Self portrait/non-representational; FINAL REVIEW:
This was a really great project, I felt like it really forced me to loosen up with my drawings. Drawing should be like a cycle, the more you do the better the result. As far as process, I remember that initially I wanted to get as much of the board covered with drawings as possible. I didn't really mind if it appeared disjointed or obscure. As I just let the drawings build up, this sort of spiral like motion became very apparent in the collage. I made up my mind that the movement of the piece was something that I liked very much so the goal began to lean towards abstraction. Lee Krasner once said of her work " I insist on letting whatever comes through to come through, I do not want a forced image." I believe that was the sort of temperament that I developed in this project. A glitch that I think became more apparent in my process is that I lost sight of what the final project should develop into. I guess that could be both a good and a bad thing. Somewhere along the line I began to rely too heavily on drawing/painting and not enough collage. After the first few weeks of the very beginning layers of the collage these hands started to develop in my drawings. I added the hands as a simple interesting form, I do not think that there was any psychological reason for choosing them. Then perhaps there was.....Hands are so descriptive, they have a lot of emotion in them. These were drawings of my hands and so that would imply some connection to me. Whether it be sadness, melancholy, loneliness, curiosity, joy. There could be a lot of that in the collage in some way. In fact the more I study it the more I think there is. What I think definitely should have been developed further is the nice black ribbon/wave that entered into the piece during its final stages of completion. There should have been more of a collage element to this rather than just painting it on. If it were added as collage it would probably mesh more definitively in the work.
One really big question that the work seemed to spur for me was: How do we define the difference between abstraction and representation? If we are thinking of nature as an artist then we are observing what is out in front of us. What we can visually perceive before us, whether it be the still life, model, etc. With abstraction the perception is still there but the artist himself seems to be nature. Nature is within him and whatever seems to come out with his hand IS nature in a sort of raw and different form from the latter. Jackson Pollock is a perfect example of this. The drip paintings were about the act of construction. The emotion which every flick or splash contained.
Another question that seemed to really irritate me as I was working on the collage was: When exactly am I finished? That may sound very generic but it's something that I really dealt with. I think the answer to that is simply that it is a sort of magic that comes with the experienced artist who knows when to stop. There is that sense of finality.....usually wrought with exhaustion.
Overall it was a good project, a lot was learned. I am relatively pleased with what the final result shows. I do think that there is indeed something left unresolved, cannot quite put my finger on it despite what I have said above.