet some really sweet and judging by our emails sassafrass ladies! Who may or may not being wearing hot shoes and their birthday suits to the show:)
girly postcard

I've been thinking a lot about what my art is about.... and how to pull it together. This show deadline has been great because it is allowing me to break all the school "rules" that I had constructed for myself. I had a heirarchy I'm realizing of what wouldn't go over well in a painting critique, which varied upon the teacher and the class. NO: Illustration like, cute, trendy, words in art if they were discernable, mission style... which is where i began making art and am influenced... you know the wonderful thing is... i have forgotten the majority of the others! At one point after a crit I wrote on tape all of the things that the teacher had said and taped it directly onto the painting. I wished I had actually made a spread sheet with all of the different marks that were deemed good or bad just to show the silliness and contradictions.

On my 2nd to last crit one of my teachers said to me:"You don't really know what you're doing, do you?" This felt like the craziest affront because what the h-e-double popsicle sticks was I doing here?! Learning, that 's what Mr. I Know What I do. Art is contradictory because on the one hand you want to be a person like myself who is sensitive and filters the world that way by noticing little things and documenting and on the other you need to be completely outside yourself and imperviable.

I am eager to get to a point where I crave a formal critique again. Right now I am so loving making everything wrong, because I think then I am actually making things right. I look at the art I made in artschool and see so much experimentation within my painting marks, but the actual paintings are extremely ugly to me and paralyzed by what not to do.

I am returning to collage, silk-screen, cute characters, messy bright colors, words in art... what have you. I think the hot pink lace elephants were one of my first f*k offs to my art school days! Which isn't to say that I didn't learn tremendously, I am just having to relearn some parts, and integrate what is me. In the best sense I think art school taught me to push an idea. Blow it up and think bigger and connect the dots. I think I am going to make a trampede of pink elephants in my paintings that are most girly.
WIP

6 comments:

amy said...

soo looking forward to seeing the show!

shari said...

hi mati!

i bet the girly show will be fabulous, pink elephants and all! i love that you are trusting yourself in the process, doing what feels right to you, ignoring the "rules". you are an amazing artist!! xo shari

Jess Hutch said...

As I read your post I got more and more fired up, like "yeah! YEAH! HOT PINK ELEPHANTS!" Have fun re-learning... it's all about incorporating what you've learned and what you've experienced and coming out with something that's *you*, right?

Anne Elizabeth Carmack said...

oh i am so excited to hear you will be in the show too - i have been visiting your blog for quite sometime...i am a los angeles artist in the very early stages of friendship with christine (swirly) and looking so forward to this show!
yrs,anne
www.accidentalauthenticity.blogspot.com

mati rose said...

yes. i'm gonna start a pink elephant revolution!

lisa solomon said...

good for you mati. this is all part of the process. i'm so happy you are making work. i had to take the longest break after undergrad just to try and organize my head.

so FANTASTIC to see you last night - but i wanted to chat w/ you more... we'll have to hang out soon... and i wish i could see the show in la. take good pics!! xo