Jacki,
Even though I can't see the details well, I love this grouping of paintings. The way you incorporated parts of your art-making process into the collection is like looking through the old master's history books. It feels mathematical and kind of antiquated. The white sketch on the neutral brown ground is gorgeous.
The objects you chose to paint are peculiar but work all together. Very cool.
-Jamster
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Sherwood
8/11/2014 03:58:19 am
Hey Jackie!
I am totally in lust over the little blue plant painting. Awesome. I am also really digging the big painting of a painting within a painting, very meta. This is getting really fun now that you have more pieces to play with. Keep it up!
It might be fun to play around with framing some of them with funky frames or playing around with different colors behind the arrangements with colored paper or something. There are so many possibilities. So now I want a coffee table book of photos of your arrangements. Maybe you should all let me design you books...I want this because of reasons.
What about buying large funky frames and arranging things within them? Or how interesting would it be to start pinning them to un-primed canvas and arranging them there? Very cool, I'd love to see how you would arrange them in a small room space. I wish I had one I could give you to play with.
Steph
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Jacki G
8/29/2014 01:51:56 am
Steph,
I like the idea of getting more funky frames. As Katie said, I am not so sure about the un-primed canvas, but I'd love to have a whole room to myself and see it all come together.
I've actually been thinking about how I can make a false wall or a large panel where I can paint a pattern or a whole painting and then arrange my paintings on top. I need a studio already...sigh.
I'll try to get better photographs together of the work sometime soon so that you can commence book designing. ;)
xoxo
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Jamie
8/23/2014 09:50:41 am
Hi again!
I am so happy that you posted this. These are so cool. I am psyched about all this appropriation!
Are you tapping into your illustrative, story-telling roots? The groupings of art work are seriously reacting like a story to me, but not a specific one, more like a visual journey. I dig it.
The baby painting on the wall of the study of (Rodin?) is the most interesting to me. It reminds me of the two female figures on the beach. Your approach with flat pattern/color blocking and classic rendering is almost collage-like!
As a huge fan of unrelated yet somehow related images, I find that abstractive quality engaging and familiar and a bit whimsy.
Definitely keep working small and doing the clusters. See how many connections you can create with your work.
I think that practice of finding relatable formal qualities and general tangibility in a body of work is something valuable that all artists should do!
I love the rhythms you are creating here. It’s like some crazy synthesis of classical drawing, painting, and collage, as though someone tried to storyboard old oral history traditions. It has that lyrical quality and the repetition that bards used to memorize epic poetry.
The wallpaper background on the larger painting with the study of the Rodin along with the sculpture really reminds me of the treatment of pattern and the flattening of space in Matisse’s Harmony in Red. Actually, now that I think on it a little more, your arrangements remind me quite a bit of his piece Studio in Red. These are a new vein of the classic “artist’s studio” painting. Just instead of showing the viewer a representation of your physical space, you are giving them your process of idea mapping and connection.
I actually don’t really like the idea of trying to frame your little stories. I feel as though they are better presented in these cluster formations. It doesn’t need the additional reinforcement of the rectangle through imposing a frame on them or placing them all together on a single canvas. It might be interesting to play with playing with the spacing between the pieces a bit more though–seeing how far you can push the distance between them and have them still connect, or creating more tension by almost, but NOT QUITE, butting them up against one another.
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Jacki G
9/2/2014 01:49:46 am
Awesome references! I've definitely had my eye on Matisse this year more than ever before. He's helped me free myself from "the rules". So thanks for picking up on that.
And I agree with you about the reinforced rectangle (ie. grouping the paintings on the single canvas). I think it could be redundant. I want people to make the connections that I am making through proximity alone.
My favorite grouping is the second from the bottom. The blue block of color has a nice weight that balances the graphic figure cloaked in black. The paintings within the figure painting add that meta level (which I love so much) and lead your eye to the left, to the text which holds the corner. The red dots are great little points of contrast. When composing these arrangements, not only following the color palette but also creating pathways that lead across the paintings, and allowing some stronger pieces to hold the corners will make them more visually compelling. I love the idea of having a painted patterned background to place these small paintings on. The combination of modern graphic elements with some of your historically inspired sketches would be quite interesting.
Yes the meta painting is fabulous. It took me a second to figure it out. I would love to see meta paintings of your groups of paintings. I also think arranging your paintings/sketches, and not necessarily repainting them exactly but using the small paintings to inspire large scale paintings would be a great expansion on this series. You best get that studio soon!
Your arrangements keep making me think about compiling unrelated bits of data (your sketched paintings) into groups that create a new meaning as a whole. Even if that is not your intention, I want to analyse the relationships between the paintings and find conceptual meaning besides formal connections. Have you juxtaposed paintings from unrelated series together? Mixing the themes up (in addition to old/new) would be a great experiment.