March/April, 2013
Drama of Perception

Stephanie Aitken
Katie Lyle
Shelley Penfold

Curated by Sandra Meigs

http://deluge.ws/dupcome.html

Tanner explained his painting simply, “I put lines here and here.” For Evan, it was more about color recognition and experimentation, “I drawed black on the purple. Look, little dots right here. Now I’m using purple again.” Other paintings were more representational or even sparked storytelling. Julia K. told a teacher about her painting, “Once upon a time there was a bear in the house and there were two little people and they were scared and a little fish came and the bear was crying. I’m done.”

"Three Places' fabric dye, bleach, washing machine, oil stick, acrylic on raw canvas

"what is this a drawing of?" "my 4 year old niece drew it" "she wanted to draw three sisters" "but there are only two of you who are sisters" "but maybe she wishes she was part of the two of you, being a sister to the two of you, instead of niece and a daughter" "maybe" "or maybe she just likes sisters" "maybe they are the sisters from something she was reading, like cinderella or something" "but maybe she wants a sister instead of a brother" "who knows what she was thinking at the time?"

"a stage is a place where anything can happen" a painting is a place where anything can happen. does that sound kind of hokey? maybe all the characters and everything on the surface is. it could all just disappear.

and if there seems to be a slight anxiety or something teetering on the verge of slippage, it's because there is!  An anxiety in the unknown, of what could happen when materials combine.  And a language of marks that document the making.

new works, in progress

September 20, 2012

"What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?"
"Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away." HF

September 19th

September...

September 2nd

Y.L.M.D, 40" x 60" oil, oil stick on raw canvas, mounted on stretched canvas

then there it was!

reunion

based on what I pick up, the broken pieces... broken pieces of memory or of the situation when it all breaks apart, things breaking apart.  Then at the same time balance is found in putting it back together in a slightly more humble, vulnerable state.

August 8th

some changes, big changes

some updates to the blog, as I ended up tearing some canvases off the stretcher and found that what was unrevealed and underneath was better.  concerns and doubts about unresolved work, well there was something else that I couldn't see at work, doing the work, under the surface.  Others just changed and there are also a few new ones....

the following, painted en plein air, just responding to the stuff around me...

something similar... the unanswered question, the void

Robert Barry Something Which Is Very Near In Place And Time But Not Yet Known To Me. 6 Feb 1971, 1971, print and transfer type on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches (21.6 x 27.9 cm)

limbo, something is missing what is it? ,although asking the right questions has always been a part of my practice as is just asking questions in general. a constant game of q &a, things are omitted and decisions are made, I will not leave you hanging, I will resolve you. but with many holes. just letting it be a void, temporary void.

august 3rd

looking up I saw a figure moving at the same pace.  black shadow above the bridge. I took of my glasses to look, exchanged a few words, perfect fleeting moment.  high above and I'm moving steps below, under the bridge where they sleep.  and then you were gone.

The Keeper, Part II

almost psychic... www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZyBmN6hWsk

seated figure

"My heart beats more for a raw, average, vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid, and the average grotesque banality in life." Max Beckmann

sous rature I, acrylic on canvas, 16"x 20"

an excerpt

an excerpt from an interview with Richard Aldrich, a painter I like...
he is asked if he had to choose from some of his favourites, which ones would he choose...
RA: Probably the ones where I learned something.  As is often the case in life, the things that were harder to do, harder to resolve, are more meaningful.

And I'm on a role, harder to resolve are more meaningful, we appreciate them more and can look back when they are solved and feel that sense of accomplishment, when all the mess is cleaned up and it is neater looking and you would never know the steps and decisions and time, sped up and slowed down and ticking away.  what it took to get to that end state. and that end point is a mystery.

or a tanline and a smile

June 26th

June 8th

oil stick on raw canvas mounted on canvas, 48"x60"

April 24th

untitled for now, 40"x60", oil and oil stick on canvas

April 3rd

Love this painting by Edwin Dickinson

Edwin Dickinson, Frances Folley, 1927

March 6th, in conversation with painting

I knew what I was thinking the entire time that I did this, you knew what I wanted you to become.

The story changed over and over but didn't I say that before - language is so malleable? - just as the colour-form (if any) are traces of the conversation.

You will never know what I wanted it to look like

It got so heavy, I just deemed it done - now you hang.

so heavy and low - stained and carrying it all, that's a lot of weight (get it?)

insert whatever you want there, again...

I knew what I meant to say and you will always hear and see something else.

of course I didn't know what you would look like

but I kept the vision of what I wanted in my head

though soft/ spongy malleable-shiftable

all it takes is "somebody"

and some silence.

Displacement (German Verschiebung, 'shift' or 'move') is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects effects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable. The term originated with Sigmund Freud.

Displacement operates in the mind unconsciously and involves emotions, ideas, or wishes being transferred from their original object to a more acceptable substitute. It is most often used to allay anxiety; and can to the displacement of aggressive impulses or to the displacement of sexual impulses...

In 1957, Jacques Lacan - building on the way in Freud's work, condensation (from German Verdichtung) and displacement are closely linked concepts, and inspired by an article by linguist Roman Jakobson - argued that the unconscious has the structure of a language, and that condensation and displacement are close equivalents to the poetic functions o fmetaphor and metonymy. As he cautiously put it, 'in the case of Verschiebung, "displacement", the German term is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in metonymy, and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship'.

February 20th

January 5th

G.E.M.S

M.S.I.T

I.D.K

G.A.B.E