and the cold tightened it's fist-The Essay-Susan Harmon

APR

24

THE ESSAY ABOUT MY PROCESS 

THE ESSAY ABOUT MY PROCESS

QUOTE FROM JACKSON POLLOCK

"My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West... When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. “

My work embraces this attitude and method of painting especially in this art that I created.

MY PROCESS in creating art is always the same; whether I am making a clay piece or a painting or a photograph. I always begin by writing words on my studio walls,LARGE AND LARGER and then  small and smaller. The words continue spilling out from the book or books which are informing the art.  I am beginning to  to prepare my subconscious for making art. In the making of this piece, I kept thinking about the text book; the content, the guilds, the progress in crafts education, the individual artists/mentors/instructors. But that did not get me the end outcome that I hoped for, which as always,for me,is a work of art which is emotive. So I turned off the lights in my studio,I sat on the floor and crossed my legs and closed my eyes to clear my mind and start again. I asked myself the same questions we were asked in class, about each chapter:What surprised me? What Impressed me? What did I take away? This was too broad as there is just too much material in this book...so I decided to say to myself,What is the most important thing about this book to me?

I kept seeing in my head and hearing(what I assumed)would sound like  the chanting of Hosten Klah (Pages 109-110)."He wove sand painting rugs only for the chants that he was qualified to sing,including Night way,Shooting way and Mountain way."..."So here is the emotion,the passion which is the catalyst I had been searching fr to make me want to make this art.... to me these emotional, haunting and meaningful chants stimulated me to make this art..."His family looms for weaving ordinary rugs were not large enough to suit Klah,who had one built that would hold a rug twelve feet square."I also work very very large so now I am relating big time,I have emotion I have large size...now color,all my work focuses on intense color..."Other colors were derived from Mexican indigo and cochineal dyes."and there I have color....The making of this piece began effortless once I had listened to the chants and decided what I would paint.And then all of a sudden it changed... I had been thinking of the picture I was making for awhile and knew it had to grow and then I feverishly cut some canvas,tore up a blouse,glued this first piece onto the canvas and it grew and I glued and added red sand and rope and cut tiny precious pieces of felt and threw paint and let it drip.and blotted it and wiped it out and then added more color....and there it is..Quite honestly this was the 4th try the others just were not getting the subtleties and emotion I wanted.and it may not be done but I like the texture when close up and all the subtleties and i like the power of it from down the street as I drove up to my open garage to view the piece.Feedback welcomed,I am still adding a line here and there....I will try to post some details as this is 7'long and 5 ' tall.

.I was told this looks like a wound and the stitches which sew up a wound,how apropos.This is sand art,fabric ,rope and paint,size 7'x5'.

Oh...I have been also reading a book called between shades of gray about a young 15 year old girl during the Lithuanian Genocide by Stalin in 1940 and her life in a Siberian concentration camp so the words for the title of this art is taken from the book....

The quote below from the book I read for class just will not leave my mind so I put it here.

."What is white?
It is the colour of mourning,because it folds all colours within it.
Mourning is also endless refraction,breaking you up into bits,fragments".
Edmund De Waal