Physical Gestures as Nervous System Indexes – Toward Merging Drawing and Painting

I am currently working on a research theme of ”Physical Gestures as Nervous System Indexes: Toward Merging of Drawing and Painting”, with the focus on the human figure. My work is interwoven with themes of physicality, viscerality, haptic visuality, materiality, embodiment of desire, sensation, perception, and sensory corporeality. I am addressing the space between drawing and painting, with the use of self-designed multiple-charcoal/multiple-brush tools for expanded drawing, painting, and monotype printmaking. My work also addresses the constructions of identity and the subject´s disintegration/integration.

During the autumn at one-year Master´s program at Glasgow School of Art, my research idea of embodiment of physicality has expanded toward the more automated, more direct response to sensation and perception, and to study physical gestures as nervous system indexes, directly linked to the nervous system. The shift has happened gradually through plenty of subject and material exploration, the most significant turning point was to develop multiple-charcoal tools for life drawing.

I strive for the most direct encounter with the perceived world as possible (rather than with the self, yet the self being as the perceiver). On my experience, I think that the tools allow me the most direct, a more ‘objective’ way of transferring perceptions and sensations – as a more physical, gestural, implicit, bodily present, and fleshy response. Sensory perception of the material and haptic visuality (term: see Marks, 2002) play an important part in my practice, haptic visuality referring to the seeing involving more directly the viewer’s body, touch, and movement: eyes metaphorically functioning as organs of touch. I see the gestural traces of tools almost as nervous system tissue, being composed of vibrating, interwoven lines, mass, impression of the energy from within… Deleuze (1981) has stated in his book of Francis Bacon that the imposition of purely manual space, the tactility, is one of the directions that can go beyond the organic representation.

I consider DeKooning, Pollock, Dumas, Bourgeois, Pitkanen-Walter, Twombly, Marila, Bacon and Rist as my most significant artistic references at the moment, whose work I see addressing the similar elements of physicality, materiality and sensuousness.

The subject’s disintegration/integration and displacement/placement also emerged to be one of the recurring themes this autumn: I have explored it by bleaching of the motifs, monotype printmaking and taking “a print of a print”.

Working in series has also become very important for me, to explore the effect of multiplying the image, cloning, and imprinting of experiences on the nervous system. I have strived to find ways of ‘objectifying’ my practice, yet without me losing the strong experiential, bodily-based approach that I do consider as one of my strengths. Neon Boy series emerged to become a surrogate image for different phenomena in my painting practice.

Deleuze, G. (1981; 2003) Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation. University of Minnesota Press.
Marks, Laura, U. 2002 Touch. Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. University of Minnesota Press.

Glasgow – Creative flux

Week 6 at Glasgow School of Art, I feel like I´m in a creative and intellectual heaven. I feel that my thinking and painting practice are in the creative flux, constantly evolving through endless experimentation and observation. I had never thought how significant it could be to be able to work full-time on art in a community of supportiveness and open-mindedness to new explorations! And knowing that we have time to develop…Of course in some of my wildest, but not-fully-formed dreams I had dreamt something like this…After few weeks´of intensive, sometimes frustrating re-focusing of practice, I now feel that something new is taking place. Or not necessarily re-focusing, but opening up new paths of material and subject explorations…Summer at SVA in NYC was also very significant, in terms of amazing community and tutors and vibrant energy of NYC, it was an amazing experience. And I feel that something from there lives inside me very strongly, some part of critiques, some connections, friendships, shared processes of creativity and humanity..

Painting and drawing are coming nearer in my practice. Through observation of live model several times a week, I feel that there has happened change in my mark-making, my drawing – and thus visual thinking – has expanded and freed up, and that has led to endless new explorations pictorially and materially in all visual work. Some of the exercises in drawing class has felt transformational to me, for example drawing with your eyes closed, relying on your memory – and then after opening the eyes, making use of the marks that I have made eyes closed. It has brought more certainty, more freedom to how I approach things visually! I would not necessarily make the division between drawings or paintings, in fact I would like them to be of the same process. I have explored this process in combing drawing on film to painting, drawing on paper to monoprinting, monoprinting and painting, drawing and painting…on various surface materials, especially film, linseed-oil soaked paper, poster paper, plain paper, plywood and canvas. My practice is linked to studying the human form and fleshiness, and also the gestures in painting, what are the traces of action. It is linked to memory and passing of time, time-based element – transformation process of something becoming something else…And our tutors are just amazing with so much of knowledge and skill. Teaching is really individual, as there are only 13 painters in our MA class!

Francis Bacon has linked painting to be of nervous system reactions and sensations. Gestures can be seen also as material index, for example Yves Klein´s body paintings, where bodies were used to apply the paint directly as printing of the body to paper. Gestures can be also dematerialized as Richter taking a photograph of a painting which is made of photograph. Gestures can be also ironic. Expanded field of painting – as far as I understood it – refers to expanding painterly practice cross different fields – to work in a liminal space between different things and disciplines, different existential planes – this was named as synasthetic gesture in our painting seminar.

 

I´m also taking this interesting postgraduate course of Analysis and Self-Analysis (Psychoanalysis relating to art, tools for analysis and self-analysis). It´s slowly, but steadily revealing its secrets to me 🙂 coming from psychology background, I was intrigued to see what psychoanalytic ideas could give to art making and analysis. Somehow learning from psychoanalysis out of the treatment context is interesting, but weird, unusual, not-in-place (at first glance) – but right now before the 5th session, I feel that there´s much potential for this framework in becoming wilder and looser and less self-conscious in all creative work. Not being scared of trying to communicate creatively and to break free from some barriers of the mind..and to learn to trust the process, also dealing with the fact that something will always be a mystery, in our very own mind, in relationships, in life…

Artistic journeys

Hi all, welcome to follow my new blog dedicated to the fascinating world of art! In few weeks to come, I´m attending an artist-in-residency program in New York City lasting for 5 weeks, and in autumn, starting Master´s studies at The Glasgow School of Arts! I intend to explore the theme of embodiment and corporeality deeper. I´m also interested in the perception process. Also movement truly intrigues me. I´m really much looking forward to interaction with fellow artists in new environments – it´s exciting NOT to know what will emerge from this process. I will try to keep my senses open, to keep myself well grounded and to remember to stay in the present moment as much as I can. And enjoy the ride! And trying not to be too focused on the outcome, but to keep exploring. This is what I hope; still there´s a little uncertainty (yet excitement) lurking beneath the surface…Happy summer to all, I will keep posting some interesting, fascinating, weird things/notions/perceptions/insights! Or something else…

Last week was a week of many farewells, but also of new starts. I have currently an exhibition “Embodied painting” in Rööperin Taidesalonki in Helsinki (see: http://www.rooperintaidesalonki.com). I feel very good about the exhibition and I really like the atmosphere at the gallery in general (warm and welcoming). It also feels good to see how my painting has evolved during last 6 months – it´s been a huge shift in my thinking this spring which is reflected in all that I do and am interested in at the moment.