28/10/09 Tutorial

So, yesterday was crap but today has been really good.
I had a tutorial today and to avoid a incomprehensable stream of consciousness and to organise my thoughts I will create a list of some of the points that were brought up.

• My work definitely works better on wood than canvas.
• I need to bring the subject matter up to date with my own photographs.
• My paintings are working differently to the photographs so far because I am putting more energy into them and restoring some of the energy that would have been there when the moment of the photograph was captured.
• The subject matter works for me as it is something I feel strongly about and can relate to.
• The energy in my paintings and some of the frustration and anger that comes across in the work is from an inherent frustration at the treatment of the northern working class society but also from my own anger and frustration at the feeling of losing those connections and roots. Moving down south and to university has made me feel I have no ownership or right to my northern, working class roots and background and that I can no longer claim that as my own. It is a fear of a loss of identity which is providing the emotional charge behind my work.
• The work incorporates social, political and economical themes as well as themes of human experience, whether it be my own, or the characters in the image or me sharing my experience through the characters in the image.
• I have to be careful not to become nostalgic or sentimental.
• I have to look carefully at the use of text in my work and the context from which it's been taking and is being used - a quote from a miner in the 80s doesn't have the same resonance if it's me repeating it. I need to avoid it appearing as a sort of teenage angst. I also need to look at dialogue vs. written text and the use of expletives and whether it gives a piece a different meaning.
• I need to continue to improve my photographic composition.

There are all the points I can think of now, it was a really helpful tutorial and I thank Mia Taylor for it. It's allowed me to see my work in a new dimension and really given me some focus to move forward. It also seems to have gotten to the root of what's fueling my work. 


Hopefully I'll be able to post some images of new work soon.