Making finished work & a moment in passing time.

Work gifted me with two long enough train journeys to have a think about how to produce more finished work as I've become frustrated by the amount of work that I have been abandoning. I thought a good place to start, would be to define what I think of as (my) finished work, so I attempted to mind-splurge and this is what I came up with.

'Can hold a conversation' means a conversation with the viewer - I don't want to dictate a meaning, there must be room for a good chunk of translation 'it looks like...'. 

Talking to other work' means that this work doesn't exist in a vacuum, but within a body of work and hasn't gone off at a tangent. I want to feel that I've got a sense of progression; towards what exactly I don't know, but I need to feel that I've moved on somehow from my last piece of work. I do like tangents, and I want to be following them down, but I don't want to be captured by a stray lighting-bolt one that burns out too quickly. The piece has to be staying on a track.

'Balanced. Form + colour.' Self-explanatory. Well, I could put this one in the middle also.

'Proud to share'. Again, self-explanatory.

'Is 'mine''. That I've not captured another's artist's style. I do have a dominant style which is quite delicate and I've worked hard to embolden my colours and lines while maintaining that delicacy. I try out other artist's styles to try and learn their techniques and improve my own and they can sometimes stick for a while. So I need to be mindful that I am in fact on the track, and not still learning a technique.

'Captured spontaneous response'. It's got to be fresh, it has to be authentic to my feelings - my response to a place in a particular moment. I also wrote this in a different way, although to me it means the same thing as 'A moment in passing time'. I'm just going to type up what I wrote in my sketchbook about that at the time and then see if I still agree with what I wrote.

Why do I say a moment in passing time rather than a 'passing moment in time'? Are they not the same thing?It's just an exchange of words but they do have a different meanings: different types of instances of perception, experiences of a moment.A 'moment of passing time' holds within the phrase a concept that there will be, inevitably, another moment, and another after that, etc. beyond me, my time; the time of my kind.A 'passing moment' is one that (to me) captures a moment and holds it. The emphasis being more on the moment not the nature of time which is to mark change. Everything one looks at stops with a captured moment, and I want a sense of time's endlessness. However, I don't want to get too wrapped up in that small definition, just hold it in the back of my mind and let it form my intuition.

Well, I guess the problem I form for myself is that an image made can not move on in time, it is captured in response to the original inspiration, it can only be of itself and move onwards as an object / document. But that's an artwork and what I'm in the business of making. So I don't want to get wrapped up in it as a concept. It's just a small part of what makes me feel a work is complete and finished.

I think part of what makes me abandon work; well, I have two things going on here. Work that I know is failing and needs to be moved on from, and work that is succeeding but needs so much attention that in order to succeed that I get bored and distracted from it. I think it's a case of mindset. I do find that the further away I get from that moment of intuitive response the more wooden works become and they fail, and I resent the time lost making them and I slam the door on them (Typical INFJ door slammer) and go off in search of something else, and so I don't ever get deeper.

That is certainly what is in danger of happening with the tree forms I have been working with for a week and a half. The first set in watercolour were floaty but bold. I felt they needed grounding so I brought in the Payne's Grey acrylic ink lines to mostly just two watercolour shades and the second set made the next day were bright, bold, clear, and they had immense life. Partly that was because I let the ink drift into very wet watercolour because I love the effect - the colour lives for itself for a bit.

Then I experimented with the letting colour live on top of a dried ground of dirty ink pot water so I could get the lovely grainy effect. The result was more meditative tones of grey and muted Cad Yellow, Aliz and Ultra in more abstracted lazy shapes which I was pleased with and couldn't wait to get back to after a few days away.

When I got back I successfully added more layers of ink pot water to the lazy shapes, but I spent the majority of the day working into the shapes I saw and creating a larger painting which was meant to be a combined response from both the original sketches, and the work created since, and that hasn't been so satisfactory. 

Looking at them blue-tacked to the wall in consecutive order they get darker and darker over time, like a moment fading from memory. The middle ones are the most satisfying. 

So I think, in all, as a means to examine my practice and potentially eliminate waste, this has been a very useful exercise. Starting a work with the idea in mind that it will be somehow a culmination is a mistake and show me abandoning that sense of a moment in passing time. Getting out of the house and going out to get more sketches would help. Holding on to the sense of a moment in passing time could be key. I have a load more paper just delivered so I can get bigger.