elleywestbrook

[elleywestbrook]

38. Reflection and evaluation FADP.

I thought I would really crack life drawing on this module!

We started off with a to and fro drawing. Which was fun and slightly addictive and stopped me taking myself at all seriously.

What I did find on this module, was a permission to turn my doodles into drawing and stop the nonsense of feeling guilty about time wasting. The module has validated my use of time. 

Louis Bourgeois used her art as a therapy and that is definitely happening within me. A release, but not necessarily to expose my innermost and deep seated neurosis and childhood traumas. It has allowed me to gently process what is happening to me now, by giving me the space to be and concentrate on something beautiful, a repetitive mark making exercise. I like the aesthetic that black line on white paper gives. I love to fill a page. Others seem to like them too and who doesn’t like affirmation? That’s not become the reason though. I feel quite tearful writing about this. It’s a peace.

Looking back at the jumping off points printed on the brief...I am unsure where I jumped off from, I seemed to make several launches and ended up at number 3. Movement/action/performance? But only in one sense...it’s been bigger than that.

I haven’t included many responses to the lectures but I must just fly the flag for you Celia...I learn so much and they inform other things for me, at the moment. Invisibility is doing a gentle breast stroke around my mind and I think I will pick that up at a later date.

Narrative was a favourite week too. My Grandmother weaving her way through all my work for this season. 

Writing, the written word or line, as drawing has similarly reawakened a buried need in me. I used to write ALL the time. It was how I processed... so whilst invisibility is doing the breast stroke, writing is just treading water. What is a line...well it seems it is many things. 

In short I feel I am at the beginning of something that might take me through my years, discovering drawing, how I draw...it matters little what tools I choose, its the threads of thought or the absence of thought knitted together to articulate the present and make sense of the past. So in effect it is a gift. 

[elleywestbrook]

37. A few more... the rest are in my sketchbooks.

[elleywestbrook]

36. more...

Drawings done as presents for the stupid amount of birthdays in May!

[elleywestbrook]

Time Lapse and going big: Performative mindfulness (is there is such a thing?)

During my last formative presentation it was suggested that I record one of my drawings as a time Lapse for inclusion into the Exploring Futures module exhibition. I put it to the vote on Social media about which one to upscale. I think if I was doing it now I would just trust my process and do it free hand as a doodle.

The reason for the time lapse is the performance aspect of these doodles, which I should maybe try and stop calling doodles and start calling them drawings. I find them meditative and now I see people standing in front of the screen and stopping and just watching. There is no sound. So the performance becomes meditative to the viewer. It’s a little ad break in the day... without any ads.

This is part of the time lapse. The full film, which is this one and another smaller free hand drawing are showing on a screen in the current exhibition that I am part of in Maylords. Released! The exhibition looks strong and I am really happy about how these have turned out and how well they have been received.

There is something hypnotic about a time lapse video.

[elleywestbrook]

34. More drawings, repetitive in style but each different.

Having been told the top drawing looked like a massive fanny hovering over a lake of fire I set about changing it. I’ve started doing more time lapse and love them.

Then apparently I did a massive nipple... what is going on in my brain?! (Or the commentator’s perhaps?)

The drawing with a hat stand in was meant to be a really long drawing (responding to Madge Gill’s work) and I started it on wallpaper lining. I didn’t like the way the sharpie reacted with the paper, hadn’t had much sleep, the content started to infuriate me with news stories and songs creeping in and I gave it up in a thoroughly bad mood. An actual proper strop.

Reflecting on this I realise something.

All my other work hangs on a narrative. It’s generally deeply personal in one way or another and is very people focused. My doodles don’t mean anything, they are the release from thinking. As soon as I start shoe-horning issues into them it all goes tits up. As I have said they appear to be meditative and allow me non thinking processing time and I think it’s something I am going to jealously guard.

[elleywestbrook]

33. Enlarging a doodle

One of our set pieces of work to complete was to pick a doodle and enlarge it. I chose a flower one and it went up to an A0 size. I wasn’t too precious about making it exact, deciding early on to grant myself licence to make a few changes and not get at all screwed up about having to present a perfect upscale.

so it presented some difficulties in translation but I LOVED IT! I like the large scale, I got seduced by big! It makes a statement...so the doodle becomes something completely different. Suddenly I can see different applications and it will be good to see if I can doodle freehand on this scale.

[elleywestbrook]

More daily drawings

[elleywestbrook]

31. Brooklyn Road has stalled here.

Collage, colour, loss of love for it.

The story of the tree: it’s written in the trunk. This tree was the bain of my Grandma’s life. She used to regularly write to the council about the mess it made of her garden and the disruptive nature of the roots making the pavements a disgrace. When I went back to scope out the house before doing a photo shoot there in December 2020 I noticed the tree had been pollarded but it had remained in situ defiantly sticking two fingers up to her. She died in 1993 but the tree lived on.

When, however, i went back to do the actual shoot on the 19th (I think) of December it had been cut down. On the one hand I think this is a terrible shame but it felt like such a win for her. As I was projecting her onto the house she could look out from the walls and smugly see the tree lost in the end. That is why the tree is transparent in this picture.

I started to add colour. Probably in reaction to the vast expanses of white. I don’t feel this is finished but I don’t want to continue at the moment. I photocopied it in sections to work into and decide where I wanted to go with it but I haven’t looked at those again either. I have been doodling/drawing for England and concentrating on time lapse video which is quite hypnotic.

[elleywestbrook]

30.

180 Brooklyn Road cont’d.

Incorporating frequently used doodle fills to create an illustrative style. Liking it but at the same time not much! A bit indifferent to be honest. So probably safe to say I am like aspects of it... the aspect I am liking is the actual doing. It comes back to being able to control my environment with music and drawing and being able to block out the chaos elsewhere in my life.

[elleywestbrook]

Post number 29.

180 Brooklyn Road.

Thinking about doing a larger scale illustrative drawing combining the narrative of my childhood relationship with my grandma which all centred around the house she lived in. 180 Brooklyn Road. My grandma is uppermost in my thoughts at the moment. I’m having to defend her memory and my love for her against my increasingly aggressive biological father. Who has a pathological hatred for her.

[elleywestbrook]

28. Doodles, doodles everywhere. Becoming the main event.

Really just concentrating on the doodles now. Black and white, pen and ink. The sketch book is starting to inform my progression with this module. It’s not just a daily drawing exercise, it is providing a bit of calm, meditative space in which to process an increasingly chaotic home life.

[elleywestbrook]

27. Bit of progression and more drawing in sketch book.

More daily drawings:

Working on a larger scale, collating and adding in an old motif ‘walking lines’. I like the chaotic mix and collage in the larger pieces. It’s not really making any sense. But it doesn’t have to.

[elleywestbrook]

26. Daily drawings and fiddling around with stitch still.

Catching up with posting daily drawings

Still playing with stitch here and struggling to fully embrace the doodle as a bona fide drawing (even though I would have said I had). I was still at this point feeling I should move it onto stitch because ‘that is what I am’ . Which I now think is bollox. I am an artist free to chose at point of making how I respond!

[elleywestbrook]

25. Artist Research

Madge Gill- outsider artist

With no training and no aspirations to fame, Madge Gill produced large scale textile artworks and many secretive ink drawings during her lifetime. She often created several in each sitting, usually at night by dim candlelight. As with all her work, the drawings were influenced by her spirit guide, Myrninerest, who Madge considered to be the true owner of her work. When she died in 1961 her vast output was discovered in cupboards and under her bed. The majority were given to Newham Council by her son and are still in their heritage collection today whilst the remainder found their way into the commercial art world.

Milliner’s Dream, black ink on card, 14 x 9 cm, circa 1940.

collection of madgegill.com

Madge Gill, ‘Untitled’, c.!940 Ink on Postcard

This image in particular I could see as a stitch piece.

“Architectural Fantasy,” the last work by Madge Gill

I don’t know the scale of this work...but it could be massive. I was really inspired to increase the scale of my works by the upscaling of the doodle I did a couple of weeks ago...but what would I be saying? Why would I do it?

Keith Haring

Tseng Kwong Chi Keith Haring in subway car, (New York), circa 1983. Photo © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc. Art © Keith Haring Foundation

Keith Haring was born in 1958, in Pennsylvania, USA. He is known for colourful, cartoon artworks and certain characters such as crawling babies, barking dogs and spaceships.

Keith Haring, 1958-1990, Untitled 1980, Ink on Bristol board, 510 x 660 mm, Collection of the Keith Haring Foundation.

When he was 20 years old he moved to New York City and was a part of the LGBTQ+ community in New York. Sadly eventually dying from an AIDS related illness, he spent much of the 1980′s living and working in the same neighbourhood  as Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat.  Haring was inspired by graffiti artists making hundreds of drawings on New York’s subway.

Keith Haring, 1958–1990, Untitled 1983, Vinyl paint on tarpaulin, 3068 x 3020 mm, Collection of KAWS

Keith Haring, 1958-1990, Untitled 1985, Chalk on paper, BvB Collection, Geneva

Keith Haring, 1958–1990, Untitled 1983, Woodcut, 610 x 762 mm, Collection of the Keith Haring Foundation

I like the use of a strong decisive line he employs and the bold  colours. There is great movement expressed in his drawings conveyed with such strong gestural marks. They make me think that my doodles could expand into something else. I shouldn’t just put them away at the end of the drawing module. 

My niggling issues are: should I push on through and invest more time and really develop them, are they too repetitive? Its a lack of confidence I think. Are they any good...should I just shut up? Maybe stitch is what I should concentrate on....blah blah blah. I seem unable to resolve anything in my head at the moment!

[elleywestbrook]

24. More Alice Kettle Stitch and other meanderings...

Further research into Alice kettle’s earlier work, looking at a book ‘Mythscapes’.

Audrey Walker writing about Alice, she was her tutor at Goldsmiths, talks of understanding textiles as a medium that crosses disciplines and acts as a bridge between fine and applied, art forms. Alice Kettle trained as a fine artist but then did a post graduate course in textiles. Audrey was struck by her ability to handle colour and noticed that her paintings (those in her portfolio brought for interview) were “Peopled with small figures and that this engagement with the human presence was the essential core of the work.”

I think human presence, stories, the intricacies of lives and what makes us human is at the core of my work too. I’m just taking a moment to really get to grips with this because Audrey Walker’s words have resonated with me. The dance between hope and reality, between experience, pain, love, loss, connections...It’s the connections, the binding of shared experience, how we can empathise with someone through their stories. Stories are very important to me. I often think I waffle on, but its that i feel it is so intrinsic to what I want to say to be able to set the scene. Tell the background, which is the story or the context. How people feel, how things make people feel. To get all’ woo woo’: its the heart entwined with the soul, the essence of the person. Back to their lived experience. In everything that I do when I am making art, I always need a hook, a story, a reason, a connection to hang it on. I need that hook in order to become passionate and obsessive about it. I get obsessive and I can’t think about anything else and I HAVE to make the work and then I HAVE to tell everyone about it. If I just concentrate on process it becomes pedestrian or at best Meditative. Meditative is good obviously, if I am in an agitated state and many times I make to know what I am thinking. It’s all combined into my process. It’s connected, connections. I am a maker so that is part of me, I bring that to the story, I articulate the retelling of what ever story through making and eventually work appears. Sometimes quickly, sometimes I take the bus all around the houses. What am I trying to say?  I hear Audrey! For me too...The human presence (and their stories) are the essential core of the work. The reason. 

Back to Alice...and more stuff relevant to my practice.

Mary schoeser opens up her essay in the book ‘MythScapes’ about Kettle - “It’s easy to get carried away with the concept of textiles as analogies for human experience, since every language abounds with phrases such as ‘the rich tapestry of life’, ‘following the thread of conversation’, ‘spinning a yarn’ and many more.” This is so true, the link between stories and stitch is embedded in history. Look at the Bayeux Tapestry, telling the story of the Norman Invasion. It was a propaganda piece, obviously, but it is historically important as a record and as a massive work of art.  

Kettle uses the rhythmic flow of machine stitch in a painterly way, she is not a slow stitch embroiderer she is a painter using modern industrial sewing machines to tell her subject’s stories. 

In 2001 she completed three High Altar frontals for Gloucester Cathedral. As soon as this lockdown is over I am going to get myself down there to have a really good look at her work.

all images of artworks lifted from Alice Kettles website. https://alicekettle.co.uk/gallery-new/

[elleywestbrook]

23. Alice Kettle - Thread Bearing Witness.

Dealing with a subject that is very close to my heart.

Alice Kettle trained as a painter. Several textile artists I have been looking at recently have ‘trained as painters’ but have moved into or chosen stitch as their medium of choice.

https://britishtextilebiennial.co.uk/programme/alice-kettle-thread-bearing-witness/#:~:text=Shown%20at%20Gawthorpe%20Hall%20during%20the%20British%20Textile,collective%20textile%20narratives%20of%20refugees%20and%20asylum%20seekers.

Alice Kettle’s Thread Bearing Witness is a major series of large textiles that consider issues of cultural heritage, refugee displacement and movement, while engaging with individual migrants and their creativity within the wider context of the global refugee crisis. The works present the individual and collective textile narratives of refugees and asylum seekers.

Sea, Ground and Sky are the titles of the three hangings or tapestries (embroideries actually).  The thread of Alice Kettle is bearing witness to the personal testimonies of the refugees she has encountered.

Kettle worked with individuals and groups of refugees and asylum seekers, in the UK and in camps in Europe, asking them to contribute to and inform these large artworks through the common language of stitch.

Sea.

Ground

Sky 

There’s something about the huge scale of the artworks that echoes the huge scale of the crisis, yet the individual stitch speaks of each individual involved. The sheer scale of lives affected, not to mention lost is represented, in my view, in each stitch but the multitude of stitch also.

This picture gives you an idea of the scale but also the draw to look at specific areas and the detail of the stitches.

[elleywestbrook]

22. Emily Tull

Artist research. Stitch as a drawing medium.

She was part of the Sky arts Portrait Artist of the year program in 2014, creating a portrait of Lord Melvyn Bragg. Below is a you tube video giving a good overview of her work, and below that some screen grabs of a layered piece that really interests me.

I am really drawn to her use of different materials to use as stitching ground. Evocative ground, vintage wallpaper from her childhood, muslin to give a ‘skin’ to use over the hessian to make the face more stable.

She uses ‘slow stitch’ ie she stores by hand and not machine. This takes a very long time but you can be very specific.

Emily trained as a fine artist and moved over from being a painter to stitch which she finds gives her more detail and control, producing less abstract images (in terms of recognisable faces). She tries to evoke the face but leaves large parts of the whole face out. I find her approach really exciting... especially using the fabrics and wallpapers that have meaning to her. In terms of my working with narrative I can see endless possibilities but I think I need to combine with machine stitch because I’m not sure I could produce enough work to satisfy my need to make if I am purely stitching by hand.

I found an article written about Emily in ‘Embroidery’ magazine (textile art mag) July/Aug 2019.

Along with fellow textile artist Cat Frampton they have formed a new society after being told that her work is not art... by a fellow artist! SEW (society for embroidered work) is about supporting artists that use stitch as a medium. I will check it out.

#Youtube