Day 100: I See You

Something completely different on the last day ... and yes, there were morning and afternoon teas involved in the process.

I was invited by an american friend to attend a artists' workshop by Webinar centered on 'finding the artist within' where one of the outcomes was that, through the analysis of your work, an artist could come to develop and build their personal artistic statement. To ensure that analysis achieved 'viable and self fitting outcomes', there was a practising psychiatrist, and art critic and a gallery owner as some of the programme leads. Run from the University of California, the core team numbered 6.

40 artists from around California attended and I found the two days interesting and, given the time difference, at times challenging but I survived the process. There was plenty of time to complete the mental exercises, questionnaires, discussions and meditations, but in order to meet the time frames for the completion of the paintings, you had to work fast.

I decided before I started that whatever the final piece of art I worked on was, it would be the one I would use to finish this project. My last painting, as were all the others, was totally different to those completed by the other artists taking part. Their work tended to feature shafts of light, clouds of billowing colour and rotating spheres and circles floating like planets in starry vistas. Clearly, my meditative, investigative and free thinking exercises led me on an alternative path.

At the end of the process, and following some word adjustments by the team leads, my completed artist's statement read as follows:

By examining the ambiguity and origination via variations, Debra tries to increase the dynamic between her audience and herself by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.

Debra's paintings directly respond to the surrounding environment and she uses her own everyday experiences as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that might go unnoticed in their original context. 

Her paintings do not show the complete story. This results from the fact that she can easily imagine her own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality and her understanding that the viewer brings their own story to her work. Through the use of aesthetics, she seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that exist to find poetic meaning in everyday life.

Compared to some of the statements for other artists in the group, mine finished in quite a readable format and, according to the art critic, was 'one of the most refreshingly straight forward and honest' Artist Statements he had seen in some time - and I thought it was a bit over wordy. Perhaps for New Zealand it is. Different cultures = different norms.

Medium: Windsor & Newton acrylic paint on Fredrix Artist Canvas

Time to complete: 1 hour