When I go to see art pieces, I want to feel something, I want to be moved, transcended, I want to feel like I want to cry or laugh of have shivers running down my spine. The work of Rose Wylie is understandably work of a very experienced painter who has been creating her paintings for a very long time and she is very dedicated and meticulous when it comes to continuing the process of creating her work. I admire her for that dyscypline. I also think it takes guts to paint such simplified paintings on such grand scale and to be able to break away from the traditional rules of depicting figure that she was taught to follow at university. I do not, however, feel moved by her paintings. I do not feel much when looking at them. I don’t know why, but this is just the way I feel and maybe knowing this can help me realise that creating giant oil figurative paintings is not my path.
ONE THING THAT STUCK WITH ME: Rose Wylie
The Process Makes The Image
I love chance.
Chance is like the break in the dotted line.
Anything that is out of control, I like.
When making this series of four monochromatic paintings of animals in ginger, black, blue and red, Wylie abandoned the paintbrush and painted directly with her hands, letting the process of manipulating her medium determine the image. Looming large at five metres wide each, the forms are reduced to the simplest means possible while still allowing the shapes to be recognisably a spider, a horse or an elephant.
Unconcerned with representing the physical reality of a living animal, these paintings hover on the edge of figuration and abstraction, with the painted words just tipping each image into an identifiable picture.
The thickly applied and occasionally smudged paint imbues these monumental works with a visceral, tactile presence that reflects the energy and enjoyment with which they were made.
ART I LIKE
In contrast, I have just stumbled upon the work of Ema Shin at Sydney Biennale “Absent Women(Tree of Family)” and it completely blew me away. I wanted to cry when looking at it because it is so absolutely stunning and beautiful and textured and uses all the elements I adore such as embroidery and beads and strands of threads, and the hearts seem giant and sculptural and I WANT TO HAVE THEM FOR MYSELF! Buf also, when reading the story behind them I wanted to cry, feeling so truly connected to what the artist was trying to say, remembering the invisibility of female artists in my family, my grandmothers in paricular, their incredible craftmanship/CRAFTWOMANSHIP work in the shadows of care responsibilities, unaprecciated and forgotten.
“Woven by Ema Shin @ema.shin and ATW weaver Saffron Gordon. Ema Shin’s Hearts of Absent Women (Tree of Family) uses thousands of specially dyed fibres, pearlescent beads, glass beads and satin ribbon, combining embellishment with technical rigour. Playing upon ideas of presence and absence, Hearts of Absent Women (Tree of Family) is inspired by a 32-generation family history book, owned and updated by the artist’s grandfather, which recorded only the names of male family members, and of women who gave birth to sons. Expanding this into a broader meditation on the historic erasure of women’s stories and their contributions to the arts, Hearts of Absent Women centres women’s crafts, typically seen as secondary to domestic pursuits. Using differing scale to literally and symbolically amplify this type of work, the tension between textile softness and precise construction stands testament to the historical and contemporary conditions of womanhood; conditions which demand both grace and profound endurance.”
Also, I feel this nis going to sound incredibly dumb and shallow, but I don’t care, I wanted to cry from anger, envy and jealousy that it was someone else, who created such beautifully stunning things with such important message, not me. What am I goint to do about this now?!?
I feel like I want to make lace hearts lamps and red knitted blood tears but worry I will just look like a giant photocopier
