Masque, Mask, Masking

Masque, Mask, Masking

Who, or what, is behind the mask, whether it be a physical covering or a facial expression or demeanour?

How we perceive ourselves may be very different from how others see us.

For this work I formed lots of papier-mâché masks using Plaster-of-Paris moulds that I made on my own face. Each mask I made from the moulds is a slightly different version of me, something of me, yet none of them really me.

Mask

A covering, physical or intangible, hiding something from view

Mask

A covering for all or part of the face, its purpose to disguise, amuse or frighten

Mask

A facial expression concealing emotions or giving a false impression

Mask

An outward appearance belying inner feelings

Mask

A likeness of a person’s face, often moulded from the face itself, for religious, ceremonial or decorative purposes

Mask

A hollow figure of a human head, used in theatre to identify a character and to amplify the voice

Masque

Masque has its origins in a folk tradition dating back to 16th century. On special occasions, masked players would unexpectedly call on the nobility singing, dancing, and bringing gifts. Spectators were invited to join in the dancing and, at the end, the players would take off their masks to reveal their identities.

I’m working on this mask-based work in response to an invitation for artwork on the theme All the Fun of the Carnival. It will be exhibited for a short period in Shipley Library (22-27 July 2024), after which I would like to bring some of these masks to life through performance work. I’m open to ideas and collaborations!

More images in the Gallery under Masque, Mask, Masking.

Isolation Drawings #12

Celebrations in lockdown…So many occasions have taken place in a much smaller, quieter manner than any of us dreamt or planned. Gifting artwork is tricky as I’m never sure how it will be received but I’ve taken the plunge in the past few weeks.

My nephew celebrated his 21st birthday at home with his parents, siblings and a takeaway instead of a night out with his mates. An Isolation painting seemed appropriate although maybe he didn’t see it that way, I didn’t get any feedback…

Isolation 4 (for Zac’s 21st)

Isolation 4 (for Zac’s 21st)

Towards the end of May, Tony & I celebrated the years we’ve been together and the adventures we’ve had. In normal circumstances we’d have a day out and a meal somewhere. This time we waited in for a delivery, had a disappointing takeaway and agreed that we preferred our home-cooked food! Tony opened his gift from me to find Isolation Painting 6. Not a total surprise as he had been around when I was working on it even if he didn’t know it was for him at the time.

Isolation 6 (Anniversary gift for Tony)

Isolation 6 (Anniversary gift for Tony)

My friend Lou’s planned birthday trip to the coast was also thwarted so I broke away from my usual palette to go with her rainbow-filled home. The rainbow rock swaddled in sunshine yellow, surrounded by sea or sky, reminds me that there are positives about the current restrictions on our lives. When lockdown feels like a prison, when its seems our freedom has been taken away, we need to close our eyes, be aware of each breath in and out, feel the sun on our skin or the rain in our hair and know that we are alive.

Isolation 7 (Lou’s Rainbow Rock)

Isolation 7 (Lou’s Rainbow Rock)

Isolation Drawings 11

All sorts of random marks had been left behind on the newspaper that covered the surface while I was painting. I liked the overlaying of paint on random images and text so pasted bits into my sketch book. Later I used them as a base for further drawings.

Isolation #29

Isolation #29

Isolation #30

Isolation #30

Isolation #31

Isolation #31

Isolation Drawings 9

Six and a half weeks into lockdown I submitted one of my Isolation paintings to Grayson’s Art Club on Channel 4. His ethos, is that we can all be creative, there are no rules, no right and wrong, and to do it is good for our mental health. I’m totally with you on that Grayson!

The week’s theme was ‘The View from Your Window’. If you’ve read my previous Isolation Drawings blogs it may not surprise you that the stones are what I now always focus on when I look out the basement window.

The submission had to include a short bit of video about why I made the work and how I found being creative during lockdown. Video-making was a challenge in itself. I had a multitude of attempts, no video editing skills, a lot of swearing and a late realisation that I needed the phone turned 90 degrees. I finally managed to record this take. Earlier versions had birds singing and the sound of a train in the distance. Instead this one features a lot of clattering from inside but I had spent too much time and emotion on it already and the deadline was looming so I just sent it off. Not the best approach and I forgot to make it clear how it linked to the theme.

It didn’t make the cut to get on Grayson’s show but I put thoughts into words even if it was in a chaotic, haphazard manner, so here you go!

Isolation Drawings 8

April turns to May. 5 weeks into lock down, 6 weeks since we were told to stop gathering in large numbers. It seems like a life time. We’ve been fortunate to have had many sunny days and I’m out in the garden again but now I’m drawing stones hidden in corners or wedged between pots as well as the ones hidden in holes.

Isolation #22

Isolation #22

Isolation #23

Isolation #23

Isolation #24

Isolation #24

Isolation #25

Isolation #25

Isolation #21

Isolation #21

Isolation #27

Isolation #27

Isolation #19

Isolation #19

Isolation #26

Isolation #26

Isolation #22

Isolation #22

Isolation #20

Isolation #20

Isolation Drawings 2

The weather turned colder, the sun disappeared. I picked up a stone from the garden and took it inside.

Stone

Stone

Drawing the stone I surrounded it with darkness, the unknown. Was it threatening and intimidating; encompassing and swaddling; or a vast ever-expanding space?

Isolation #7

Isolation #7

Taking this drawing as a starting point and one of my old paintings as a base, I began working on a larger scale with paint, charcoal, pastel and graphite. I wanted the blackness to have density and depth and shadows of the old painting to be visible through the layers and marks that it were gradually covering it.

Isolation 1

Isolation 1

Our lives are built on everything that has gone before. We change moment by moment.

The cold, smooth pebble I cradle in my hands turns my gaze into the universe.

Isolation Drawings 1

Covid-19. Home is a safe place; home is a prison. We’re in this together; we’re in this alone. Stay home, stay safe, stay sane.

In this period of confinement I needed to find a focus and decided to go into the garden each day to draw whatever I found.

I began drawing individual stones that, some time back, I had placed in the holes of breeze blocks. Different stones, different holes, the same basic situation but each unique. It brought to mind each of us attempting to deal with our own particular isolation, some isolated alone, some isolated with others, each bringing its own set of challenges.

Isolation #1

Isolation #1

Isolation #2

Isolation #2

Isolation #3

Isolation #3

Isolation #4

Isolation #4

Isolation #5

Isolation #5

Isolation #8

Isolation #8

Every Contact Leaves a Trace

I have been working in an exploratory manner, taking marks back and forth through different processes, incorporating a variety of materials. As I reuse, rework, and re-appropriate, some marks are eroded, fragmented or lost whilst others evolve to take their place. I may ink and print, photograph, overlay images, photograph again, laser engrave one image onto another and so on. Concealing and revealing, eroding and depositing, I create palimpsests; something bearing traces of an earlier form.

As I work, I am reminded of Edmond Locard’s principle, 'Every contact leaves a trace', upon which forensic science is founded. He proposed that when two surfaces come into contact, each will leave a trace upon the other. For instance, someone breaking into a property may retain tiny fragments of glass on their clothing whilst leaving fibres and fingerprints on the broken pane. Locard was concerned with physical contacts but I extend this to more ethereal, social, psychological and intellectual traces. My life is changed moment by moment by every thought and encounter, by people I meet and even those I don't. I am constantly evolving and will never again be exactly the same person as I am in this present instant. And even this present instant has already gone.

X Marks

Over the last few months the focus of my art practice has moved from the traces of other people’s lives to a different, yet connected, narrative about the marks that I leave behind. 

In the old diaries I had been working with I found X marks. They seemed to represent something but I didn't know what. Their significance has long been lost but they must have had some meaning and purpose to the person who made them.

I started to make my own X marks whilst experimenting with carborundum and drypoint printing, the former giving a really nice gritty grainy texture to the marks, the latter much more scratchy. 

Carborundum print (actual size 9 x 6.5cm)

Carborundum print (actual size 9 x 6.5cm)

I am making Xs

An X has many connotations
X = yes
X = no
X = wrong
X marks the spot
X = love
X crosses out
X obliterates or maybe it doesn’t – I can still see what’s underneath
X indicates
X invalidates
X is a secret code
X is different every time I make an X
X votes
X = for
X = against
X means different things in different situations and to different people

Carborundum plates ready to either blind emboss (to make an impression without ink) or to ink and print. 

Carborundum plates ready to either blind emboss (to make an impression without ink) or to ink and print. 

I decided to work on a small scale, something I'm not used to doing, and cut the metal plates in to the size of playing cards. I like this as a symbol of the game of chance that we call life; each decision, each thought and encounter is a part of what makes us who we are. we are changing moment by moment. Just as no two prints I make are ever identical, I am never exactly the same person as I ever was before or will ever be again. 

X13.jpg
Source: http://www.jennyzigzag.co.uk/

Some Type of Legacy

We each change the world around us and leaves traces as we go. Our lives affect those of others in the present and in the future; people we know and others who we never even meet. Some of the evidence is physical and obvious whilst other parts are intangible marks made by words, actions and inactions. 

Work in progress

In Some Type of Legacy I am painting on canvas which I have stretched on a frame passed on to me, previously used by a friend. Something of her is here, becoming part of something new that I am creating and which, in its turn, becomes part of the past even as I make it.

Destiny's Diaries

There is so little left once we die and the memory of us gets lost in time. My current work is based around a suitcase full of old diaries found in the outhouse of a property bought by a friend from a deceased person's estate. I wondered who the writer was, why she obsessively recorded the details of her everyday life over 30 years and what memory there was left of her.

Found in an outhouse: a suitcase full of old diaries

Found in an outhouse: a suitcase full of old diaries

Reading the diaries seems intrusive yet may be all that remains. Among the daily entries regarding weather, shopping, household chores and health are symbols and codes suggesting events or encounters to be known and remembered only by the author. Through my work I wanted to respond to her existence; to acknowledge that she lived.

I began by transposing fragments of diary text and symbols onto pages from books written by someone who seemed to be an important part of her life. In the overlaying of the academic texts that one of them was working on with the daily recording of everyday life by the other, it evokes what was happening in their lives together. Whilst in some ways it seemed wrong to destroy the book in order to create something else, that too seemed to have significance in the context of her life.

I also incorporated markings from old newspapers found under the carpet in the same house. Dating back about 70 years, these papers bore lines and holes; signs of wear and the weight of the years. 

I believe we create our own paths, our lives affected by the decisions we make, so was intrigued by the trust the diary writer put in fortune tellers' predictions. The symbolism of reading palms and tea-leaves is interesting, whether or not one believes in it. Lines on hands representing the future have connotations of journeys, meeting points, routes and relationships. Random tea-leaf patterns are reminiscent of map markings which in turn evoke travelling and a sense of place.

Some interesting aspects were developing in my work, particularly in the symbolism, but I wanted to create more of a sense of the layers of history and weathering, of marks being left and memories fading. In Helped me tend, and Will go (below) I copied extracts from the diaries, creating a background of writing. Whilst laborious, it seemed to emulate the obsessive recording of mundane facts day after day. I then overlaid washes and marks using watercolours, pencils, pastels, crayons, wax and collage, gradually obscuring the writing beneath; connoting memories of people gradually disappearing and leaving traces that we hardly see today.

Helped me tend

Helped me tend

Will Go

Will Go

In both of the above pieces and the one below, I introduced aspects of burial places and memorials, the 'inscriptions' being fragmentary diary excerpts of daily life. Whatever background and experience, desires and regrets we have, in the end we die and our bodies return to the earth. I unexpectedly found the writer's burial place when looking for a grave she referred to in her diaries. Second row from the left (below) was based on this finding. In the left hand image, the work seemed unfinished and I decided to continue to work on it. After overlaying further marks and washes, creating more muted tones, I then added the very bold black charcoal lines. Making these marks passionately and definitely seemed to add something very certain to what seemed to be fading into the past.

Among the items that were passed on to me was a small, old but unused canvas, the frame slightly warped. From other sources I acquired discarded off-cuts of wood and a couple of old primed but unused and unwanted boards. Initially I used these as a way to break away from the boundaries and surfaces on which I had been previously been painting and drawing but as I did so I felt a further sense of connections with people who I did not know; I was creating something from a part of someone else's life.

Everything would be

Everything would be

Things may happen

Things may happen

Things may happen (left) and Everything would be (right)

Things may happen (left) and Everything would be (right)

My titles are by no means descriptive or explanatory. I have used words and phrases taken from the diaries to invite the viewer to question, explore and respond. 

When she was

When she was

To go further

To go further

I am constantly touched by the remnants of others' lives and continue to work with these sources, themes and exploration of media.