Article

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Dots

Abstract

Watercolor

This week has been really active for my art practice.  I have been building on the idea that art is important work for myself, and to take it seriously as if it is my job.
My work feels obscured from my sense of knowing and mastery.  This space of &#8220;obscured from my sense of knowing and mastery&#8221;, I am discovering, is important for growth and I am seeking it out in every stream connected to my practice.  The sense of ease in my practice has been just a general sense of love and care for art.  I enjoy making these practices, even though they challenge me or absolutely because they challenge me.
I have been reading a lot of books around the subject of work and economics.  Jay Dalio&#8217;s Principles being the most interesting.  That book has me more inspired to be experience fear and pain. I also read December by Klüge.  That book was fantastic.  Definitely a work I&#8217;d like to re-read and try to extract more from.
I have been looking at the paintings of Cecily Brown.  I am taken by the way she occupies the space with lots of small vague forms and marks that lead to an image that resembles the richness of nature.  I love the level of abstraction to representation she presents.

These two paintings are on my wall/in progress.

They feel like they are touching something, though they feel too flat for my liking, and not fully expressed.  I think adding more contrast in color and form could be what activates them.

After another painting session some forms are beginning to take shape but I am also now losing clarity and unity.  It seems like the next steps would be to create more clarity by making a large shape and also clarify existing forms. The dots feel like an add on after the fact but maybe after successive layers they will take on more meaning.  This painting could definitely slide into mud but risk needs to happen to see what is possibly there.

The best possible outcome of this project, as far as I am concerned, is that our lives, our spaces, our community are enriched through the sacred process of sharing art.
$1000 for a commissioned piece.
The categories I&#8217;m receiving commissions within are abstraction, landscape, waves, and portraits.  If you decide you want to commission we will meet for 30 minutes to an hour to chat about ideas and inspirations. If you have photos and references it is great to bring those to the consultation.  The size format that I am interested in ranges from 16&#215;20 to 36&#215;36. It can be larger or smaller depending on the idea and composition that feels natural to the subject of the work, but this will generally be range of sizes.  You can expect the works to look like evolutions on existing works depicted on my website, though I will be pushing my own boundaries as an artist with every work.
If you want to commission a painting email me at kylewestbrookartist@gmail.com
If you want to collect an existing artwork please email me, and we can chat about pricing etc.  Dimensions are included with the picture to give you an idea of size.
Here I&#8217;ll share some thoughts about specifics around pricing as they relate to my business.  These will change and be modified over time but I think my own understanding of how to make this practice more sustainable as a business will evolve.  $1000 is a sort of even round number and though it is certainly a significant portion of money, I believe it gives access to a wider selection of people interested in art collecting, while not completely devaluing my time and the materials.  Existing works on paper can be priced lower, as the material costs are lower, and they sort of pop into existence.  Email me for more specifics about works within the archive.
If you have any questions or thoughts about how to improve this process please let me know!
Thank you for your interest in my practice.

I am working with paper and watercolor to begin my explorations into these dot paintings.  The spirit of the work feels stronger in some paintings and weaker in others.  More and more it is starting feel like the idea is how the dot relates to its shadow and how that changes throughout the grid in the painting.  My instincts are leading me toward more clarity in the image, which may mean less layering, maybe more contrast.  I am wondering if being more precise, maybe machine like will bring more of the spirit out.  Or perhaps it&#8217;s establishing the precision and then letting it fail and become precise again and then fail and repeat that process until some life enters the work.

Signals shied, ubiquitous interference, seeing filtered, input interpreted to language partially translated.

This week has been active.  I made a first painting of Mitch. It reveals to me that the painting needs more love, as it feels rough and clumsy.  I am working on a painting of a show dog at this moment.  I am really trying to slow down in the moment to moment mark making. I am trying to recognize the marks that I find distracting later and not make them to begin with.  I have been obsessing over Thomas Ruff’s work.  His work is so dry, I aspire to make something that feels as dry.

I feel my practice moving forward, which at its most basic is what I want.  Specifics about paintings seem like the wrong place to focus.  Simply making seems to be the important thing for me, as the act holds pleasure for me and connecting to that impulse is restorative. I’ve dedicated 14 hours to the practice this week.  Connecting to reading has been challenging, I find myself lost in the language of images more than text.  
Key take aways from last weeks meeting include:
<ul>
<li>Just say &#8220;Thank you.&#8221;</li>
<li>Narrative at its simplest is change over time. </li>
<li>Government as the occult.</li>
<li>Creating space in the McConnell painting is a matter of creating beauty.</li>
<li>The portrait as deteriorated Landscape</li>
<li>Work that is an empty vessel, ready to relieve the burden of the viewers narrative.</li>
</ul>

Forage

Most of this week was spent recovering from some illness, maybe Covid. I have spent only a few hours photographing and uploading these archive entries this week. All of these works occurred over the past few weeks.  I am noticing a more impasto texture to the paintings.  It appears that I am interested in the portrait.  
I have had the feeling of retreat, as if I want to avoid my practice. And curiously, there is also a lot of energy in the acceptance that occurs when I publish works to the site, as if I am saying, “OK, here is where I am right now,” as an artist. That feels truthful, and therefore nourishing.  I see a lot of technical places to be improved, those insights feel like sharp little daggers, as most of the time I am not sure how to improve the works.  The particular quality of the ugliness of Ice Cream II was a sort of pleasant strange surprise. It felt worth keeping as a result. 
I am going to work on a landscape and McConnell this coming week. I feel as if I am making unconsciously, and maybe that should be good enough for a moment.  One thing that occurs to me as I reflect on these latest works, I believe I need to slow down and develop the forms more meticulously.  I’d like to include some more color into my practice, which has been really challenging me lately.  I am having difficulty discovering subtle realistic color harmonies that hold some aesthetic quality.  
I am excited to track my practice here.  The site makes me want to improve my work.

&#8220;It is not exactly the face that constitutes the wall of the signifier or the hole of subjectivity. The face, at least the concrete face, vaguely begins to take shape on the white wall. It vaguely begins to appear in the black hole. In film, the close-up of the face can be said to have two poles: make the face reflect light or, on the contrary, emphasize its shadows to the point of engulfing it &#8220;in pitiless darkness.&#8221;1 A psychologist once said that the face is a visual percept that crystallizes out of &#8220;different varieties of vague luminosity without form or dimension.&#8221; A suggestive whiteness, a hole that captures, a face. According to this account, the dimensionless black hole and formless white wall are already there to begin with. And there are already a number of possible combinations in the system: either black holes distribute themselves on the white wall, or the white wall unravels and moves toward a black hole combining all black holes, hurtling them together or making them &#8220;crest.&#8221; Sometimes faces appear on the wall, with their holes; sometimes they appear in the hole, with their linearized, rolled-up wall. A horror story, the face is a horror story. &#8221; (p. 189)

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