Frances Black

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ARTIST CATALOGUE

Valise*

Much of my practice has to do with thinking how a painting works discretely, and how it works in relation, whether to an image, text, or statement by the artist. I am quite taken up with the idea that a painting is a mechanism all of its own, and that it can be meaningful in terms of this. That is, that it operates independently of context or any conscious, logical comprehension. It is in this sense that I think of the reality of a painting. 

An important part of a painting’s reality, is that it functions primarily as a self-contained object, not as an image among other images. It is from this point that the painting works relationally – not in a way that is necessarily contingent, but in that it re-directs rhythms and associations, and offers space through the ambiguity between paintings. My feeling about drawings is different. I think that they tend towards attachment and flimsiness. They feel manipulatable, as well as elaborative, like footnotes. I’ve included my drawings in this presentation because I haven’t achieved the quality I’m looking for in any individual painting, and I’m hoping that something of it might sit between them and the drawings. This is of course in opposition to how I’ve described the mechanism of painting. 

But, considering that these drawings were made as preparatory steps in the painting process, this is a tentative, disassembled vision of what I would like my paintings to look like, until I can reconcile them into a single image. * Blood in the cradle. Forrest. Spread. Valise. I don’t think it gets to a point. People get going, or get tired. Speed helps all the people. My dog at this point. My point at this point. What’s the appeal? Have you seen it? Need is a strong word. Can’t sustain it. No not at all. Egypt. Does it show up on the skin? I don’t think I have many secrets in general. (That’s not me. That’s someone else.) I do have secrets? Secrets are not so interesting. I have nothing to say.