This week in the course I’m taking, we are to steal a few ideas from a favorite artist. At first I was going to steal from Leonora Carrington, but I didn’t feel that excited about it. Then for some reason out of the blue I thought of the artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. I’m mystified why he came to mind. I am barely familiar with his work, having viewed and then not shown his Art 21 profile because he uses the word masturbation in it. But his work uses a lot of his own comic characters and he uses his own world as the basis for his work.
So I re-watched the video, which I haven’t watched in 8 years I think. Some of the elements I noted in his work are layers (like obsessively layered), stencils, combining drawings with painting and other media, messy, complicated, obsessively detailed, storytelling. He has some characters, or energies that he uses in his work: Mounds, Torpedo Boy, Loid, Painter. I also have characters or energies that I work with, and while he uses comic storytelling, I have a hint of narrative and a love of children’s picture books that I’ve always wanted to explore more deeply (this is part of my love of Kiki Smith as well).
His studio is a lovely messy space with piles of ephemera he uses in his layered collaged work. I have a lot of unsuccessful older work that I’ve never finished or don’t like but am loath to throw away. Perfect for collage! I have been meaning to gather all of my artwork in my studio, so I fianlly did the last stage of that.
I decided to make a few experiments, because after realizing the parallels in my work, and the possibilities if I steal some of his methods, I was overwhelmed and probably hypomanic and actually had to lay down to calm my mind. When I woke up this morning I decided to keep it small and simple and not be intimidated by his masterworks that took him years.
Experiment #1 was to collage some of my own older artworks together, and to do a stencil over the top. I found a random abstract uncommitted painting to use as a background and another slightly abstracted painting of a figure. I cut out the figure and glued it to the background, and cut out circular shapes from the leftover paper. Then I did a stencil over the top, the only stencil I have, with swirls, using green gold paint. I tried using actual metallic gold but it was too thin and bubbly.
Experiment # 2 was a print out of a drawing in an old sketchbook. I glued that onto a brown piece of paper pulled out a handmade sketchbook someone gave me that doesn’t open up flat and thus is not pleasant to use as a sketchbook. I used paint, posca markers, woody crayons. I meant for it to just use neutrals and it feels overworked to me. I think I’ll try it again.
There is a third experiment, but it deserves a separate blog post.
But what did I get from these first 2. One of my goals is to BE INTERESTED (a phrase from this lovely talk by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in what I am doing. That is a message I keep getting. In my class, we are to ask ourselves “Am I enjoying this or am I not?” and If not, why? Do something else. It’s not am I interested in how good this will be, but am I having fun experimenting with this.
I continue to struggle with that, keep getting sucked back into “but will it be GOOD” and it’s such a hard habit to break. With the exercises on this page, I felt a bit separate from it, it was just an exercise, and it was fun. But it didn’t give me a sense of direction. I wasn’t necessarily interested in it. I can see doing it in the future when I have no other ideas, and it is a great way to use up old work I want to get rid of. I like it for that.