Strategic silence

Egg Tempera on Gessoed Panel 72' × 48' in

Perception is not neutral it is trained almost algorithmically. I have spent decades training perception as a jewellery designer first and later within the pedagogical traditions of Fine art. Gradually developing a visual literacy just as a physician has developed the perceptual literacy to recognise pathology in what appears to be an ordinary body, the ability to perceive relationships that are invisible to an untrained eye .The shift in ontology that happens through artistic training, the gradual reconfiguration of perception,

What once appeared as isolated objects dissolves in to relationships. The negative space ceases to be negative at all. It becomes an active participant in the image shaping form as much as form shapes it. Void and object begin to coauthor each other.

I began to perceive the dialogical field, the sensitivity to material intelligence, to the tactile qualities of the surface, the merging edges, the viscosity of paint, the memory embedded with in layers, all these are not just formal aspects but carriers of meaning. 

Eventually an image is no longer experienced as a collection of objects but as a field of relation, a sort of symbiosis in which every mark conditions every other mark. 

Water colour and ball pen on paper

I took time to realise that this way of seeing was not necessarily a studio practice, that meaning is rarely contained in a single object, it emerges through relational ontology. I have seen artists on public platforms, I get so nervous just imagining myself in their place. I understand that the nervousness comes from the understanding that seeing is never neutral, it is conditioned by experience, culture, memory, education, awareness. we do not simply look at images we read them through the structures of our own life. 

Because of this describing a work can feel like collapsing a multidimensional experience in to a single pathway. I am afraid that by speaking  I become one more layer of the work to be interpreted. 

More importantly the artwork is not the only artwork. My life, how I speak, what I speak, the gestures, beliefs, contradictions and silence all become part of the works interpretation. I am being interpreted too - my accent, confidence, pauses, age, vocabulary, politics viewers would assume from my appearance, my region education all this begin producing meaning independent of my intention. 

Just as the painting is interpreted through the viewers experience so is the artist .

So public speaking isn’t frightening because I am afraid of saying something wrong but because speaking fixes parts of my identity in language, 

And once the way is shown or words are uttered the exploration stops, people might stop looking for themselves they begin looking through my explanation 

This isn’t unique to visual arts, meaning is co created by the observer, so I am aware that my own words will also be reconstructed by every listener according to their own history, culture, politics and assumptions. 

This is where the paradox comes in.

 The more aware I become of interpretation the more I recognise  that meaning is negotiated rather that transmitted.

My intentions cease to have privileged authority once they enter another persons world. The hesitation  comes from the understanding that every explanation illuminates one path while closing many others . I understand that everyone will receive these words with their own experiences, just as everyone will have a different experience looking at a painting. In that sense I am not only speaking about art, I have become another artwork being interpreted.  

Graphite and Charcoal on Paper

All this talk of Semiotics, interpretation and the impossibility of communicating intention is true. But perhaps its a strategy devised by my own psyche to postpone the simple act of standing in front of other people and speaking.

What I understand of my work I’d be very careful about dismissing my thinking as avoidance. My practice genuinely revolves around Perception and in ways the relationship between observer and the observed, its natural for these concerns to extend to speaking, but also the intellect is giving fear a very beautiful vocabulary