Painting (Written 10-10-13)

Painting has been surprisingly enjoyable this week. I was doubtful at the beginning that I would enjoy it because I haven't done any painting since AS Level, and don't feel particularly comfortable doing it. In fact, it was these things that made it enjoyable because I felt really free to experiment - I had no expectation of myself to live up to as I might in future weeks. I learnt an awful lot from the slideshow about how to look at paintings and understanding the different brush strokes.. this is something that I feel I have missed out on before, and it was really good to have the opportunity to consider painting in this way. From this, I feel myself already better able to look at paintings and understand them, and appreciate the visual language of the artist's work.

I produced a few paintings that (as relatively quick studies) I am happy with and more importantly, interested in. I am mainly interested in the shapes and the structures that they show, especially in the painting made from stencils as it has a certain geometry to it. I was wondering however, how much of the interest I see in my paintings is really about the painting or the subject in the original image. In the crit, it was pointed out that I am perhaps looking at the painting in a 3D way, thinking about what it would be like as a sculpture for instance.

However, I enjoyed it less when I was trying to make a painting using layers - I have never formally been taught how to paint in the past and really, have little knowledge of how to apply the paint (at AS Level I just did it in the manner which felt most natural and was not advised otherwise). I think I have little patience for painting 'properly' - waiting for layers to dry etc. The thing that held me back the most was that I feel I have no ability to judge whether a painting is good or not - I think this is because this medium does not interest me, maybe I have not researched it enough or am familiar enough with paintings, but I found it really off-putting to produce something and have no confidence in my opinion about it.