21 Artist Practice and University of Westminster (Harrow Campus)

 On Friday we had a great opportunity in the shape of  contemporary British Artist Simon English who shared his trajectory of what he described as being his love of drawing (which often included painting).

As well as an Artist Simon is a teacher and it was interesting to hear him talk about what he gets from teaching he has a love for research.

Simon has exhibited worldwide, made media appearances  and also is responsible for various books.

Simon described how he has struggled between doubt and certainty with periods of introspection and withdrawal - he explained how leaving private education and time in college from 16 onwards brought him to be where he is now, Simon also spoke about collaboration and working with his assistant Cedric.

Studio space was important to Simon and he works (often) by combining smaller works together, often on paper some being 2.5m by 2.5m. 

Some of his words that  I noted were ' Find the fun' and he also spoke about his use of Automatic writing and the benefits he got from walking 

Simon also spoke about the use of what is now known as 'Mind Mapping' he preferred the now discredited term Brain Storming (see why it's not used so much now) 

Is it a sausage machine?


After Lunch we got to hear about the University of Westminster from a current student (and a  CityLit FDA alumni ) Tom - Tom described the programme and facilities.

Tom who is in year 3  is interestingly working with 'Dust' in his now sculptural works and is looking forward to an end of year show.

Points Tom were especially enthusiastic about were  Tutors and Cross Generational nature of the students (from 18 to 68 year olds) - he is getting some experience with work with workshops/technicians.

After an  enthusiastic Tom left we had some time expressing stuff around development of career  via collage with Simon - lots of things to think about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The start days 1 and 2

Image
 This week I have started a course at CityLit London that's about Art and Design, the course runs for an academic year and is 3 days per week. CityLit is an institution that offers many opportunities for adult learning one of the big assets is the teaching which is conducted by people who have a real life history in the topics they teach in - I started the part 1 of the course pre pandemic and here is a link to a post from early 2020 On this website I will reflect on the learning and experience, what approaches were taken, feedback from the group  and the way I felt about various aspects of the topic. Monday  13th September 2021. The first session was Textiles and we looked at  a presentation on  Textiles and some of the artists working in this area - funnily enough I had visited a local Arts Trail at the weekend and seen and discussed with a participating artist a textile approach using a recycling perspective  as the raw material (sort of if I can see raw...
Read more

Day 11 - a bit of colour

Image
Colour is a complex matter, a science  as well as part of art. When we look at an area of colour it can be described as being made up of 3 variables  Light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans perceive (via Rods and Cones in their eyes) in a particular way. Numbers can be apportioned to give a defined colour via    Hue -  the attribute of a colour by virtue of which it is discernible as red, green, etc., and which is dependent on its dominant wavelength and independent of intensity or lightness Tone  - this  refers to the relative lightness or darkness of a colour. One colour can have an almost infinite number of different tones and  Saturation  refers to the intensity of a colour. This is different from hue,  Saturation is the strength of a surface colour, its degree of visual difference from neutral grey. paint behaves differently from light in mixing, the primary colours with paint are Red Blue and Yellow - mixing th...
Read more

18 -Last Friday, more Editing

Image
An image from Dresden Dynamo   Last week in the Moving image session we were shown a piece of work that was created in the days of 16mm (this film format is still around but less common these days)the work we saw was 'Dresden Dynamo ' by the experimental film maker Lis Rhodes and was made 1971-72. (More about Liz Rhodes here )  Liz explains the way the Sound track was created  and the reason for it's unpredictability and other-worldliness here. The image is read by an optical sound head and this is not the usual way (normally a distinct  separate sound track of audio/music would be recorded ) conversely the pattern and shapes in Liz's film correspond with the soundtrack so we see the sound and here the pictures. We also got a chance to see Berlin Horse by Malcolm Le Grice (with soundtrack by Brian Eno) - we were told that the film was colourised black and white (printed to add colour), the film includes found footage, superimposition and various distortions (in...
Read more