July 20, 2015

8.30 am. Over the weekend, several correspondence that required some serious attention had accrued. (The size of an email bears no relationship to either its import or demands.) 11.00 am. I pressed on with my practice-based work index. I copied and PDF-ed indices, which I’d already compiled up to 2007. I’ve kept an accurate list of my visual artworks ever since I first began my Foundation Studies course in September 1977:

Screen-Shot-2015-07-20-at-11.59.10

The list begins with the first weekend project (a self portrait) and ends with a trio of canvasses that were indicative of the shape of things to come … for any very long time:

a4106547680_16
John Harvey, Off  (1978), acrylic on canvas, 60 × 60 cm

The projects we undertook were prescribed, unlike anything I’d encountered at ‘O’ and ‘A’ level (mercifully), and object based: chairs draped in polythene, a studio hung with shiny black plastic and tinfoil (into which I introduced a pane of Flemish glass), knitted wool, basketry, salads, paint boxes, life studies, landscape studies, perspective exercises, and views from the window at the art school’s annex on Emlyn Street, Newport (now demolished):

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 12.54.08

The ‘object’ has remained fundamental to my work: be that a text or a found sound. I need something to interpret.

1.40 pm. I retrieved sound equipment from the School, which I’d been using to provide ad hoc and rudimentary tutorials on sound production, in readiness for my annual inventory of stock. 2.00 pm. The Pictorial Bible III: The Bible in Translation visual artworks were typed up as an index:

Screen Shot 2015-07-20 at 16.36.24

4.30 pm. I’ve already made photographs of a number of the works. These now need to be reassessed and modified for tone and colour, principally.

6.30 pm. Practice session 1. 7.30 pm. An unpacking and putting away of studio equipment. 8.00 pm. Back to modifying photographs of The Pictorial Bible III work.

10.40 pm. ‘The night watch’. I made a tentative start on reviewing the material that I’d produced for ‘The Wounded Heart Ministries’ on Friday and Saturday, and began setting it within a more conscious compositional framework.

IMG_4237

Previous Post
July 18, 2015
Next Post
July 21, 2015