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"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

I recently woke up with that line from the Communist Manifesto in my head.

It’s a quote that’s stayed with me ever since rereading the manifesto during my Postmodernism course at Goldsmiths, a moment when I began to understand its reach beyond politics into something more existential. I wondered why I was reminded of it, and I’ve been thinking about how it speaks not just to individual instability, but to the broader social condition I find myself working within. The sense that systems are dissolving (moral, cultural, environmental) that nothing feels fixed, and even what once felt sacred is being stripped of meaning or turned into commodity.

In my practice, I often work with ambiguity, dissolution, and the instability of perception...but perhaps this is also a response to the social texture of the present...where meaning feels harder and harder to grasp. Maybe this quote serves as a reminder that we are living through the collapse of certainties.

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Juliann Bell - what is painting?

Uncertainty - should I use this work more/explain it

Ned Khan / Olifur Ellisson

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Last week I had a big session on the Cyanotype machine. This is one of the results. Its actually very beautiful - In a way I think its a shame that it is only a 'midway point' / a source of inspiration - as opposed to a final product.

the object I'd found was a bunch of some type of cotton intermixed with threads.

I'd found it on the floor of the making space.

I picked it because I thought it would be interesting to try cyanotyping something which has a strange structure - quite wispy and potentially transparent. The result was really intriguing. Like a trace of something hiding further back on the surface.

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Eclipsed, oil and sold pastels on canvas, 120 x 90 cm

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Today was good. the work was well received and little issues was raised conceptually with it.

One big feedback was surrounding Eclipsed (above). I introduced it as somewhat of a failure because it looked too much like a 'pillow'. The feedback was - why not lean into the idea of symbols? A pillow has many subtleties as a 'thing'... rest/death etc.

I said 'I would like to stay away from 'semiotics' - the idea of the work is to transcend language - but I was told 'maybe you are limiting yourself'. this have me food for thought.

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This week I need to focus on what will be required for the MA application for this is the thing which is barrelling towards me.

1) Artist statement (350 words) and do a version for the portfolio that is 200 words max.

2) think on how to organise the work for the portfolio. I have started a document but pictures arent quite there yet - put timepieces in the meantime.

3) try to make 1 painting, preferably 2.

4) prepare and shoot 2 min video for application.

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Results of experimentation and creative explorations. Final outcomes and tests.

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Notes, thoughts and results (creative or not) of Lectures and/or workshops.

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Research

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Question Word (eg how)

Small verb (eg can)

Context/medium/theory/idea (eg contemporary landscape photography)

Interrogatory verb (eg re-examine)

Medium/Theory/Concept (eg notions of the sublime)

"How can tenebrism in painting be re-examined to explore notions of distance and the unknown?"

"How can the interplay of darkness and form in painting construct an experience of alienation and estrangement?"

"How can the interplay of darkness and absence in painting invoke mystery and resist linguistic containment?"

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I found this piece (read aloud by the cohort during the lecture) extremely moving.

As an artist, I often struggle with low self-esteem (for many reasons), and I frequently wrestle with the discomfort of all the “navel-gazing” our work seems to demand.

Why should my voice matter when there are so many urgent problems in the world? Why should I be heard when others seem more intelligent, more capable, with more interesting stories to tell?

But this piece reminded me that using your voice is an act of courage. That self-judgment can be the loudest silencer. And that while it may sound like a platitude, it’s true: we are often far harsher with ourselves than we would ever be with anyone else.

Your experience is unique. That’s reason enough.

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1. Emotion (a) - Anxiety

that feeling that is always there but you ignore and it has become a pet

2. Intention (j) - Juxtapose

doing that thing that you know you shouldn't

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Cosima and I book some time in the making space to make Cyanotype paper.

the process is laborious but not particularly difficult - quite fun actually.

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What fascinates me about Michaël Borremans is his ability to create images that feel both familiar and entirely alien. His paintings often appear rooted in tradition but they carry an uncanny charge, as if something is not quite right. I’m drawn to how he constructs a world that hints at ritual, symbolism, or narrative, but then refuses to explain itself. There’s a palpable tension between the recognisable and the unknowable, something I also try to hold in my own work. Borremans’ ability to make meaning feel suspended, hovering just out of reach, continues to intrigue me.

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Artist Spotlight: Michaël Borremans – A Complete and Chronological Overview

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My practice explores the interplay between concealment and revelation, creating works that function as thresholds between the known and the unknown. Through painting, I investigate the tension between clarity and obscurity, presence and absence, structure and surrender.

Coming from a background in law, I was trained to seek resolution. Yet, in my artistic practice, I am drawn to what evades definition. My work resists fixed meaning, instead inviting ambiguity and interpretation. However, while embracing openness, I recognize the necessity of anchoring perception in form. My paintings resist pure abstraction, grounding themselves in suggestive shapes or familiar structures that provide an entry point for the viewer. This approach aligns with Heidegger’s notion of “earth” (a space of concealment and resistance) where meaning does not emerge through explanation but through presence and encounter.

In a world obsessed with clarity, analysis, and definitive answers, my work revels in all that escapes classification. It engages with what lingers at the edges of perception, what can be sensed but not fully grasped. Through shadow, reflection, and dissolution, I seek to create images that resist resolution, compelling the viewer to dwell in uncertainty. My paintings do not depict narratives or conclusions; instead, they suggest possibilities, acting as portals between the seen and unseen.

Informed by my ongoing fascination with the alien and the uncanny, my work resists the demand for definitive interpretation. I seek to create paintings that do not merely depict but affect. Works that, like monoliths or veiled figures, suggest a presence beyond what is immediately graspable. By embracing ambiguity and the unresolved while maintaining an anchor in form, I invite the viewer to engage with their own perception, recognizing that meaning is not fixed but continually unfolding.

Artist Statement (200 words)

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I am haunted by a 'in between' picture I took of a WIP a month or so ago. without wanting to I created a square /cube which seems floating im. mist - unclear what it is. I love this photo - I wish id kept it but I didn't.

I try to recreate it.

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In a recent series of two paintings, I explored the tension between structure and fluidity by constructing forms that began as defined ‘boxes’ but gradually dissolved into a fine mist. I was drawn to the power of the cube as a structural element.

its presence immediately suggests function and purpose, raising questions: What is it for? What’s inside? Who built it? What exists on top of it? Unlike purely amorphous forms, the cube holds an inherent sense of intent, yet by allowing it to disintegrate, I wanted to challenge the stability it represents. The shift from solidity to dissolution mirrors a broader preoccupation in my work: how form resists, how meaning wavers, and how perception is always in flux. This interplay between containment and dissolution, certainty and ambiguity invites an engagement with the limits of structure itself, questioning how much of what we see is defined, and how much is subject to perceptual transformation.

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we experiment with the application of the chemicals. Some of it, we apply evenly, some we play with brushes, sponges etc. We will see once it dries how this will affect the result

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Ai WeiWei, F.U.C.K (2024) Buttons, Fabric (ww2 stretchers?) each panel 188x110 cm

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Ai Wei Wei: A New Chapter -  Lisson Gallery

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Ai Wei Wei: A New Chapter -  Lisson Gallery

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I visited Ai Weiwei’s A New Chapter at the Lisson Gallery and, at first, found the work somewhat emotionally dry. Its execution felt more like a statement than an immersive experience. However, upon reflection, I realise that its impact may lie elsewhere. Rather than moving me in the moment, the work has lingered, making me question the relationship between political activism and art. Ai’s practice often starts from a conceptual or ideological position and works backward, which can sometimes feel clinical, yet it undeniably provokes thought. His approach raises important questions: If an artwork’s primary function is political messaging, does it need to be art at all? Or does its presence in an art space shift how we engage with it?

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This text explores how modern urban environments shape psychological experience, fostering both heightened individuality and alienation. He argues that the pace, sensory overload, and economic rationalisation of city life force individuals to develop a detached, blasé attitude as a means of self-preservation. While this detachment allows for personal autonomy, it also creates a sense of fragmentation and disconnection, where the self is both liberated and adrift.

Simmel’s reflection on ALIENATION AS A CONDITION OF MODERNITY offers a lens through which to position my own work. My paintings engage with a contemporary experience of UNCERTAINTY AND DISPLACEMENT, mirroring how perception itself feels unstable, forms hover between recognition and dissolution like identity and meaning do in an era of liquidity and flux. In this way, my work is not only a personal investigation but also a response to the shifting psychological conditions of the present, where alienation is no longer just a side effect of modern life, but its defining structure.

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As I progress in my exploration of practical methods (particularly my deepening engagement with oil painting) I'm beginning to crystallise a broader philosophy around my work. I'm increasingly concerned with its relevance in today's world, especially considering the immediacy of information, the overload of data, and the growing uncertainty about truth and reality.​

The concept of immediacy in media theory delves into the desire for direct, unmediated experiences and how media can create the illusion of such immediacy, often obscuring the underlying reality. This is particularly relevant in an era where digital interfaces and virtual realities blur the boundaries between the real and the simulated.

Engaging with these perspectives informs my artistic practice, prompting me to create work that not only explores perception but also questions the nature of reality in an age of information overload and digital mediation.​

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immediate, immediacy “There are several small paintings by Chardin...Nearly all represent fruit and the accessories of a meal. They are nature itself; the objects seem to come forward from the canvas and have a look of reality which deceives the eye...When I look at other artist’s paintings I feel I need to make myself a new pair of eyes; to see Chardin’s I only need to keep those which nature gave me and use them well....” --Denis Diderot, 1763 Immediacy : An Impossible Absolute?In the above quotation, the realistic depiction of the fruit serves as a window onto the actual, tangible experience of fruit. The recognition of the fruit seems so real to Diderot that he says it is even deceiving. He does not need to apply any other interpretations that may aid his vision of the fruit: he sees them clearly and immediately just by looking. Is this a state of immediacy? Is the experience of the fruit so real that the medium itself, the painting, disappears? While a medium is often depicted as a window onto a vision or an experience, immediacy is the absence of that window and is instead the presence of the viewer within the vision or experience itself. Yet the ‘disappearance’ of the medium not only affects the viewer, but the producer as well. In fact, the change in emphasis from the immediacy of the experience on the part of the viewer to that of the producer is a key shift in the conception of media over the last hundred years. If mediation is the manner in which, according to Raymond Williams, the producer becomes alienated from his product, then immediacy is an absolute state in which the producer and production becomes unified into one seamless line. [1] Therefore, ‘immediacy’ connotes a fusion of elements where the fusion itself is not simply invisible, but non-existent. Arising within a critical debate in art history, the concept of ‘immediacy’ is itself often alienated from its essentially strict meaning of the absence of media. The concept of ‘immediacy’ is often manipulated--used to describe a state in which the influence of any mediating factors is rendered invisible--and subsequently attains a utopian connotation of artistic creation. Therefore, ‘immediacy’, so rarely used in its absolute form, becomes a relational tool: often, the usage is such that one thing is more or less immediate than another, yet neither can ever exist in a state of immediacy. The idea of ‘immediacy’--the condition of being immediate or unmediated--comes up not only as an influential term in the course of art history, but as a model within the discourses of linguistics, logic, philosophy, psychology and cultural studies, among many others. By its very definition, ‘immediacy’ through a manipulation of either time or space, connects two distinct entities, thus negating binary oppositions. The oppositions of artist/audience, time/space, cause/effect, artist/medium, action/stasis, real/abstract are all sent into far more confused and clouded relations once immediacy enters and the producer or observer attempts to connect the opposing elements. Thus, the debate that arises then over the concept of ‘immediacy’ often revolves around the purity of the absence of mediation, or, more explicitly, the “return” to the precise definition of immediacy. The definition of immediate asserts that within a relation of a person or thing to another there exists no intermediary or intervening member, medium, or agent. When two things have a relationship of immediacy, they are in actual contact or direct personal relation. [2] Essentially, immediacy is the negation of media. While media are the mechanisms through which connections are made and meanings are understood, immediacy is the manner in which the media are abbreviated and hidden. Therefore, the inherent paradox within the relationship of media to immediacy is that while immediacy is the abridgement of media in favor of the connection between the elements that are being mediated, immediacy relies on the existence of media to further reduce the theoretical distance between those same elements. This paradox can be illustrated through the concept of a highway: while a highway is an intervening medium that accelerates the connection between two points, thus generating immediacy, this immediacy nonetheless relies on the highway as a medium to diminish the temporal and spatial distance between the same two points. An analysis of ‘immediacy’ can begin with Plato’s conception of purity of experience. Speech, he maintains, is more immediate than writing, because of the authenticity and credibility of the words as emerging from the speaker’s mouth and mind. Yet both speech and language are themselves media, which thus mediate the conditions of the dialogue. Even in this idealized form of unmediated communication there exists a number of intervening factors between speaker and listener, thus further emphasizing the placement of ‘immediacy’ as a contextual tool: speech is immediate only in its comparison to the more highly mediated communication of writing. [3] On the other hand, Aristotle seems to be entirely aware of the impossibility of the absolute absence of mediation within art. The very definition that Aristotle offers to begin devising a theory of art is that all art forms are practices of imitation. This imitation (see mimesis) requires a means--an intervening force--in order to duplicate. The epic poem relies on language to imitate; the tragedy relies on its actors. [4] Marshall McLuhan advances this concept of the impossibility of the absence of mediating factors by asserting the inherent “nesting” contained within this imitation: McLuhan ascertains that the language that Aristotle asserts is the method of poetry nonetheless relies on words, which rely on the understanding of symbols as a medium in and of itself. [5] If viewed through the perspective of Aristotle, the development of the concept of immediacy in the course of art history is a consequence of the desire of the imitation to be rendered identical. Mechanisms of narrative, painting and sculpture often desire as realistic depictions as possible in their effect. In this sense, ‘immediacy’ takes on the connotation of the journalistic intensity of these realistic products. However, the very basis of these products as imitations uncovers their nature as mediated by the essential mechanisms of its production. The eyes of the painter, the experience of the painter, the brush, the easel, the paint all serve to mediate the relationship between the viewer and the original subject. The artist thus attempts to create immediacy through emotive and symbolic gestures within the work: gestures of ceremony allude to a narrative that could be understood ‘immediately’ from the gesture. [6] Gestures become indexical of experience. [7] Nicolas Poussin can be seen as key figure in the advance toward ‘immediacy’ through the manipulation of expression rather than dictated emotion. Poussin presents a representation that shuttles between what C.S. Peirce defines as icon and index: the observer is alerted to emotion not by its physical imitation, but by the possibility of imitation [8] . Poussin thus exemplifies the transformation to an unmediated sensory relationship with form. [9] (see painting) Form became not simply a means to a direct representation, but an area of exploration, in which form could produce an emotion that was not presented within the confines of the frame. This projected an immediacy that bridged the viewer and the viewed. Yet the concept of immediacy in realism transforms itself from a direct course between subject and viewer to a direct course between artist and medium. The development of new technologies within the medium of paint--the growing popularity of the more ‘immediate’ methods oil sketches, watercolor and acrylics--was indicative of the desire for the artist to imitate not what he saw outside of himself, but what was contained within. [10] Understanding ‘immediacy’ as “uninterrupted in course” and “direct”, the Impressionists attempted to create an unmediated course between their vision and their product. Immediacy came to describe the desired and absolute relationship between an artist and his medium, unhindered by the necessary mediations of the elements of production. [11] The Impressionists thus focused what Poussin began: the specific instant of time that the Impressionists bound up in their canvases where icons of a moment, but also, and more importantly, the depiction of the moment became and index of the painter’s presence within that moment. Specifically, the art of the 20 th century has dealt with the concept of immediacy as a manner of manipulating media in order to gain access to another realm of creation or understanding. The Surrealists, using the concepts of Automatism, attempted to achieve immediacy in their work: the two points that they wished to have an immediate relationship were their unconscious and their product. Surrealism saw the self as a mediating factor, and attempted to negate expected configurations of content in favor of submitting the self to impulse and intuition. A fantasy world of immediacy developed, in which paintings were made of dreams and the conscious world was bypassed. The relationship of media in Surrealism, then, was not between the artist and the paint, but rather between the artist and himself. Yet the ‘highway’ to the vision of the subconscious was, of course, the mediating world of paint, canvas and self. [12] Alternatively, the state of ‘immediacy’ that was desired within Abstract Expressionism was a physicality of paint. Instead of being mediated by subject matter, and even form, the painter allowed himself to experiment in a direct discourse with the paint and the canvas. A proclaimed independence from political and social restrictions pushed the Abstract-Expressionists to explore their relationship with their craft without the mediation of a message. Jackson Pollock, the major example of Action Art, negated the brush, the easel and the wall to establish a physical contact and directness with the paint, thus allowing him to depict the act of ‘immediacy’. It is here that the concept of immediacy revolves back onto itself, with the fusion of media not for the immediate effect of the viewer, but for immediate depiction of immediacy itself. What is crucial to understand about the changes in the art historical definitions of immediacy is the relationship of the elements of cause and effect that are fused through the employment of immediacy; while realism attempts to display an immediacy of experience--the viewer is immediately transported into the atmosphere depicted while both the painter and the medium are rendered invisible, abstraction attempts an immediacy between the painter and the medium--the concept of the viewer is entirely phased out. The negation of the media between painter and viewer eliminates the necessitation of the viewable in art. Thus, the artist does not attempt to communicate something to anyone but himself. [13] . The artist is no longer sending a message through the paint or the canvas; by deleting the receiver from the communication model, the artist thus engages in a dialogue with himself--with paint as the method of speech. It is with this understanding of ‘immediacy’ that formalism can be best approached. Formalism, as an emphasis on the formal qualities of line, color, texture and value, nonetheless deals with the representation of immediacy. In much the same way that Action Art is inherently self-referential, this representation refers back to itself as an imitation of the sensuousness of the medium itself. An example of the circuitous argument that is inherent in any debate regarding immediacy is that of photography, specifically ‘instant’ photography. Polaroid cameras, which still rely on the media of light, film, shutters and subjects in order to produce an image, have been deemed ‘immediate’ because of the abbreviation of time: a subject can be transferred to a printed photograph within seconds, simply by the click of a button. However, this kind of immediacy circles back around to William’s concept of alienation: the advance toward immediacy has displaced the process through which, over time, the artist refines his product. In a similar manner, an ‘immediate access store’, which, in a computer is “a storage space whose access time is negligible,” develops a sense of technological immediacy in the user, yet at the same time alienates the user from his own memory. [14] It is here that the employed form of immediacy, as a method that alters time and space but does not altogether negate them, is most diverted from its absolute meaning as a fused course between elements. While the usage of the word ‘immediacy’ in the course of political history may be essentially dead, an investigation into its political connotation arouses an understanding of further layers of power and control. In this conception, ‘immediacy’ describes the condition of the relationship between a person who is subject to a superior power. Existing primarily in the feudal context of Medieval Europe, ‘immediacy’ describes the essentially binding relationship of the tenant to the landlord, or the vassal to the sovereign. [15] The understanding of ‘immediacy’ in such a manner fades out of the lexicon in direct correlation to the political diminishment of the feudal ‘holding’ of a person within one’s power; yet the appropriation of this political connotation in the contemporary art historical debate leads to a more complex reading of the relationship between artist, media and audience. Who controls whom? And if money is the medium by which the landlord controls the tenant, what is the medium through which art is controlled? Ariane Weisel Winter 2002

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Although I was initially drawn to Ian McKeever’s work purely on a visual level (particularly his use of layering and the solidity within abstraction) it’s interesting to now discover how closely his conceptual concerns align with my own.

Reading his writing, I’m especially drawn to the idea that painting reaches toward what cannot be fully grasped. This echoes my own interest in ambiguity, presence, and withholding resolution. The notion that painting can return us to a slower, quieter mode of being (one that resists the image-saturation of contemporary life) feels relevant to what I’m trying to explore and the writings and thoughts Ive been having in the recent weeks.

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Inspired by Man Ray (as explored in Investigate) the following process begins with the found object (leaves, cogs, sticks from the floor, meaningless in themselves). Removed from their original context, they become unfamiliar, slightly alien.

I then create a cyanotype, using light to record the object’s presence without detailing its form. The cyanotype flattens it, silences it, leaving only a kind of shadow or trace. In doing so, it introduces a layer of abstraction and estrangement.

The object is no longer a tool or thing, it becomes a shape, a ghost, a suggestion of meaning.

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From the cyanotype, I make a drawing, using them to intuitively respond to what remains and what has been lost. I then translate it into a painting, pushing it further into ambiguity. At each stage of this process, the object is abstracted, softened, and made less knowable. I’m interested in this gradual drift from recognition toward unknowing; how the thing becomes a feeling, a surface, a presence.

The object is a starting point, but it is never the subject. What matters is how it dissolves into something that resists language, yet still feels like it holds meaning. This slow process of removal allows me to explore how we recognise without identifying, and how painting can hold space for something undefined but felt.

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Cyanotypes (found), oil on canvas , 120x90 cm

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It’s holding too much of its form, almost like it's showing instead of suggesting. I’ve been staring at it for days, feeling unsure. It’s frustrating, especially since we’re in the Realise phase and this is supposed to be the time for outcomes, not unresolved questions. I’m worried this isn’t a result I can stand behind.

At the same time, a lot of people seem to like it, which makes me question myself even more. But maybe this is part of it—maybe this painting shows me something useful. It marks the edge of what I want. It teaches me that when the image is too settled, it loses that ambiguity I’m chasing. So even if it’s not “the one,” maybe it defines something. A parameter. A limit. Something to work against.

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Throughout the crit, I received positive feedback when it came to 'Over there' (terrible name - should rethink it). Tutor said: 'I feel like I could enter this space'.

Interesting, I thought.

I have never have considered about actually creating a space - I just have the image 'float' somewhat. I suppose there was part of me that was consciously doing so as I wanted the object to feel like it was communicating from an area of existence beyond our physical realm. Nonetheless, why not try something new?

this painting (two panels) is the first time I actually created a room. see the corner on the right panel.

This is not the only thing which distinguishes this painting. in making my 'structures' which I have now done a few times, I drew something which looked like a baby carriage or a bassinet. It was by mistake but it made me think about the conversation around symbols we had throughout the crit - what if I leaned into this?

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I didn't use zest-it or turpentine. this effect emerged from an overuse of lineseed oil.

the drips are different from what would happen if one used turpentine and it was somewhat of a revelation...this is what Noah Davis did! I looked at his paintings carefully and had asked myself how he managed to do his drip effects because they were subtler than turpentine drips which are aggressive and deeper in the colour. I felt like I uncovered a painting secret.

His work is etherial and his colours nearly like 'washes' - could he have been just leaving into the oil? perhaps medium? Ive never use medium because I think it it dries too quick.

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Lee Mackinnon 2023
"Tod’s work explores the remediation of paint in a period of digital image circulation, with its accelerating speeds of transmission and shared attention deficit. Works negotiate this shift through stillness and ambiguity. Peripheral events, fleeting moments, and chance encounters are brought to the centre creating new imaginary territories. Visual fragments taken from the internet, TV, and art history are playfully recombined and erased. Zones of exclusion are brought to the fore, challenging the primacy of
centre over periphery. Exclusion matters.
Layers of transparent glaze are built to create a shallow depth of field that replicates the luminosity of the screen. Here, figurative and non-figurative elements meet, collide, and are altered by each other. Fluctuating areas of colour and bodies of paint are expanded and foregrounded. Ambiguity invites us to speculate, to create meaning playfully, offering a counterpoint to the directed and surveilled nature of our digital lives.
Night walks are an important part of Tod’s practice. Not only challenging what can be seen, but who should be seen, where, for what reason?. Walking at night can be away of disappearing, and of simultaneously becoming hyper-visible. Night walking can be to challenge to paternalist orthodoxy. So too can painting."
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EXHIBITION : Amazonic Ashes - Alessandra Risi

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EXHIBITION : Amazonic Ashes - Alessandra Risi

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Went to see this exhibition by a student of RCA painting.

initially, I didn't think I would enjoy the work but standing in front of it this painter has a really engaging hand. the work really moves, it pulls you in.

the story behind the work was also very interesting. my partner was with me and he was mostly interested in that which makes me realise just how much story is as important as the work itself.

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before reading week I had great success in making that one painting based on a cyanotype. I had made some cyanotype pages as well to try the process but as they aren't my final result I just needed something cheap and cheerful as a study so I purchased a whole pack of already treated cyanotype papers online.

As I'm not a planner - and part of the work is subconscious engagement, I don't prepare my compositions. I go to the cyanotype machine in the making space and look around me for things which look interesting.

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Based on a cyanotype made in this week's session, I made this painting.

For some reason (most likely as a result of some kind of emotional instability) I ended up erasing this piece.

What a shame. I've done this a few times this semester and I must stop myself because in retrospect, I see potential in the work I throw away.

I'm trying to remember what it was that made me erase it....I think It might have had to do with the proportions of the work. I think the space to the right felt too empty. Honestly however, I am uncertain.

The truth is, that however much I might conceptualise my work, I am still constantly in connection with a wordless aestheticism that lies somewhere mysterious in my brain. Why do certain images work and others don't? I try to rationalise this by using maths (i.e. always considering the golden ration in my compositions) but the truth is it doesn't quite solve the mystery.

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Cyanotype Destroyed Painting was based on

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Cyanotype Destroyed Painting was based on

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Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1960

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Thinking: Why am I still painting on canvas? 

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Thinking: Why am I still painting on canvas? 

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I was thinking...I've clearly made the decision to return to the rectangular canvas and commit to it as the primary container for my work.

While contemporary painting often moves beyond traditional formats into installation, sculpture, or expanded practice, I found myself drawn back to the canvas...not out of conservatism, but because of the strange distance it creates. The canvas operates, for me, not as a window or a flat support, but as a threshold: a surface that holds presence, but resists full entry. There is a psychological charge in this. It feels present, material, but also removed, asking to be looked at but not fully accessed.

Rather than seeing this decision as limiting, I’ve come to think of it as a means to perpetuate the conceptual concerns I'm exploring.

I am not finding articles or theories about this specifically....must ask someone for direction on this.

...but I’m beginning to understand the canvas as more than a surface, it’s a stage for ambiguity, a space where the image can remain suspended, and the viewer’s attention is slowed. What matters is not what the canvas shows, but how it holds and keeps at a distance from the viewer.

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Why was I recommended to look at Ned Khan?

His installations felt far from my own materials. But the more I tried to engage with it, the more I started to sense a connection. Like me, Kahn seems drawn to the invisible...to forces that resist explanation but shape experience nonetheless? There’s something in the way he collaborates with nature, lets it reveal itself through subtle shifts and patterns, that echoes my own interest in surrender, ambiguity, and the unseen logic behind things. Maybe that’s why... not because our work looks alike, but because we’re both trying to listen to something bigger than us.

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Mirror Array, Rodeo Beach, Marin Headlands, CA

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Olafur Eliasson was also suggested to me during tutorial. Again, I wasn’t sure what the connection was meant to be. His work is grand, immersive, architectural... rooted in light and space...and it's also very big.

The more I thought about it, the more I think I understand why I was asked to look into this. Eliasson isn’t just working with materials, he’s working with perception itself. He invites viewers to become aware of their own looking, to notice how their bodies interact with space and how experience is constructed in real time. This mirrors what I’m exploring in my own way, the instability of recognition, the space between knowing and not knowing, the moment when something familiar turns strange. Maybe the link isn’t scale, but SENSATION... how we feel when confronted with something we can’t fully name.

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A four-metre-tall column of disparate geometric forms, ' Power tower' was constructed as a stainless-steel framework, incorporating triangular panels of plywood and handblown, coloured glass in an intuitive, yet symmetric, manner. Light bulbs mounted at intervals along the length of the column illuminate it from within, casting variegated, angular shadows around the surrounding space. The geometric forms that make up the work were arrived at intuitively through playing with a children's toy, known as Zometools, a construction set that consists of struts and nodes that allow great flexibility in creating geometric forms.⁠

While the panels of plywood indicate the faces of the polyhedrons, the panes of coloured glass are embedded within the structure, sketching out a multicoloured core. The tones progress from purple at the floor through the major colours of the visible spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, and blue at the apex.⁠
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Image: 'Power tower', 2005/2023; previously shown in 'The curious desert', in National Museum of Qatar, Doha, Qatar, 2023 (photo: Anders Sune Berg).⁠

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Official website of Olafur Eliasson and his studio: Studio Olafur Eliasson

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This work is relatively small, unassuming. I wasn't taking it seriously at first, and I thought I was just going to use the experiment to cover up an unsuccessful painting in the background....but it actually was the start of a new thread of thinking.

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I find myself sitting in front of this work for long periods. For it to move beyond mere abstraction, it must convey a sense of light. light as it interacts with a surface.

My practice is gradually evolving into an exploration of light and space above all else. These are, after all, the elements that define volume to the eye.

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I had an old Canvas board on which I had spread an impasto I'd made out of charcoal and acrylic base. I wanted to see if I could make a black colour out of the mixture but I'd found it too grainy and hard to use.

I'd discarded the board to the side - literally had been sitting there for months.

So after the success of the most recent painting I decided to try the same methodology on this canvas. It was the only one I had left so I'd need to make the marked base work.

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I call this piece 'that day in the woods' because It reminds me of the wood huts I discovered in my wanderings earlier this semester.

Albeit small, this painting opens up lots of new enquiries...the fact that there was acrylic on the base created an interesting relationship between layers. I also barely used any pigment in the top area, just some tinted Zest it. ITs a work which engages with a variety of textures in a way that my other paintings haven't. ITs interesting. I think I ought to explore this acrylic / oil combo again in the future. I don't love the 'flatness' of acrylic but perhaps, if worked ON (dry) I could come up with something interesting.

Something to think about.

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So the research of Wiebke Leister was a revelation this week. How did I not know how similar her interests were to mine?

She refers to Barthes' camera Lucida which I then look into..while a personal meditation on photography, its core ideas (particularly the punctum) extend far beyond the photographic image. The punctum is that elusive detail which “pricks” the viewer, resisting analysis yet evoking an often intimate response. This concept links to my own desire to create works that are not illustrative but affective, forms that carry an emotional or psychological charge without revealing precisely why. Like Barthes’ search for something beyond meaning, my practice explores how ambiguity, silence, and unresolved form can generate connection and recognition on a non-verbal level. In this way, Camera Lucida supports my belief that what cannot be fully explained often holds the most truth.

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This piece was painted as a final exploration of the methodology I explored last week. Now...does it work?

Although it might not appear to be, it is actually inspired be the cyanotype shown a few entries back on this timeline. Last week I thought about suggestion of space and light and this was an attempt at re-engaging with those ideas.

I must say I feel the work is quite interesting. I feel like it an 'easy painting' in that I think people will like it, potentially even buy it because it's easy-beautiful....but does it achieve what I want it to achieve? Somewhat. I can't help but feel it's not engaging enough. there is suggestion of light and shape but perhaps not enough. I also feel like I've seen this before but I don't seem to be able to find any references.

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Since my cyanotypes have been so successful, I’ve started wondering whether there’s scope in exploring the notion of shadow photography.

Conceptually, it shares common ground with the cyanotypes. the object becomes reconfigured and reimagined through processes of layering and transformation. However, when I try to sketch based on shadows, the results feel disappointingly flat. Unlike the cyanotypes, which somehow retain a sense of depth and atmosphere, shadow-based works lack that spatial complexity. I might pursue a few more experiments, but off the cuff, this direction doesn’t feel as inspiring. There’s a kind of magic in the cyanotype’s tonal richness that shadows, at least in my current trials, haven’t yet matched.

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This week it occurred to me I'm going to have to share my contact details with my peers for the publication and I have absolutely no social media.

Weirdly, considering it pretty much is the only thing that defines my generation.

Anyways, I'm aware I'm going to have to create an active instagram page. I'm no fool, it's virtually the one platform artists use...it is my project for the summer.

In the meantime I thought I'd make a website. giorgiadestefano.com was surprisingly available, so I bought that, and thought as time goes on I can embed my links onto the front page for the future.

I plopped in a bunch of my work but that's another thing I'll need to work on this summer - refining it and updating it.

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These weeks are hard because in the background, I am thinking a lot about my MA application. Pretty much exclusively. This is a video attempt - it wasn't my final one. I add it here because not having a testament to this process this week would feel disingenuous.

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Continued experiment with turpentine - help

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Continued experiment with turpentine - help

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Considering this is essentially just a large canvas with colour and turpentine thrown at it, it’s kind of funny how many hours I’ve spent just standing in front of it.

I’m trying to figure out whether I can lean into this effect to get closer to what I’m after...or if it’s veering too far into abstraction. The drips draw attention to the fact that it’s paint, that it’s a flat surface.

But I want to achieve depth, a suggestion of space, a thingness that feels real and present.

I spent days stuck on this. In the end, I had to put it aside...it was driving me mad.

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Most of my Final Outcomes are shown in the GradDip portfolio

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Most of my Final Outcomes are shown in the GradDip portfolio

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In thinking about how my work might be shown, I keep returning to the Rothko Chapel not in terms of scale or iconography, but in atmosphere. A space that holds stillness, encourages contemplation, and allows each painting to breathe in relation to the others. I’m drawn to the idea of exhibiting the work in a setting that resists spectacle, where the viewer slows down, maybe even feels slightly disoriented. The architecture of the Chapel itself is liminal not quite a white cube, not overtly symbolic, but subtly off-centre. That sense of in-betweenness mirrors the way I want my paintings to function: not as answers, but as thresholds; images that hover between presence and absence, recognition and ambiguity. A space like this would allow the work to unfold slowly, inviting the viewer to dwell in a state of not-knowing, rather than pushing toward resolution.

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As I’ve mentioned throughout this journey, this course has been as much a crash course in IT as it has been in fine art. That might sound minor, but it’s actually been hugely significant. The satisfaction I feel in being able to take my own photographs, manipulate them in Photoshop, build layouts in InDesign, and handle a camera with confidence, it’s something I genuinely value. These skills have expanded how I think about presenting my work and given me more agency in shaping its narrative.

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There was a moment of gossip among students that the final portfolio might require showing work in situ...a rumour that was quickly dismissed by a tutor. Still, it pushed me to experiment with layout and documentation in new ways, and I ended up producing a few example spreads.

It also made me think more deeply about how I want my work to be shown; whether there are specific conditions that would allow the paintings to be experienced more fully.

I thought about low lighting, quiet spaces, and how context shapes perception. That led me back to Rothko, and the conditions he designed for his Chapel: a space that slows you down, that holds ambiguity without distraction. It made me wonder what kind of space my paintings ask for and how the setting could echo the themes of slowness, ambiguity, and presence that run through the work itself.

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This article offers an overview of Agamben’s concept of the “whatever being” from The Coming Community. It explores how this being isn’t defined by qualities or categories, but exists as presence in and of itself—not indifferent, but open. This resonates with my interest in forms that resist explanation but still hold weight. In my paintings, I try to create a space where the image is not representative of something, but simply is, a thing encountered, not decoded. The “whatever being” helps articulate why I’m drawn to the ambiguous and the unnameable.

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Ideas are displayed, without intention, in the act of naming, and they have to be renewed in philosophical contemplation. In this renewal the primordial mode of apprehending words is restored. And so, in the course of its history, which has so often been an object of scorn, philosophy is--and rightly so--a struggle for the representation of a limited number of words which always remain the same--a struggle for the representation of ideas. In philosophy, therefore, it is a dubious undertaking to introduce new terminologies which are not strictly confined to the conceptual field, but are directed towards the ultimate objects of consideration. Such terminologies--abortive denominative processes in which intention plays a greater part than language--lack that objectivity with which history has endowed the principal formulations of philosophical reflections. These latter can stand up on their own in perfect isolation, as mere words never can. And so ideas subscribe to the law which states: all essences exist in complete and immaculate independence, not only from phenomena, but, especially, from each other. Just as the harmony of the spheres depends on the orbits of stars which do not come into contact with each other, so the existence of the mundus intelligibilis depends on the unbridgeable distance between pure essences. Every idea is a sun and is related to other ideas just as suns are related to each other. The harmonious relationship between such essences is what constitutes truth. Its oft-cited multiplicity is finite; for discontinuity is a characteristic of the “essences.” (37)

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I'd forgotten about the Time Capsule. It was themes and Ideas we'd put together at the start of Investigate that we wanted to explore. It's interesting to look into it and see what indeed took off and what was abandoned.

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It’s interesting to see how much emphasis I initially placed on the word spirit.

And yet, I didn’t engage with it directly during either Investigate or Realise. This isn’t because it’s a topic I find uninteresting or distant from my constellation of references...in fact, quite the opposite.

Last semester, I focused my essay on the artist Solange Pessoa. What fascinated me most was her relationship to matter as something living, meaningful, and wise.

It was this quality in her work that initially drew me to making my own pigments and prompted me to consider materiality in a deeper way at the beginning of Investigate.

What unfolded, however, was a shift in focus, towards perception and the construction of meaning in relation to the image. Still, I can’t help but feel that spirituality is a close twin to this inquiry. Spirit, like perception, is embedded in the everyday yet never fully graspable.

Similarly, my thoughts have circled around what we see and what remains hidden. how form, shadow, and surface evoke a presence that is felt rather than know.

Perhaps in stepping away from the word spirit, I’ve been circling around it all along; through ambiguity, through the unknown, through attempts to translate what resists explanation.

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Agamben’s exploration of potentiality, especially as outlined in his broader philosophical project (and threaded through The Coming Community), shapes the logic of my work. He insists that to be truly free, potentiality must also include the potential not to act...to not do.

This refusal, this holding of space for what might not materialise, mirrors my commitment to works that dwell in indeterminacy.

In a world driven by outcomes and legibility, my paintings and objects embrace suspension, the almost-formed, and the not-yet. Agamben’s influence allows me to think of these hesitations not as lacks, but as powerful spaces of resistance. In this sense, art becomes a site where potentiality is not exhausted , but held open.

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Noah Davis’s paintings had a significant influence on my thinking around tone and atmosphere. His work often carries a sense of stillness, figures suspended in time, bathed in muted, almost dusky palettes that evoke memory rather than depiction. What I find most compelling is how Davis creates emotional depth without relying on overt symbolism; the power lies in what’s withheld. It makes me think of own desire to create paintings that linger in ambiguity, where mood takes precedence over narrative. His use of colour and restraint has encouraged me to think about how tone... colour, density, spatial tension, can carry meaning. In many ways, Davis reminded me that it’s possible to make work that is both quiet and charged.

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As I wrap up, I’m reminded of the painting above...something I made back in 2018, and at the time, I was proud of it. Looking at it now, I can see just how much has changed through the course of my artistic life. The journey I’ve taken this year in particular has been phenomenal. I’ve discovered a visual voice I genuinely feel excited about, one I want to keep exploring and deepening.

And yet, it’s striking to realise that many of the questions I’m working through now were already there. Even in this early piece, I was playing with the boundary between abstraction and depiction. I also remember my obsession with halos (something I later re-termed as “auras,” as I shifted more into abstraction), a concept I explored in depth last semester. I’ve always been drawn to the space between visibility and invisibility, between matter and ephemerality, between presence and absence.

I suppose what fascinates me most is the absurdity of existence, that we live within structures and systems we take very seriously, yet their true meaning always slips out of reach. There’s something dark in that, but also something joyful. It makes me laugh. It makes me happy. My work might carry a certain weight, but at its core, it’s happy work. I’m happy that there is so much I don’t know. I’m happy that mystery still exists.

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Today, THINKING itself is obsolete.

In documenting art on the basis of LANGUAGE:

We are human and true for the sake of MATTER, COLOUR and PERCEPTION,

At the crossroads of the lights, alert, attentively awaiting NOTHING

If you find it future and don't want to waste your time on a MESSAGE that means nothing,

consider that here we cast OUR SILENCE on fertile ground.

Here we have a right to do some prospecting, for we have NOTHING TO SAY,

We are ghosts drunk on energy, we dig into the GROUND.