Tutorial, reflection, problem solving with photos.. and painting

 Made some progress with this - there's another layer of paint in olive green oil over the acrylic and I've continued with the face. It's early days and it's not coming together as I'd hoped, but I think it'll go somewhere.

 Continued with this -not picked this one up for a bit but I'm keen to get it finished. 

Just putting some recent works together to see how they read with older pieces.. 

Had my tutorial with Ian and discussed the other Mother Project and how it'd raised some considerations for me around approach, line of enquiry and how I'd struggled with being on the receiving end of it in terms of - the line of questioning (anticipated answers/ not deviating from the set questions) It had felt less like a conversation and more like data collection, and having never feeling like I was part of the ideal mum club, I now, also didn't fit the criteria for this Other Mother Club - I'd felt quite vulnerable towards the end, fraudulent almost, and like I was just having a bit of a winge or should maybe explore my feelings with some kind of professional... but it was also validating - I knew I was interested in the contemporary relationship with the Witch. The psychological damage that the witch persecutions had on how women feel and operate today.

Ian flagged up ethics and I confirmed that there was a consent form and input was anonymised, and anything put out on the page was paraphrased, but even this felt like the data had been captured and re translated - it was no longer authentic. I'd never referenced male voices, just that you can't consider the experience of mothers without considering the men in their lives because they're intrinsically linked (good and bad/ both supportive and absent are relevant)  Referred to the Talking for others paper that Ian had suggested in a lecture - I need to read this.    Ian flagged a dynamic - a change in control and agency in the conversation.  I'd drawn on my customer services experience and how we'd have conversations and collect data and this wasn't it.  I'd considered talking/ conversations in my practice after speaking to Katrina Wilde but a set of questions isn't going to hit the mark.

  Then on the way home talking to Kite about Ethnocentrism, I'd referred to native Americans language and how they have a word for when a mushroom becomes itself - pushing through the earth to become into being. (Acknowledging that referencing other cultures as more primitive based on our own perception of how a culture should operate - drove colonisation)

Colonisers didn't recognise language formed from a culture that recognised nature as instrinic to life, they labelled things- natural things-  as objects and assigned monetary value. It occurred to me that this is what capitalism and monetisation has done to women...assigned them as objects with no monetary value so what they are 'doing' becomes irrelevant - invisible - unnoticed.   It occurs to me that Kite and my own research areas cross over a lot...maybe we should think more seriously about a collaboration. 

Back to - The tutorial. As I talked about new ways of bringing contemporary photographs into the conversation- through brighter colours, trying to find the place that I want to paint within, loose strokes and charcoal lines and depicting people in candid modern situations that reflect how we operate around the witches hat - we talked about the witches hat being the image that occurs in all of the paintings. I explained that I considered painting animals that had been the accusers familiars and then naming them, with the "witches" name - reflecting that it was boys, children and men accused of witchcraft too, and I shared the Salem Trials - but Ian flagged up concerns that it changes the direction of the work. PROBLEM: It's hard to find photographs that I can paint from that are candid and banal but pick up on the context of my work...

Ian explained that I can cultivate or edit a photograph (as I have done to an extent in some work) to create the painting.

When I shared the practice bad painting - it was interesting to view it as a constructed image that slowly builds detail - because the detail has never been there (it's imaginary) details remain vague.. has whereas in my other work I work from photos and then struggle to find that vague space - the space where your mind can complete something..

What do photos give me that working from my imagination doesn't - the realism?

What does an imaginary image give me that a photo doesn't - the scope to put together anything without detail?

           Somewhere in here is the potentially the space that I'd like my paintings to operate in?

I'll have a play at curating and editing from photographs.. Could an AI photograph generate something to work from? Do I need to combine a photo reference with an imagined composition?

I also need to consider that a painting of a photograph when it is considered as a document - so you can see the edges, not just the reproduced picture - reads differently..  Can I bring back some masking to do this..