Part 5: Initial reflection

1 December 2016. The past year has been one of the most challenging in my life and the progress made in Painting 1 reflected that. I felt that I was not totally free to explore and experiment, on the other hand our situation caused me to think along totally new lines.

Overall I found that my technical abilities did not develop as quickly as the larger ideas emerging from our situation and many of the experiments carried out and assignment pieces submitted necessarily remained incomplete concerning the rigour of argument translated into a visual language. I think that the latter is exactly what I need to practice in Part 5 of the course. Since I have already decided on my subject for the concluding series of paintings, I will try and make this the basis of my investigations throughout this part. My chosen subject will be “shadows”, physical and mental, past and future, real and imaginary. Since we are not asked to produce finished paintings for the exercises, I am determined to put all my creative abilities into developing at least a rudimentary painted language adequate for translating my subject into powerful visual signals.