Since arriving at DCR I have been exploring this new environment, meeting people, eating great dinners and hunting and gathering materials and imagery from The Hague, which I may develop during my 2-month residency.
I have been thinking about the relationship painting practice has to the found painted object/surface, looking at printed/stenciled papers and fabric and wondering if I find a painting or image which suggests a painting what can I bring to an already visually engaging object.
I have also been Researching new artists (certainly new to me) reading interesting reviews, listening to artist Pod casts and gathering provoking quotes from critic and artists which somehow fit into the many questions and problems in relation to contemporary painting practice I am contemplating within the studio. My favorite to date is:
‘The real problem is always how to make paintings anew, with more than just a twist. Painters cannot avoid quoting, re-quoting, echoing, succeeding and failing in comparison to the past. No Painter can pretend to be original, there are only so many ways to put paint on a surface’
Adrian Searle, Guardine.co.uk, June 2009
So I am now collecting vintage postcards of Dutch flower arrangements and still life paintings and plan to work with this found composition/image…
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Susans' stay has been made possible with the help of the Arts Council Ireland
