PARAGLACIAL/GEOMORPHIC and heading in the right direction.

Geomorphic 2 - Pauline Woolley 2013

 The very act of making work can be very misleading.  On Friday night I went to the Private View of an interesting painting show at Harrington Mill Studios in Nottingham and bumped into fellow artist Clay Smith.  After chatting for a while the inevitable question "How is your work going?" came up.  Interestingly  Luke Tarpey of The Tarpey Gallery asked me the same question when I delivered my work for the Tarpey Open the morning after.  My reply for both questions resulted in me shrugging my shoulders and replying with "Yeah okay.  I have ideas but not really the time at the moment...ideas are formulating."  Because I don't spend hours upon hours day after day making work I often feel that my reply doesn't do me justice.

On a long redirected drive back from my family last night I began to reflect on my practice and the answer I had given to both people.  My work over the past twelve months has begun to redirect itself and having spent many years making paintings, the mere fact that my making work has moved into the realms of the photographic image has taken a bit of adjusting to.  I will not stop making paintings. I adore painting. For the foreseeable future the work I want to make work lies in cameraless or reconstructed imagery.  Imagery I have captured or made myself.  Interestingly I always want to make the final image in the dark room or for it to have a strong analogue leaning.  This is the painter in me.  I want to get my hands dirty and for my work to have solid technical skills behind it.  The reality of all of this is that I do have work on the go.  Work I have been planning for along time.  Work that I have been selecting the right photographic images for.  

Paraglacial/Geomorphic is one such series.  I think I have now selected my final set of images for this series and I am now in the process of selecting an appropriate print method for the set.  This is a series that I have not spent hour upon hour, day after day working on but a series that has taken three years to collect imagery from locations such as Iceland, North Wales, Greece and the Balerics Islands.  It's also taken 6 months to think about it, write notes on scrap bits of paper and in my sketchbook and phone, then a few weeks to mould and experiment with the images until something goes click and I know intuitively that it's complete. 

I have another ambitious project that I am planning for next year.  One that is requiring alot of technical research and location hunting.  So maybe I should not be shrugging when asked "How is your work going?" but actually saying "It's going great.  Lots of research and making the work in small doses but you know, it's actually heading in the right direction".