Thursday 29 April 2010

40




A frozen trough.
Clinging to cold flat depth
brown leaves resist but yield
to dry cold wind.
A corner turned,
flipped up, the seal broken it follows
to congregate in a square corner.
Become same.

Inside.
White light falls on silver flesh
whisper thin like paper ash.
Seeps through follicles long gone
to reveal a neat round skull
full of thought.

Transparent flesh has lost memory
as it hangs crinkled and soft.
Sat sunk into feather down
she is small.
In bra and pants pausing,
flesh weeps from her back.

I creep through black light
staring widely helps nothing,
night vision lost to the screen.
I find my place now, my half,
and return to the warm plump
flesh of love.

Carol Peace
One night, on turning 40 in the Spring of 2010

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Sculpting like a painter

Written in April 2010 while making the piece 'Her'
http://www.carolpeace.com/detail.asp?tc=13&mc=1&sc=48&w=504

Sculpting like a painter

Anish Kapoor says that he is a ' painter working as a sculptor '.

I like oil paintings very much and think I would like to be a painter.

The reason I think I would like to be a painter at the moment is about illusion.

I envy the painters ability to escape the reality, there are reams of information missing but the image is just as arresting. Potentially arresting because of this missing information, this fudging of life. Nathon Fords work has this ( http://www.beauxartsbath.co.uk/Ford09/Pages/Index09.html ) Clarity appears only in small traces, like in life when clear thoughts appear they are more potent, more real.


I looked back into my sketchbook to find the quote about Anish Kapoor from a recent trip to the Guggenheim, it says there in his words, 'art is illusion, it's the illusion that goes deeper to the real'. I was originally excited about this piece because I always wanted to make my dress like this, sections of core ten like a bridge but maybe it was in fact this piece that made me understand more clearly.


For now, my illusion is the illusion I see in painting, in thick oil paint. Is this possible within the three dimensions of clay? It is there, it has to be all there, it is not an illusion, and there are no clever kapoor tricks in a seated figure. With my work you walk round the back.........a painting of a head has no back and does not need one.
But the last few days I have found a bit of peace with this issue and perhaps a way of remaining a sculptor.


The clay is so like oil paint, always has been. So like charcoal, the image is there and then it's gone. It is easy to pile on, scrape off, smudge, fudge. So I have to rely on surface like a painter does. Be a sculptor, but my paint is clay.