Boring to whom? Isn't that a subjective term? Some drawings are seemingly line-less but actually are dense delicate lines; some are rubbed and thus tonal, etc. I can't imagine a boring line or mark or boring anything that's objectively boring. It's me or you who can be bored, but nothing can be boring in itself.
Sometimes skills are refined through practice and repetition or sustained concentration to match a model. Sometimes skills are purposely subverted for the sake of enlivening them or destroying them or revealing something new about them. I tend to be always wanting to subvert my skills to avoid becoming formulaic or boring to myself. So I am always deskilling my practice, to put it in jeopardy, to risk failure while not actually failing. And yet I sometimes consciously try to refine my skills, to improve my facility with this or that method. But whatever way I go, I am fully conscious of alternatives that negate my practice altogether and, as I said earlier, that consciousness is ironic because I go ahead anyway with my refinements and subversions. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, March 12, 2010 7:49:09 PM Subject: Re: Physician, heal thyself In a message dated 3/12/10 7:40:56 PM, [email protected] writes: > Except the concern for the marks was guided by the representational > model. It was using marks to do represent something that was not marks, > not "approved" marks. I meant to say that the concern changed to the marks > themselves as the representation. From marks for art to marks as art. > Ok. But it looks as if the marks themselves were now the subject of representation-first the more familiar and numerous of the classical marks,and now (Ofilie) invented marks whose purpose is to represent a mark rather than to serve a greater whole. MAking up marks is harder than it looks(I know,I know, this is bordering on the fatuous) when you do know what the mark will be used for,when it is for nothing, a pure mark, it must surely be difficult to tell those marks which represent art well from those which do so badly? It might involve a skill. There are a lot of paintings out there in which the marks are boring, flaccid, tentative or careless or outright thoughtless and the maker doesn't seem to know the difference between his or her marks. They lack involvement with the marks,they are if anything more interested in the title. They didn't refuse the boring etc marks. Kate Sullivan
