The paintings

First, continuing with the ideas from the cat paintings, i made a painting from a photo and then painted out the figure. I liked how it looked with it brushily painted out, so some of the face is still visible. Also i chose this photo because i thought it might reference a Franz Kline painting. But i don't really think it does.

Next i decided to "remove the figures in various ways. At this point i'm still kind of not into painting but i don;t know what else to do, and i'm under tremendous pressure (in a weird i'm-taking-it-personally kind of way) from the department to produce produce produce! And the catch phrase i've been hearing since arriving at this school is trotted out yet again- "Don;t think, just make!" I'm going back and forth on that and the whole grad school mechanism, but that ranting is for another day...back to these paintings! Here i painted on vellum and then scratched off the figure, and painted the "background" on the back of the vellum. Leaving some scratched remnants. This is probably the most violent intervention i've done, AND the only one in which the original image really no longer exists.

And in this one i painted it and then covered the figure with paper pulp...sort of embedding the paint into the paper, or sandwiching it. I think i like the paintings on paper better than on canvas, it seems to be closer referencing the photo.

So at this point i got fed up and put all the paintings and photos away and decided to start on more installations, even if they don't mean anything yet, this is the physical work i want to make. The weird thing about doing these paintings is i got so hung up on being accurate and realistic (not my strong suit, at least since i haven't been working realistically for about ten years) and "I'm a Conceptual painter, they can't be interesting in their making, they are just there to serve a point" -- where the hell did that come from, who's talking?? As Mat said in like the first two minutes of being in my studio tonight..."Isn't that the answer you're looking for? To make Conceptual work but enjoy the working and making interesting objects?" (well, i edited a little for clarity...) Yeah, i guess. More soon

Gripping Footage

A current project is painting out the text (actually the entire page) of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas as i read (ie, read a page, paint it out, read next page, etc). That's one thing (with many levels of meaning that i will write about) but i'm also deciding to embrace or at least try documentation. i had been leary of this for a while even though it was constantly recommended to me. i thought it would feel self-conscious, egotistical, and a more literal "proof" than i wanted (i thought i wanted to the finished object to be proof enough). But i thought i would give it a shot. Behold the exciting action packed shots of Niki reading! (note the forehead crease, jeez, it's not that hard of a book!)
I'm documenting some other actions that i will post this week as i finish up. They will probably give more insight to the entire group of work. But i'm starting to push away from the stringent truth model, and my reasons are complicated but i'll try to get into them next time. Anyway, one direction this easing-up has allowed me to take is the realm of non-original documents (like mass-produced texts as opposed to personal snapshots). I tried to describe it in this way: The snapshots are more the actual real-life object, but the books are more metaphor therefore they are more abstract. I'm going to stop trying to explain that thought for now because i can tell it's not going anywhere. I will try again. If anyone has any idea what i'm trying to get at, let me know.

Overheard in Niki's Studio

"oh niki! Why are you making all these paintings? Are you in a painting class or something?"


updates on the way, as Crit Countdown hits 14 Days!!

Pedestals

SO i'm still doing these painted photos because i feel like it's the most on-track thing i've done. The big thing with these has been the comment i've heard for my whole 15-year painting career: Get bigger! i wanna see these huge!! You should print them out digitally enlarged!!! All of these comments seem very knee-jerk-reaction to me, and in fact the opposite of the point of why i'm doing them. The scale i feel is problematic but the fact that they are original, negative-long-gone, physical artifacts of life is the whole point! What's at stake if you are painting on something that you could just re-print as many times as you needed to? The point here, in part, is sacrifice, giving something up, destroying the reminder, or memory, or all you have left of the event or person.

Anyway, the installation has been the tricky part, but i feel like i'm on to something. thinking about literal pedestals, and the "pedestal" i often use to refer to the art world or art context. And in the last class in which i showed these, just taped to the wall, we went through the whole crit and then AFTER, when i was taking them down, people came up and said, "Oh, can i look at these? Before i just walked past and didn't really look at them." WTF?? Yeah, in my studio often people breeze right by them. I guess the nature of snapshots. Maybe too personal? Anyway, i'm starting to play with the pedestal, to draw attention, to help define the photo, and to add some sort of supportive environment. I like them all aesthetically, but so far the blank canvas seems the most pointed.

I have a whole stack of photos i want to paint. I'm surprising myself with how unique they all turn out being, not just repeated gimmick. Let me know if you want to see close-ups of the photos so far. Also, see previous post for my next emotional feat. Yikes!

Boring Variations on a Theme

So....i'm doing more cats erased, in paintings. I'm not sure if i'm going to continue, because i hate repeating myself and i am boring myself to death doing the same painting over again. It's an interesting challenge to make it not boring, and i have to figure out if i am really learning something here.
I'm also working on this painting of a formal wedding portrait, which is maybe one of the ugliest paintings i've ever done, but right now i'm just trying to figure out the idea (if you think you know or are one of the people in the original photo, please don't be alarmed. I tried to change some details to make it more generic looking. Which maybe wrong wrong wrong considering what i say next). The person painted out in this one is a person who is actually close to dying very soon. I keep trying to figure out what is too far, where is that line to cross, for just myself? My next step is to paint over OLD pictures of my family, but that really scares me. First, it feels to historic, like these artifacts are part of my lineage and what i will pass down to future generations. So why do they feel that way and the "contemporary" photos don't? And, that connects to number two in a way...I don't feel like these old photos actually belong to me. They belong to future generations, blah blah, but most of all they belong to my mom. It's HER parents in those photos. That i think is why i feels so wrong, i'm taking something away from her. Thereby, cutting up my own clothes, so to speak. (Maybe that will catch on as a phrase. Probably not)

Update: Here is the painting:




Some questions: Does it matter that the painting is not only not photorealistic, but rather bad and clunky? (I've gotten opinions going both ways - some people like the awkward painting, saying it's charming and sincere). Not sure what i think. I'm still trying to figure out if painting these makes sense. To me it's pushing the believability/trust factor ("Did you really paint the cat??") and also rather than painting out a memory or artifact i'm painting out my own work, my own evidence of labor. How much do you think documentation matters? ie, showing the original painting? The idea of Peformance keeps coming up in my studio too, which i think i mentioned when talking about Janine Antoni. Jon Kessler (who rocks) came to my studio this week and broke it down in a very simple and fertile equation: Verb>Action>Performance. Hmmmm
One more issue that was brought up in Sheila's class (w/ the copies)...Maybe it's not about painting out your real family but painting out your art family. I've been meditating on this for a couple weeks. And it becomes a particularly uneasy situation when placed in the context of Holy SHit, March is Women's History Month. "Kill your heroes" + "Write women back into history". My memory of my grandfather is not nearly as precarious as gender equality. How much does this have to do with the past and how much with the future? Maybe that's enough babbling for now, must get back to work.

Update: Next-Day Antoni/Kriese