Craft, Content and Chance
It’s been an unsettled few weeks as we move out of lockdown and life’s responsibilities resume, hence the late post. A few happenings are influencing my thoughts with regards to my art practice at the moment:
- An interview with, extreme realist Artist, Daniel Sprick, who stressed the importance of a thorough grounding in the CRAFT of painting as provided by the Ateliers.
- Other podcasts that expressed concern that artists trained in ateliers have learnt the craft but have no training in development of the CONTENT of their work.
- A conversation with a friend/artist/philosophy tutor, Sarah Munro, who’s PhD research considers the role of CHANCE in an artist’s practice.
- Jac Saorsa, my Atelier Tutor who sees every step of my practice and gives me valuable training and advice.
CONTENT
I studied art at Wintec School of Media Arts where my visual arts training had a contemporary approach. I learnt how to develop an analytical mind employ various media and experimental techniques to create artwork that presented my perspective on an idea. My art ranged from a rose-pink tinted greenhouse in a derelict courtyard where I hosted a week of performances, glow in the dark resin sculptures and some relatively large scale paintings. It was about content and how to convey an idea effectively.
CRAFT
A painter to the core, I realised there were gaps in my training that became more evident through, struggling to achieve certain visual effects and frustrating technical mistakes in the application of paint. My Vietnamese Lounge painting is in a shipping container in NZ, it will remain sticky until it has enough dust on its surface to give the appearance of being dry. I loved this painting and spent months on it!
I needed to learn the CRAFT of painting. This was the point when I found out about Atelier training. Ateliers being workshops, where you learn the craft of how to produce realistic representational paintings that create the illusion of a 3-dimensional object on a 2-dimensional plane. This training prioritises the aesthetic of achieving realism over the concept behind the work.
Why don’t institutions offer training in both content and craft you may ask? Well, Atelier training was the mode of learning up until the end of the 19th century, masters taught their apprentices the specific techniques of how to paint realistically, teaching the eye to read nature. It was a precise step by step approach and if you were good enough your master let you finish his paintings for him! Some of the original ateliers still exist and have a lineage that traces master to master back to the likes of Titian. The romantic in me loves the idea of learning a technique that has been passed down through the centuries, once taught by Titian. Romance aside the artist was basically a worker in a factory producing commissioned paintings, with little room for self-expression.
End of the 19th century, the advent of Post Modernism and the avant-garde, traditional conventions of painting became outmoded. A new type of artist emerged putting greater value on doing something innovative with expression of individual vision. It wasn’t a case of absorbing the new techniques into the old in one school of learning, it was a complete rejection of tradition that led to contemporary art institutions not teaching the craft of painting. As a result of the quality of painting suffered. Things are now turning around, it’s the 21st-century and art students are seeking out the skills of the old masters and new ateliers are joining the old that still exist.
So where am I going with this? I’m just trying to negotiate my way around wanting to learn the craft of the masters and combine this with critical analysis concerning content to enable me to create paintings that represent my ideas to the best of my ability.
There is a turbulence in this that I just can’t quite find the words for but it has to do with the fact that painting step by step following a well versed atelier style, with a predictable, albeit beautiful, end result takes the soul out of the process of painting. I need experimentation and self-expression to be an artist in this world and that requires faith in CHANCE. I don’t mean chance as in the Surrealist strategy, I mean an unrestricted engagement in the process that can lead to unpredictable results, the magic of painting that keeps me hooked. After all, how did the masters learn their trade in the first place.
So, what am I doing, I am working on a monochrome cast painting, as per the early years in a 19th century atelier, I am painting faces experimenting with both traditional pallets and my own inventions with varying degrees of predictability and success.