“…back when I was teaching art, the hardest thing to get across was convincing students to let go of their preciousness. Either they clung to a preconceived notion of what their piece was going to look like, or they were scared to ‘mess up’ after they’d barely laid-down the groundwork.
“… I would repeatedly remind the class that they wouldn’t know what their work was going to look like (or what it was about) until they’d committed to multiple of layers of paper and paint.
“My own collages often have twenty or thirty such layers, the colours and the content matter in a constant state of change, waiting for the picture’s intent (not mine) to emerge. Then, when the subject, the palette and the atmosphere finally emerged, there was still the fine brush work to be done. That consisted of carefully painting out the tears and cracks so that the image developed continuity and became a single surface. When a piece is complete, it needs to speak with a single voice, and if it doesn’t, then it simply isn’t finished. “
Nick Bantock, on Facebook 21 November 2020 and check out his art for sale
The highway from A to Z is never the interesting road to travel, and a motorway cafe is never going to serve anything but the predictable. It’ll get you to a destination, but is it truly where you want to be?
