Disruption
How do I do this?
How far do I go?
What do I want to say? To reveal or to conceal? To disrupt or to emphasize? Self or otherness?
What is the otherness within this piece?
..... is it the otherness of self or the otherness of the artistic relationship?
Intra-action or interaction?
Detachment or investing in?
Inquiring, exploring or questioning?
".....changes in expression and emphasis. At times I saw vacancy and detachment, but as the work progressed this changed to solidity and determination. I ask myself how (and why) you chose those particular stages to pause, record and share? I see works which are distinct and feel separate yet which are inextricably related by being part of the same process. Also in my mind is whether you see the process as a continuum or a set of discrete stages, and if this is dependent in any way on the subject matter? I also note the desire to reveal your process to the audience, which in itself intrigues me...." (Easthaugh, 2024). Commentary by others, my audience, the public, engage with my own thoughts as the first two self-portraits start to form a new body of work that is both separate and intrinsically connected to my fungal work. Through the examination of my artistic relationship with my sense of self I become both self critical and introverted. I find myself allowing, consciously, the introversion that is natural to me and yet which I often mask from the outside world. Easthaugh questions why I chose the stages to pause, record and share? she questions the work that feels distinct and yet inextricably related or whether the process is either a continuum or set of discrete stages? I have intentionally paraphrased and repeated the questions immediately in order to artistically detach from an emotional and subjective self and yet I still have no direct answer other than to create the questions at the beginning of this blog ....
..... but why?
...... simply because my self, me, often answers questions with a question in order to create neurodiverse clarification and to give myself, and here I say the word without separation, time to process what is being asked of me .... something I am only now beginning to understand and recognise. The stages are paused and recorded not to share but to enable me to create the continuum of the process: without these pauses I am unable to critically analyse colour, tone, value or form in order to create either realism or disruption by allowing the self, the personal self, to work in conjunction with, rather than against, the artistic self to process the information in order to progress the work. The juxtaposing between the self and the artistic self, or the self and a sense of otherness, enables reflective introspection at its most basic but if I am to consider this further I would argue that the introspection becomes reflexive due to the impact upon the broader context of the project (Kallos, 2022): the impact being how the delayed processing of my neurodiversity enables ongoing critical evaluation throughout the artistic process even if that evaluation takes place during the discrete stages that Easthaugh refers to. These stages take the form of a change of colour, the layers of glazing or blending, corrections of form or checking of position of facial elements i.e. any element of the continuous process and evolution of the work that results in a physical pause which may also be caused by my propensity for 'snacky-snacks' as it is colloquially termed in my household such is my love of them! However, within this piece the stages were not always what I would call discrete with the language being often as 'colourful' as the palette itself or even some laughter. I am willing to admit here that this piece caused considerable consternation to the point at the earliest stage of sketching the Pastelmat was wiped clean as I struggled with sketching freehand, with no grid lines following Dave Porter's lessons on portrait drawing. A compromise between freehand and a grid was simply vertical and horizontal lines from which I realised an almost architectural approach suited my often, too, logical or literal neurodiverse mind. I have to remember that whole faces are not my natural home although I am more familiar with drawing eyes and to lesser extents noses and mouths as separate features albeit within fungal works and hence proportions, placement and sizing all need to be learnt - by writing this down I am vocalising, not just to an audience, but to my personal self and artistic other that I am experiencing and exploring a new learning journey as part of the investigation into the relationship that exists between and within the two. Each layer of glazing, each colour chosen and each mark is part of that journey and if something goes wrong or does not work then it is simply part of that journey - this sentence may seem obvious and even simplistic but it is something that is often forgotten and yet reminds the artist that errors enable progression and l earning, and again I say this to myself more than you, the reader: reflexive introspection perhaps at its most useful at the point of writing! ..... but how and where does this leave this third portrait? do I still go for complete disruption of the purported realism of my original portrait and therefore contextualising the piece within the movement proposed by John Seed? what does this disruption even mean to my sense of self? what would that narrative be? intuition tells me to push my own boundaries but the piece never felt as if it sat 'right' all throughout the process as I could not configure either proportionally, locationally or tonally the facial elements: throughout the work it felt as if there was a push-pull fight ongoing with at times the work coming together and the next layer of marks destroying the piece - a feeling that I should have stopped earlier and then wanting to push yet still further.
Even now, as I write, there is a feeling of wanting to re-start the piece from scratch, of not being happy with it to the point of disliking it and yet also being relatively happy with its outcome - it became a piece where features were re-formed almost repetitively. You-Tube videos enabled basic understanding of where I was going wrong and how to correct the errors but realistic skin tones both happened naturally and evaded me in equal proportions. As I write I want to go back, but will also resist, to the piece and re-work around the bridge of the nose which has become highly emphasized unwittingly and yet in itself that belies its personal history - a history of being broken not once but twice .... and even potentially a third time that is directly related to this artistic practice! I question whether this piece represents the point where subconscious memories intra-act with the conscious self, and artistic self (other) within a phenomological context if phenomenology is ".... is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. " (Woodruff, 2018)? Woodruff further states:
"The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions." (2018) Within this piece the intentionality of the piece is the experience of its consecution of creation as it becomes directed towards the intra-actions that occur from within the processes and material interactions; with those same intra-actions being reflective of the examination of the artistic relation and self that is at the heart of the project. Phenomenological study is occurring as I am now critically analysing and studying "....appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience." (Woodruff, 2018) whilst questioning the point where the conscious self meets the sub-conscious self if I am to refer to the work of the artist Hayley Lock (2024). Henceforth, I find my artistic self interrogating the appearance of the not just the final piece but its interim images, taken during the working process, as part of an overall experience and how or why I experienced it? Did the personal self also have agency through the subconscious memories impacting upon the focus on the nose? or was that agency in the possession of the artistic self due to a deliberate re-focusing on and of the right hand side of the face during the latter stages of the work? The experience of agency itself I would argue creates an alternative sense of otherness through the juxtapositioning of the artistic self and personal self if they are seen as separate and detached entities. Does the experience of agency also suggest the intertwining of those separate and yet entwined self's within a third other? i.e. that of the neurodiversity.
A sense of otherness I would suggest pervades within the work as it is neither the personal self, or representative of the artist self but rather instead it speaks of the agency of the neurodiverse otherness that exists within both and yet also does not define either; but instead impacts upon how both experience the world rather than the reality of the world with that otherness situating the work within both a phenomenological context and the disrupted realism movement of Seed. Seed states "It is a subjective approach to painting that favors perception over seeing and embraces subjectivity." (2019) and hence by pushing artistic boundaries to what felt as if, but not necessarily are, at their furthest I allow for a subjective experience of the work at the point I decide to share it with a wider public - at the point of publishing this post that sharing will be done within minutes or a few hours. The concealing of the meaning, i.e. the disruption and distraction of neurodiverse experiences, is intentional but the intra-active becomings that are as a result of the material processes and intentionality of the work enable potential subjective revelations that are dependent upon the individual perceptions of an audience. A part of me, wants to hold back from publishing the work online as it feels intensely personal - perhaps the most personal piece of work I have ever done and the most intimate as the reality of it demonstrates the masking of my neurodiverse otherness, the fear of being seen demonstrated in the single eye being clear but the other being blurred and the anxiety that is both hidden and yet seen. However, at the earliest point of creation the intent was for the piece to be seen and to be perceived subjectively by an audience - to put this examination of the self within the public arena in order to progress the project with the progression reliant on the publishing of each portrait.
The piece is not however resolved - it is merely a comma, a semi-colon or even a question mark .... a grammatical punctuation within the project to lead to the next piece. It has become part of a rhizomatic process which consistently "moves, mutates and connects" (Scott, 2005) enabling not just the interrogation of the artistic relationship and sense of self but also of the philosophical research that is now underpinning what set out to be purely an artistic project.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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