Painting Experiment 1 – Video

August 9, 2012, 3:59 am

≫ Next: Painting Experiment 3 (Yellow, Blue, Red)

The creative process has been a bit harrowing of late. Do you know the feeling?

Many experiments have followed, and out of frustration I made a video piece that I starred in. Some people do that when they’re frustrated, I guess? That’s something you won’t catch me doing very often. Yet here I am, painting into thin air from the inside out.

It was pretty fun to make. I didn’t get too much paint on myself, and it helped me to learn what I don’t want to do, make works about me. There, I said it. Shall we move on then?

This painting onto plastic thing I have been playing with in recent weeks has been pretty fun. Unfortunately, it also caused a bit of a distraction from the work I want to be making. In many ways, I’m not much of a multi-tasker with ideas. I can’t move my work in two disparate directions, they have to vaguely be going toward the same end.

The paint carnage afterward wasn’t actually that bad…

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Painting Experiment 3 (Yellow, Blue, Red)

October 3, 2012, 7:28 pm

≫ Next: Structure into Pink and Blue is complete

≪ Previous: Painting Experiment 1 – Video

Video still

This still is from my latest painting experiment, this time with red, yellow and blue. Are you seeing a theme with primary colours recently?

This is the most successful yet. I was able to get the lighting right, a good camera and edit properly. I’m learning a lot about the video process. However, as you learn more about making video, you find there is so much more to know. I enjoy making videos, but for the moment, that’s not where I want my focus to go. So, they might just appear in my work now and then.

This work will form part of my assessment this semester and may turn up in some exhibitions in the future.

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Structure into Pink and Blue is complete

October 25, 2012, 7:31 pm

≫ Next: Ephemera: Why it’s not a shame when I tear down an artwork

≪ Previous: Painting Experiment 3 (Yellow, Blue, Red)

Installations are hard to photograph. I always find it tough. Straight lines warp through the camera, light is hard to capture (for the novice photographer), and you can’t shoot around corners or capture two elements of the installation that talk to each other in the same frame. I usually find solace in the fact that I take as many photos as I can from as many angles as I can, trying to focus on the sweet spots for reading the installation, or at least where I think the sweet spots are. It was suggested to me a while ago to start filming my installations, as a way of capturing the spatial experience of moving through the work. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely something. I have been doing this on and off for a while.

Here is the video (now in 2D!!) and the installation shots of the finished work. (Note: there is no sound)

Structure into Pink and Blue from Naomi Nicholls on Vimeo.

Acrylic paint, paint pen and vinyl.

This work, in signwriting vinyl, acrylic paint pens and acrylic paint, has again allowed me to use multiple materials to build the installation. I love that. It just doesn’t feel right unless there are number of different mediums being used. Perhaps it doesn’t feel enough like a collage or that I’m truly building the work. This, when you think about it, is heavily related to the content of the work – building structures in space that are related to architecture of a site.

I’m pleased with the illusory qualities of this work. However, if you try to step into the rectangle across the floor and wall, it vanishes and becomes lines on the floor. Perhaps this is something I can push further.

The glossy finish which the vinyl gives, is fantastic. When it’s paired with the matt finish of the acrylic paint, it creates a kind of ambiguous spatial effect, highlighting the possibility of a fold in the wall.

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Ephemera: Why it’s not a shame when I tear down an artwork

July 3, 2015, 10:00 pm

≫ Next: We packed up the car and took art to Sydney!

≪ Previous: Structure into Pink and Blue is complete

e·phem·er·al
[ih-fem-er-uhl]
adjective
1.lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory: the ephemeral joys of childhood.
2.lasting but one day: an ephemeral flower.
noun
3.anything short-lived, as certain insects.

My work exists for a time and then it is gone again – it’s ephemeral. This is a word I have become closely acquainted with. Rather a nice one, especially in it’s pural form, ephemera. I get asked what the point of the work is if it’s only present for a short time. It’s an interesting connundrum. I used to agonise over it, but it’s par-for-the-course now – put it up, pause, rip it down.

To me my paintings are so performative and involve my whole body, its whole movement. So to compare it to an art object where it would be a great a shame if it were destroyed discounts the performative in these works. To make art objects (like a painting on canvas, a thing, something you can hold in your hand) is to make something for forever, to draw attention to and value the art-thing, but what do you do when the art isn’t an object? If it’s part of a wall, a floor or a ceiling and will be taken down, how is its fleeting life to be valued?

It began to happen quite organically, I wanted to paint ever larger and once you grow beyond the dimensions of your car, moving your art around and keeping it in good condition while you’re at it, becomes extremely difficult. It was the fault of one too many trips in the car, trying to drive with the seat pulled all the way forward, knees way up under the steering wheel, allowing room for the large canvases in the back. (And this hardly stellar car idea only developed after a period of taking large canvasses on the train, where it began to be miraculous that I wasn’t carried away on a gust of wind during the walk to the station, while carrying such a mighty sail of a painting). Ah the memories.

Then onto the wall and floor I went and the thought of killing my darlings was truly sad, because the painting had been hard fought. One of the first videos I made, though, was of me pulling down a painting. I peeled painted vinyl off the floor, the act of which made the paint move into three dimensional space and wrenching the colour from its surface was transformative. The space could be returned to its former state and the painting was now a pile of sticky, stretched vinyl scraps, a brightly coloured mess, my fingernails a mess.

Tearing down an artwork has grown to be as much a part of the art making as the development work leading up to the painting that it has equal value in my mind. It’s just as performative to tear at this skin I spread over the floor as it is to paint with my whole body. I brought it into the world and now I take it out. Then the ideas from the physicality of tearing down forms part of the thought processes and development for the next iteration or the next work.

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We packed up the car and took art to Sydney!

August 25, 2017, 12:22 am

≪ Previous: Ephemera: Why it’s not a shame when I tear down an artwork

You may have already heard about my preparations for taking my work to show in Sydney, and if you did miss it, follow along on my Instagram back a few weeks. Now it’s all over and the dust has settled. I even managed to edit video documentation. More on that later… One day in early July, […]

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