Because of this, I'm thinking I have head back to the cyanotype + watercolor process and try out some of the ideas I had this summer that I never got to try. I'll be moving on from just depicting light and water, but the medium in general seemed to offer a lot of possibilities that I wanted to try at some point. This seems like an opportune moment because why not keep up with a process I put a lot of time into mastering and take it somewhere new and different?
I've spent the semester so far struggling to bounce back from what I felt like was a really successful artistic experience this summer, and generate ideas I'm as passionate about. I think instead of fighting that, I'm going to try to work with it and feed off the momentum from the summer project but without the same coastal studies fellowship parameters.
The main idea I'm currently interested in playing with is the notion that cyanotypes give me the control over how much of a photographic rendering the viewer sees, where it is on the page, what we see and how it relates to the watercoloring around it. For me this brings up the larger idea of the contrast between painting/drawing and photography. I'm interested in what things make more sense to be seen in a photographic rendering versus a looser, less realistic interpretation. And the idea that even though a painter can sometimes achieve a quality photorealism, viewing what is clearly a photograph has a different effect on the viewer.
So...this week's goal:
- Create a least 10 cyanotype/watercolor pieces. Try to experiment with all the different ideas I've had including: painting the cyanotype part in certain shapes, using the painting cyanotype parts to define negative space, incoporating a cyanotype photograph into a small part of a larger painted scene, painting it in the form of text/a word/a number, try using colored paper, try tea-toning the prints, try scanned in images like maps, newspapers, etc as negatives in addition to pictures.
- sub-goal: take any additional photographs necessary that make sense for the images I'm creating here.
Above is very rough example of something that might result. I think these will end up being sort of whimsical. This will also be good for me because I've gotten very caught up in trying to think through all of my ideas and have been way to cerebral about everything and prohibiting myself from just producing things and trying things for fear of them being horrible. So, other subgoal--not be afraid of things being tacky, kitchy, cheesy, etc. If/when they are I'll be the first to say it, but I've prevented myself from following through with ideas in the past because of that, when really just some tweaking/refining can solve said problems.
Ok, that was long. But sums up my current state of mind.
