This work has explored the similarities and differences in the genres of poetry and painting. I have largely been interested in the relationship between the two means of creating images; poetry relies on words to create the same picture that can be conveyed in a painting. Whilst both can be said to be bias in their portrayal of the image, words are more obviously persuasive. The meaning of a painting is completely altered by its caption, or lack of it. The painting that I am exhibiting as my final piece is changed by the sound of poetry that can be heard on the head phones next to it. Yet I did not want the sound to be openly available, that is, the choice of wearing the headphones is important here. The viewer would be confronted by the image first, and these initial impressions would be challenged somewhat by the connotations placed upon the piece by the poems.
The use of nature and the environment has become central to both areas of my work. Man’s role in his environment, both negatively and passively has become a major a line of interest. What is ‘natural’ and can the meaning ever be extended to a gallery? The process of walking was my primary tool of research during the work, and my visual recordings merely a accessible tool for later use. The video recordings were interesting to me at this stage as they pulled me into much greater depth concerning the viewer relationship with nature distorted in this way. And to me it can only be seen as a distortion; a completely different experience to the original.
I have explored ways of capturing, or at least, to some extent trying to convey these experiences through both my art and writing. The poetry is narrative based, it gives the reader (or in this case listener) a journey, movement beyond the still image of the painting. It also gives the painting symbolism. Despite these observations, it was still important the work was aesthetic as this is critical to the man / nature relationship. A landscape painting is a ma-made projection of what nature should look like, but it is an important way of trying to capture an audience imagination. The visuals needed to be equally weighted with the experience I was trying to convey, and in this case also needed to be strong enough to carry the poems. Other elements interested me here such as the opportunity for somehow involving the ‘real’ environment as part of the art. This extra dimension would allow me to present, describe and physically show part of the walks.
The idea to develop the picture of the bridge to an oil painting stemmed largely from my discovery early on in the project of the need we have, as artists, to record what we see, though often we are not sure why. I became interested in the process of creating this painting and photographed the working process as I went along. It fascinated me how I had worked on the piece intuitively, and the photographs together created a sort of disjointed stop motion of the whole process of painting. What appealed to me about these pictures was the ironic lack of human intervention; it was almost as if the paintings were appearing, the creative elements almost disappeared completely from the piece, brush strokes were lost, highlights appeared.
However, the poems I had written about the image were extremely personal and I felt this should be reflected in the finished piece. The bridge as a painting allowed the viewer to create their own assumptions or story behind it; the poems, on the other hand, were narrated and presented from the authors point of view. The work would include the poems, I decided, as they highlighted perfectly the difference between the two genres. The process of development is quite different, yet the similar journeys the two projects took me on began to feel quite similar. I felt the story I was able to tell with words was something that could be shown as an image though less directly. In many ways this is the beauty of art; poetry uses words to create a series of images, this type of painting can allow the viewer little doubt in what they’ve been shown.
