stuck and bored....

I've been stuck again.....in my blog post of January 26th, "The bird is flying", I talked about how sometimes you start an artwork that is somehow unsatisfactory - it can't be resolved, becomes frustratingly stuck or simply fails! I have perhaps 3-4 artworks floating about in my studio in this category. Sometimes after a few weeks, months or even years I go back to them and fiddle a bit more. There is one of these I think can eventually be "resolved" in time for my August exhibition at Muswellbrook Gallery. I rarely throw anything out or completely trash it. From uncompleted works I'll often cannabalise parts I like by cutting them up and inserting the fragments into later works. A month ago I cut up a canvas that had been finished 12 years ago! Parts of it will go into another one of the artworks I'm struggling to finish.

I have gotten into this place of irresolution with The Golden Pierrot. Here is a picture of it at the moment. It probably looks close to finished to most people and it does only require some finessing to the background. But I'm so bored and frustrated with it....

Golden Pierrot, as at April 5

I'm pretty sure I will return to it and do the 6-10 hours needed to complete it but at the moment its been abandoned while I've started another work - pictures of that this afternoon or tomorrow.


I think some of my problems with this one are - I don't usually do "realistic" backgrounds and are getting quite bored with getting this one right and I don't like how grey and monochromatic the background has became. I feel like I've started constructing a complicated story when in truth I have little interest in being a contrived narrative maker. My modus operandi is just to arrange a bit of stuff on a 2 dimensional surface and let other people make of it what they will. I'm tempted to do something wild and rebellious to bust myself out of that place and lash on lots of bright colour and abstract sploshes of pattern!!!....it may happen yet! The arch shape is a technique called bas relief, I built it using textured air drying paperclay.