a practical practical idea!

So far my practical idea had been:

• make work in an uninhibited, intuitive way like so many outsider artists do

But it didn't make sense because:

• I am not an outsider artist and never can be
• outsider artists don't, as a group, have an aesthetic
• there was no thematic link or subject matter driving my work
• this work just ended up looking like my usual stuff :-(

 

the weird but not weird paintings I did

I spoke to Teresa and we talked about what is actually driving the work of outsider artists. We talked about how they worked as passion projects- things that really meant a lot to them, but it was more than that, they work obsessively. Many are collectors, and many will repeatedly draw the same thing over and over again. Howard Finster painted over 25000 paintings in his lifetime, which seems like  a lot!

This brought about the idea of collections, of repeatedly drawing and painting the same subject matter over and over again. The project could be a time based thing, less of a final concrete product but a product of my ongoing practice. I like the idea of drawing the same thing over and over again, and can see it being compiled in a publication at the end of it. 

One thing I find myself doodling all of the time are tigers- they don't mean much to me except they look cool and can be drawn very diversely (and as a child they were possibly a favourite). I once joked about how there are "1000 ways to draw a tiger" (there are 1000+ ways to draw anything in my opinion) and how I'd like to make a book of it....

    

a small selection of the tigers I've drawn recently