The nature of criticism and a reevaluation of my work

Some pills are hard to swallow and others...well you don't wanna swallow them. Yet how do we tell the difference between medicine and drugs?
The following post is rushed and poor as i am writting on my break between reviews at work. I needed to get this down asap but wish i could have spent more time as it is actually a crucially important notion to me; and this blog.

I had a long chat with James the other day (who I painted in a partnership with for the final year of my Fine Art Ba hons) about my new body of work. he made many observations. As someone who pirdes myself on being open to criticism I have been spending the past day or two decoding his points of view. There is no use blindly absorbing advise when it is always biased and full of truths and half truths. So I thought it interesting to discuss the process i went through adn the consequent revelations.

Firstly i had to realise that every person brings limited and biased eyes to your work. There bias comes from what they know of you, what they value in art (and dont value), what they know about art (and don't know)and what you think the intention of their remarks is. no criticvism is a pure appraisal of another work, however much we try and be objective and honest. jealousies, paranoias, banter, limitations of knowledge and approach all effect how we view the work of a friend. if we can decode these elemetns we can find the seeds of accurate adn crucial criticism.

James commented on his disapointemnet with some fo the surfaces and the weakenss is certain other technical elements, such as the drawing. It goes without saying he is accurate. Firstly though I realsied it was important to appreciate that this was always going to be what he was focusing on. The subject, content and potential narrative are elements I feel he is not interested in; so the former would always be the arena of discussion. 9apologies if that seems unfair, it is not a compliment or a criticism, more an observation.) Secondally it is impossible to decode the complex web of feeling s two people have for the others work when they have been invovled in joint practise in the past. naturally they are always going to compare the work you did together against the new output.

From my point of few this is not a problem. I agree that certain little areas of our joint work explored interesting techniques adn surfaces; yet I am now interested in having a content, a function and a purpose to my explorations. I feel this is actually essential and that there is no such thing as purely self reflexive work. the moment you don't have sub ject matter your fucked.

I digress... after all this i realised there was some justification to james' barrage of commentary on the new surfaces etc. i have expanded in what i want to do, but perhaps to far. I have always felt process, surface and formal qualities of the medium itself are the central building block tot he narratives and subjects i want to explore. With recent moves towards more faceted and complex narratives i have found this to be fading. some of the earleir and fresher works in the series were less explicit or clear in content but dealt with the inbetween states, time warn surface and musical use of the medium which are, ironically, inherent to all the content in my new work.

I think i need to find a more consistent and simple form of narration. From foundation through to now certain values have interested me, that now relate to particular stories. From Ode to a Nightgingale to icarus i am interesteed in notions of rising and falling, of floating, of moving between states 9literal and metaphorical) of tangible reality and an other spiritual realm. For a few years these got lost in my practise as i located my approach to firmly in painterly exploration. now i have goen ther other way.

i think i need to understand the things i want to acheive then find a visual basis to start from which will allow me to pursue these notions. I need to consider the subject matter, the approach, the content, the formal plays, the boundaries etc etc.

I shall tackle all of these later in a blog regarding the next body of work i plan to develop after this current selection of paintings is finished (hopefully should finish them by the start of December)