I have been working for almost a year on building images. At this point, I have slipped into a stage that is probably very similar to what happens to a heroin addict: I only want the fun, none of boring stuff. I have painted the panels http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html which is lots and lots and lots of fun, and exciting. I have taken and gathered the images/painted paper/photographs (fun), and I have cut out and pieced them together to make stories about things I didn't know existed until I pulled them all together(fun and interesting). I tack them onto the painted surfaces with poster adhesive, and then I put them up on the wall to look and then adjust as need be(not as fun but okay).
The images that I have put up are soon covered by other images, so that on my shelves I have images that go three and four deep, all waiting to be adhered(NOT fun). I forget about the ones I've done as I stack more over them.
The tables are covered with folders with photos/painted paper/and painted panels. As I continue to work they are then covered by more folders and more bits and pieces of paper: faces, textures, shapes. Somehow I keep a fairly precise idea of where everything is on the seven tables in my studio: two tiny cut out horse ears? No problem, on the shelf under the image of the Twin Selves towards the back(and this from a mind that can't remember why it's taking me from one room to the next). If I start to clean up and organize things(not fun), instead I just make more collages(fun). By this time every scrap of paper that I've cut, or printed out has potential, and if I throw it away, what then? Gone(not fun)!
I'm left with a mountain of work: the careful, precise, and anal job of adhering the images permanently, then coated with a final varnish(NOT NOT fun). I will end up with a stiff and sore neck and a jaw that doesn't want to open because I have been clenching as I glue. I will photograph the new work, adjust the images in Photoshop(not as un-fun as adhering but not exactly fun), then send the images to my galleries to see which ones they want to exhibit(sometimes fun, sometimes not). So, wherever I have put a "not fun" think of that heroin addict dozing off on the dirty mattress on the floor, bills unpaid, leaking roof, and a kitchen stacked full of unwashed dishes.
30+ years of paintings, talked about one painting at a time: what went into the paintings, what I was trying to say, what was happening at the time of my life that I made the paintings. The paintings themselves are narrative, and this adds a little more to the story that they tell.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Man with TV 1986
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