MFA Questions and Answers
Sally Barron WhiteCliffe MFA
March 2023 - Q and A
What do you Do?
I paint usually on large canvases with oil and acrylic, derived from drawings often made with charcoal, or pencil, from life. I am interested in the movement of the human form, specifically as it relates to the patterns and colour found in landscape. Perhaps more specifically how the nature of my mark making and bodily gesture affects the outcome on the canvas.
I am increasingly absorbed in abstraction and the idea of refracted seeing, and have been looking at the book "Disrupted Realism" Paintings for a Distracted world by John Seed
I have been making Paintings/pictures that build up in layers. I find it best to stand when I work and also enjoy the possibilities of the work changing direction when I come back another day.
Most recently I have been attempting to work solely from impulse and memory of the body and landscape with mixed results.
Or capture?
I have been considering my feelings before and during the painting process - specifically the emotions surrounding what it feels like to be in certain landscapes.
I am very interested in the work of French Impressionists and Post impressionists in the 19 –20th C and the building of colour fields. I want to develop work that explores the space between the observable, interpretation and imagination - as Cezanne observed, “The job of painting is to develop a new optic of Nature”1
I feel we are facing challenges today with the technological revolution and our separation from the landscape. Can we pour more of ourselves into the work and not outsource to AI or the second hand images we are bombarded with? I ask myself the question Why does this even matter, and how can I harness these ideas to drive my painting practice forward?
Or select?
I am especially interested in drawing, and collage, asking myself the question, is this a preparation or prelude to development of future work? Drawings can well be improvised independent works - and I wish to explore both these ideas in large ‘book- like’ sketch books, that can also stand alone as works on their own.
I have been especially interested in the process of painting after reading about William De kooning being a house painter and mural painter. He used that knowledge to prep his canvases and how this knowledge ensured the freedom he achieved in his gesture.
I would like the learning of process to drive my exploration of creating larger works. Staple to wall, stretch tightly, super prime to ensure smooth brush strokes. Increase the quantity of paint colours preprepared in jars, explore different mediums to help with this, and increase brush size, perhaps even put 2 brushes taped together.
I have been called a drawer/painter in the past, which is an unconscious thing for me but is something I want to be more intentional with and develop more.
I have been thinking about drawing in relation to painting, with the shared qualities of most drawing being, part of a process, the use of line, inchoate, a visualization of an idea or observation. Drawings can leave things in an unresolved state which is also something to aspire to in painting for me at least.
How do you make decisions during the process of your work? How and why do you select the materials, techniques, and themes that you do?
I have become consistent prepping similar size supports and have them ready before starting to work.
The abstract expressionists such as De Kooning often had a near square format that can lends itself more readily to abstract work, I have also favoured a portrait format for landscapes as this is more unexpected from traditional formats for this genre.
New work
I have largely limited myself in new work to a standard size (1650 x 1800mm) as this fits the standard metric stretcher pieces available, and is my ‘wing span’, the physical length of my reach.
Having preprepared canvas in large quantities will allow me to work on several pieces at a time.
Simultaneously I ‘start small and work up’. I make sketches that become collages that become paintings. I feel I need to restrict myself to a step by step process at least to start with. For Example
En plein air sketch or watercolour
Studio work up 2/3 versions of this slightly larger
Project or re draw onto larger prepped (with thin layer of sienna, warm grey or blue) canvas
Build up oil painted picture
The process of choosing the size and type of support seems to already begin the creation of the piece.
I choose to paint with oil but can be more open to starting with acrylic as this helps to cover large areas can help with “letting the paint ‘do its own thing’ For example When I do a generous wash of paint it drips or flows in a way I can't always control.
This applies to the themes as well, I have worked well with an idea of a theme, eg childhood in NZ, but would like to have this be broader, and more relevant to me today.
I use text as a starting point, especially poems, plays or stories that are important to me. For example, Virginia Woolf ‘The Waves’
What are you valuing in the work?
I value colour harmonies and compositional strength.
How it relates to other art movements
I am also interested in sentimentality, the Romantic tradition of 19th C landscape art and nostalgia. As well as the Nabis decorative ideas Vuillard and his some of his contemporaries espoused. The disruption or description of the picture plane is also important to me, I want an ongoing conversation with these ideas in my work.
What about the paint language do you value? We discussed colour and mark making when we met?
I value paint language that is unmistakably individual, for example in the work of Joan Mitchel or Bonnard, in fact many artists whose stroke or gesture reveals the exploration of the rhythm of their body during the painting process - in much the same way as drawing does.
Colour theory is useful for me, I recently went to the exhibition Light from the Tate at the Auckland City art gallery which was inspirational with regards to the history of colour theory and how artists such as Turner applied new ideas to his work. As well as the work of Hommage to the Square by Joseph Albers.
What are your sources or inspirations for images or forms used?
Life drawing, en plein air drawing and painting, photographs, film, other artists work, especially from the late 19th early 20 thC European tradition. The intersection and preoccupations of early photography and painting is a particular inspiration. For example The Barbizon painters who were interested in the cliche-verre as process midway between drawing, photography and printmaking. The sense of composition and tonal values from this era is a particular source of inspiration.
The work of Degas, Bonnard, Vuillard and Matisse, especially, and Edvard Munch.
I find that by looking at their work helps me to not be overly and directly influenced by more recent artists, for example the subject matter of Peter Doig or the colour palette of David Hockney.
I also look at Medieval paintings (eg Giotto), as well as grand History paintings for compositional ideas. (Titian)
I admire the work of Frank Auerbach when he made drawings of the paintings of past masters in the National Gallery London and went on to create his own paintings from these. This has been a useful idea for me in the past and I could do more work with this kind of process or system as a way to start work.
I would like to do more Drawing or painting en plein air, and work from drawings I have made directly onto the canvas, then paint over with thin layers of oil paint and ‘build the painting’
I would like to use 3 D more eg clay models I have made myself, modelling figures and heads from clay then painting them.
What are you trying to say in the work?
I want to explore what Peter Doig calls the “sprawling wilderness of Memory”
Perhaps we cling so desperately to memories because we note the passing of time and that passing of time is related to our own mortality. Painting allows us to arrest that moment and bring it back into the physical space that defines a sense of the present. To intervene in some way with the passage of time is what art and the creative act can do. Neil Tait suggested to me on Turps Banana Correspondence course that if I was “more open to the philosophical, poetic thought that might be said to define my painting activity my work would be stronger for it”
My paintings would be more defined by doubt.
How is the way you are saying it, with the materials, techniques and themes, the best for the ideas you want to present?
I think a fractured yet cohesive reexamined picture/image is something I can say with paint.
I have been inspired by the Degas/Kitaj reworking with line and paint then line over again. I think it’s better for me when I go large and the sheer size of the arm movement necessary gives a feeling of expansion and bravura. The size of the canvas seems to feel correct when it is my arm span, ‘human size’ if you will.
Many of the artists work I admire also refer to a collective memory, a memory of all the many paintings we have all seen together and privately, for example with Doig one sees Daumier, Van Gogh, Bonnard, the list goes on all absorbed into his paintings and reunited within his own images. This is something I would like to be more conscious of doing, not just being influenced by, but deliberately quoting or misquoting other artists work in a way that enhances mine.
What is it you’ve been trying to do to make the work relevant in relation to ideas, cultural circumstances or contemporary issues?
I have been trying to think about the question of the figure, what perhaps is making it so ‘loaded’ or even overloaded with meaning that abstraction is possibly preferred. The idea of the disrupted figure is interesting as well in an age where social media and repetition and endless exposure to the digital image erodes our direct experience of life.
I want to use my painting practice as a tool to better understand what painting is and can be. I want to place myself at the center of this enquiry. An exploration of being and knowing. The act of painting can be a cathartic or subversive occupation. Painting is time consuming which is an anathema to modern life. one has to stand in front of a work and examine it, this takes time and one can also understand the time it takes to make the work. People always ask ‘how long did it take you to make this?’
How does the current work relate to your previous work?
The current work is about exploring my marks and colour choices whilst trying to untether myself to the idea of a conclusion. Previous work has either had a composition decided or becomes something more definite subject matter wise eventually.
I think the common link in all my work is the subject of light and how colour affects the emotional viewing of the work, as well as the physical qualities of paint itself.
How does this work fit into a larger body of work or overarching project of ideas (if it does)?
I want it to be the beginning of a body of work that explores the landscape and memory.
How did your ideas change (if they did) to this point? Or how are your ideas changing (if they are)?
I am feeling open to abstraction for its own sake and my ideas are changing to include more emotion, text collage etc. Perhaps the figure disappears altogether.
Has anyone done this kind of work before?
The work of abstract expressionist artists such as Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and William de Kooning as examples of artists who have approached abstraction from the place of the directly observable. This position was directly informed by the work of Picasso and Matisse.
Matisse especially could be an important artist for me as I explore the space between the observable, interpretation and imagination.
Does anyone else do it now? Who are the artists that occupy this terrain?
Cecily Brown
Flora Yukhnovich, Jade Fadojutimi, More figuratively
Jenny Saville, Daisy Parish, Alex Katz, Makiko Kudo, Maureen Gallace
Who are the writers on the subjects? What specifically have they said, which then potentially motivates your own thinking for your work?
Alex Katz has discussed ‘slipping glimpse’ an idea previously expressed by De Kooning, I take this to mean an image from real life that burns into your retina that you try and reproduce in its essence.
As I often wonder about when and at what stage to use photography in a painting as an aid or starting point, I think it is invaluable that I consider writers on this subject. Seminal works on this are
Roland Barthes ‘Camera Lucida” and Susan Sontag ‘On Photography’ and John Berger “Ways of Seeing”
In the book Oxyrhnchus - Gargosian, the essay ‘Shored fragments (for Jenny Saville) by John Elderfield – he explains the Saville talks about ‘fragments captured in layers of time’ and Elderfield quotes discussions on the Wasteland by TS elliott as ‘Fragments coming together without a plan’
She works in sections building up layers and fragments of intimate body parts and images from art history
Her pervasive interest in sketches and unfinished ‘open’ works
Is your field an established one or did you invent it? What histories are you contributing to?
I would say my field is established but open to expansion, especially around direct painting from landscape and memory – I have 2 not necessarily opposing interests, en plein air/life drawing and a personal response to abstract expressionism.
I have an interest in creating a narrative, that may or may not mean anything to the viewer - its origins do not have to be known, and exploring the actual act of painting and crafting a picture.
Footnotes
1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Cézanne’s Doubt. 1945. https://faculty.uml.edu/rinnis/cezannedoubt.pdf.
