It's Your Turn Now

Francis on the left, Bridgette on the right. But which came first?

I feel like I have so much to say about the collaborative exhibition, Your Turn, that Francis and I just took down today from the Blue Sky Gallery.  I don't want to regurgitate the press release here, you can check our actual Your Turn blog for that!  But I do want to reflect a bit on the experience.

1) Collaboration was an unexpected joy.  When you are predisposed to gloomy internal narratives like me, the idea of working alongside your significant other is slightly terrifying.  To elaborate, we have a pretty solid home life, but some of the most intense arguments we've had have been about art (and Valentine's Day which is another story). Therefore, the idea of taking aesthetics, something we both have strong individual-type feelings about and trying to come to consensus seemed daunting - like someone could be sleeping on the couch at some point during the exercise. The experience, however, was extremely productive and it was easy to slip into a working routine with Francis. Which really, duh!  We work together on stuff all the time, I don't know what I was so nervous about.

2) Having ownership over our own individual works in the show helped make the process of working together positive.  In some ways, this feels like a cop out, maybe?  That we both used each other as inspiration, but didn't actually physically work on the same pieces together (except Lost Horizons).  But this way of working did allow us to each exercise some control over what we would be putting out in the world.

3) Francis is really good at framing up interesting compositions. Painting from his photographs gave me the freedom to not have to laboriously build up an armature to hang my composition on, as generally seems to be part of my painting process.  It was so refreshing, and interestingly made me feel able to stop early on if I liked the results of a few brushstrokes. I am generally able to get this kind of freshness in a drawing, but have trouble striking that balance in a painting, because they just seem weighted differently. But why do they need to be? I think it's my own hang up, and maybe also a parsimonious relation to resources as well. If I'm going to pay for a big canvas, then I bloody well better get to paint a whole bunch all over it.

 
4) And last but not least, Charmaine roller skated!!!
The Future of Art Viewing by Issa Randall, starring Charmaine Griffith

Hairy Armpit waves goodbye! detail, Hairy Armpit, oil on panel, 10" x 10"

all photographs by Francis!