Recently, I have been mulling over about what it is I am painting and why it is my natural inclination to paint the things I do.
I have avoided these questions because often I felt that with every painting, my practice seemed to shift out of my initial ‘focus’. In previous years, my subject matter was restricted solely to the female nude painted in dynamic colours, gestural marks, and large-scale canvases. Furthermore, conceptually, my ideas were bounced between post-colonialist theory and intersectional feminism and now towards a an entirely different ball game.
As 2020 rolls out, my practice has drastically shifted from the start of last year and I wonder how much more my practice will shift by the end of the next year.
Currently, my practice seems to float in the deep sea of ‘ecological awareness’ as the climate changes drastically with every breathe in our lungs. Having this looming context inhabit my every action, my affected practice is interested in the value of ‘relationship’ to understand the world as connected in which every ‘small thing’, be it physical and/or metaphysical affects another. A kind-of precursor to ecological restoration, understanding the value of ‘relationship’ and or ‘interconnectivity’, exposes that every bit of life, be it human or non-human nature within ecology, is significant and dependent on each other.
The discipline of painting often feels like a hypocritical. How does an artist who makes marks, dynamic gestures, new shapes and compositions and lives for mixing vivid colours and drawing figurations justify their painting practice in an ecological crisis?
My answer usually varies between the practical and the conceptual (often the conceptual because my selfish desire to use colours and capture figurations outweigh my eco-conscience rational).
1) My practical answer:
- I haven’t bought any new pigments this year-I am trying to ‘work within my limits’ in a literal sense. I am nervous to find out what happens when I use up all my paints. I am excited for the possibility to explore image- making within a limited colour palate. A self portrait of a eco-painter?
- I use ‘eco-gesso’- as long as I have oil-pigments, I need to combine it with appropriate gesso to do the painting justice.
- I use organic walnut oil- to accompany the oil pigments, the canvas, and the gesso.
- I have used up all my canvas, I am panicking because this means I may just have to go shopping for the first time to find cotton bedsheets to paint on (following through with the method of ‘working within my limits’). I am nervous about painting on sheets, I am unsure of the quality, the durability, and if it is texture appropriate for oil painting.
- On second thought, I might sew together all my loose canvas ends, scraps, and given bits and bobs. Working within my resource limits has really pushed my creative bounds right to the edge. However, if this means I can continue my painting practice, so be it, bring it on fucking capitalism.
2) My conceptual answer:
- Using the methodology of the ‘compost’, my painting practice is interested in idea of the ‘small’. The ‘small’ could be used to describe the ‘personal’ as opposed to the ‘big’ populations. The ‘small’ is a subjective perspective of its context, thus describing the nuances within the local, be it domestic or wider work-field.
- Furthermore, the ‘small’ could be used to describe the sentiments of the small. Be it photographs, ephemeral thoughts, inarticulable feelings, emotions, memories, dreams and imaginations. These ‘small’ complexities are that which make up an individual.
- Why is the small important? By observing, taking account, considering nuances and the small things of a given individual be it human or non-human, one may grow to understand or be in relationship with the other. The ‘small’ requires digging more than the surface (description/label/ stereotype) of a subject. Rather, by acquiring into the small, we should be inclined to sympathise, to connect and understand contexts of others to ourselves. Thus noticing the layers of the ‘small’, the personal, we see the personal within the political.
- In an ecological sense, noticing, observing the small within non-human nature, the weather, our grass, as opposed to the neighbours grass, the sun on our side of the street, etc we can appreciate the nuances that of life within our local.
- A painting practice that uses the methodology of the compost to place an impetus on the personal ‘small things’ is a research into appreciating the context, the sentiments, and other complexities of the individual thereby challenging surface narratives (made by a monoculture).
Why do I paint?
The more I paint, the more I understand myself in relation to the subject matter I reference. Thus, painting is like building a relationship with myself as I ironically study my relationship with my immediate world.
A 'compost' of varied subject matter, a tree, a photograph, a word, a name, a study of my immediate surroundings, a reference to the current news; all of these 'things', the sentiments that I cannot articulate which make up my current frame of mind are composed on the field of the canvas.
The canvas is a place of figuring my being in the world; my very own field or my garden, as I add my 'compost' and all its 'small' and seemingly insignificant things. In doing so, the layers of references, in combination with painterly colours, shapes, my intuitive painting method, the canvas regenerates a diaristic image which the viewer is invited to articulate within the prism of their own backgrounds and understanding. Paintings are a window into my being however they are reciprocal as the process started from observing my external context, through my eyes, and once again reaches out to the viewer as they peer into my field.
Thus, painting helps me subtly gain agency as I deny stereotypes (created by mono-cultural narratives) that ignore the intricacies of (my)self without understanding or acquiring relationship with me.
Thus, those who are in the 'know' will understand some/ parts/ most of my work, whilst others might have to (re)construct their own understanding entirely by scratch. I hate to sound narcissistic, as though 'understanding' my work is an unattainable task because it is so personal. I am still working on how I can position the balance between relating and identifying-fully, thus effacing someone's experience.
In thinking of my painting as a 'field' in which the viewer is invited into my representation of my context(s)- I simultaneously thought of the 'window-like' paintings of Lee.
Each work seems to be like a world, ecology or a galaxy in itself. His use of luminescent colours, the play between positive and negative space, human-figurations which transform into other-worldly creatures and his portrayal of landscapes which seem both alien and familiar to the world I know. I consider the balance of being an outsider not knowing who he references and identifying similar and familiar subject matter. On a universal sense, the viewer can identify with general representations, however on an intimate level, I realise the window to his paintings is bound in a metaphorical glass box. Perhaps on some level, I can relate to general understandings of his work, however I will always be bound from understanding his intentions because in fact I do not know him at all. I am a stranger.
Adam Lee For Signs, for Seasons, for Days and for Years (Watchmen) 2010 oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas 200.0 x 250.0 cm
Adam Lee
Paradiso Terrestre
2015
oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
275.0 x 200.0 cm
Adam Lee
Babel
2015
oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
220.0 x 350.0 cm
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