Sarah Shaw

quotes from http://www.ink-d.co.uk/blog/2015/06/interview-with-sarah-shaw

‘Shift’ brings together a new collection of paintings which explore different ways to express a multitude of ideas around history, time, consciousness and psychology

the key recurring image being that of something, whether it be a flux of humanity or a natural element, spinning in infinity – shifting in time and space through broken painted frames. I wanted the exhibition to have lots of interlocking reoccurring themes and colours running through, and visualised the show as a whole rather than a series of separate paintings.

sounds like my ideas, that i can picture the end result, the exhibition space as a whole, but not really the individual images that i present in that space.

Shift' has many different meanings, and I do like exploring language which has different contexts, but I was thinking along the lines of it describing an event that occurs when something passes from one state to another and undergoes a qualitative change. Towards the end of the making of this show I began to think of the word 'shift' as being the perfect one to illustrate my current practice. It was also seemed perfectly in keeping with describing some of the qualities of paint, the shift in scale, the sense of time which I always attempt to evoke and the shift in movement of some of the inhabitants of the paintings. My work has undergone some transformations of late, and I have begun exploring a different kind of imagery and experimenting with different processes which have led to somewhat of a sea change in my practice therefore naming the show 'Shift' had personal significance.
 

her working process sounds a bit like me in that she is changing, but with her its the process itself, whereas mine is about the process of shifting from one idea to another

I wanted the large painting ' Search' to have an equation to real life, so the bending figures had a relation in size to the viewer - I had to compromise a little on this as I would have needed an even larger canvas, but the paintings I have made since the show started are exploring a more human scale. The thinking behind the range in scale was to explore a sense of the epic versus the intimate - and to explore something of our human relation to nature
 

ah yeah i need to think about scale really. so far only my idea has been that my little negatives are lost on a wall, their scale dictated by the process i use, can i actually think about a different scale, while still retaining their unique quality? what would this involve? would i scan my pictures and print them larger? or could i cut them to half frames?, destroy the negative, as i could destroy the flower that made it? could i make them into a collage? could i make them into a grid to cover a wall? could i make them into a long book like ed ruscha? the first idea that pops to my head is have them in order of lightnest to darkest, but what does that say of photography? nothing that hasnt already been said before... could i edit to some sort of narrative? cant really think of some narrative so far, maybe this is improved when i have more frames? so far i have my sight firmly resting on 3/4 walls with each 2-3 frames spaced several metres apart. i cant think away from this with my current amount of images

Theres something about old English traditions that always gets to me - It's really hard to put my finger on the feeling; its a kind of odd nostalgia, its something about how intriguing human beings can be with their odd customs and traditions and inventions - something about history and my sense of identity as an inhabitant of this country, and something about my gypsy heritage perhaps. When I started painting the dancers I wanted to get a sense of not only movement and colour and unity but also something darker beneath these customs - something about nature, life and death - in the end the paintings evolved into these odd maelstroms of humans in and out of time, dancing, moving , living, fighting through the painted space.

so does her painting take me back to times when i visited countryside villages where i saw morris dancers? the general aura of those towns? well yeah they definitelly remind me of morris dancres, infact if you were to ask me before reading, i would say that is what is depicted in the painting. but does it remind me of the aura of the villages? well yeah i can imagine being sat outside a pub on a sunny afternoon, theres a few bushes/large potted plants, the sort you get outside country pubs to the left of me, the dancers are dancing near a stone water fountain in the middle of the square. there are a few other people watching from the benches too, there are decorations in the square because some festival or celebration is happening. i can see the unity in the dancers as they come together in some particcular dance move, however i cant see about something darker, i can see about the customs and the connection to nature, perhaps i have forgotten what i would read in Terry Pratchett books about the point of countryside customs and their birth in keeping evil at bay... i think if i was to actually research into morris dancing and countryside customs there would be a darker side to discover, so i dont disbelieve her when she says this.

I can't remember who said it but I remember reading about an artist who said that he enjoyed images that change from something literal to something which has the possibility of becoming embedded in the mind - I would hope that the viewer is sufficiently intrigued at least that they would come back and take more time to look.

to be fair i think most people enjoy this more, and hope that work has a deeper meaning, after all that is what makes great art, it has to speak about several things, it must have a point, that isnt just the literal one, you must look at art and the more you look into a particular piece then the more you can see, and thats what makes it great.

When painting is at its best there is a kind of blankness in the mind for me - I'm not thinking about anything specific, just making speedy and intuitive decisions, sometimes about practicalities/material qualities of paint / sometimes about the best way to evoke a certain feeling/ always a questioning of how to best make the two dimensional space suit my purposes - my tutor used to describe it as 'accelerated consciousness' where the decisions you make are being made so speedily and intuitively obeying your own sense of aesthetics and 'rightness' in a painting.

what am i thinking about when i am making pictures? i think mostly i am grumbling because i cant get the tripod legs right, or the right angle or the bloody shutter cable has fallen out. am i thinking i need to make a nice picture? yeah i guess so... trying to find the right frame, but im not sure if im conciously thinking or not, i literally can remember...

The ironically named ‘Tiny Protest Paintings’ give a sense of the powerlessness to change the things I would like to, but the need also to express something in paint, no matter how useless

mmm yeah i cant change the world with photographs, are my photographs a protest? agaisnt human 'progression' or activity or against the social structure of the world i find myself in, like i mused about in my earlier posts? hmm maybeee not much of a protest though, they are taking what is and changing it for my own goals

quotes from http://www.sarahshaw.co.uk/news/2014/07/16/solo-show-at-the-artists-residence-gallery,-brighton/

Time collapses as past, present and future are represented in oil paintings that obey a non-linear chronology: they stand simultaneously as a visualising of the past and as a perception of the present.

Some of the works imagery springs from the artist’s imagination, whilst other work explores metaphorical or symbolic images/barriers/passages to speak of some of the conditions of being human and also of the concept of living through time.

again here is an artist who has found the key concepts they want to say to the world and found a way to do it.

quotes from http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/interview-aesthetica-art-prize-longlisted-artist-sarah-shaw/

I’ve always been fascinated with the flowers that people leave strapped to lamp-posts in memory of the people who have met their end at that place. They have always seemed so charged and poignant, both morbidly beautiful and strangely evocative of so many things: all the hopes, fears, disappointments, losses that we have all experienced at some point in life, whether it be the actual loss of a loved one or the loss of something else like love, youth or dreams.

well this is a very interesting take on it, am i leaving flowers for the death of the natural world, for the death of the ancient societies? i didnt think so maybe i need to read into more about why im interested? bc i visited the countryside as a child? that made me yearn for a simpler life? i think the ancient people had a simpler life? maybe but im guessing their lives were filled with danger and fear.

I’m still learning myself, but I would recommend trying to find your own voice as an artist rather than emulate others’, work hard, and persevere with knocking on doors despite the rejection you will inevitably receive and develop a thick skin because this path is a difficult one. It’s hard to live an emotional life which is visible and open to the criticism of strangers, but the sense of accomplishment and the sense of knowing yourself within the painting process is worth all the worry.

i guess the hardest thing at the moment for me is overcoming the doubt

http://blog.lawrence.co.uk/?p=286

quotes from http://www.artinbrighton.co.uk/artists/2015/12/2/an-interview-with-brightons-new-artistic-starlet-sarah-shaw

I allow myself to have a relative amount of freedom in the subjects I choose but they all have common threads running through them – especially in the Rorschach paintings which explored ideas around psychology. I have always played with ways in which to pictorially divide the canvas to achieve a certain effect, to attempt to speak of time, or to make a part of a painting function as either a barrier or as an opening – a pictorial device to invite a viewer into a painting or otherwise

Do you think you have something to say, or is it simply to create pieces for people to escape into?
I make work. All kinds of work, at all different times of day, whilst stuff is happening in the world, in my life, in other peoples’ lives - some of this stuff makes it back into the work.
I don’t come to a canvas with big ideas about ‘saying’ something. If I’m angry about something it will make its way into the work, if I’m sad that’ll be there too. If other people get something from it then that’s a huge bonus but I’m not even making it for them. I make work firstly for myself. It wouldn’t be real if I didn’t.

is this how i work? this seems more intuitive to me, maybe i need to paint not to photograph, - a photograph is too real, it has its basis in the world, so therefore it must say something of the world.