Perception in the way that I am interested in it, does not exist without experience. Experience does not exist behind a lens. Or rather, a camera lens. I wear lenses in the form of contacts and glasses all day every day. The act of seeing something through a medium of any sort, will distort the way something is experienced. A camera will grab hold of a minute second in time and space and hold on to it forever. We do not ever experience the world like this. In this way, the only way for me to truly explore perception is to work from life....in real time. I have to experience the event itself and capture it moment by moment over a period of time. Never capturing only one second, but adding together this second with that second with the next and the next and so on until what I have captured is truer to perception.
I am often confronted with anger by those who use photo references in their art. I do not discount using a photo in the least...unless you are interested in perception, which is almost always not the case. I have used and will probably continue to use photos for various other projects. But, that is only because in those situations perception is the least of my worries. That being said, I am always way more interested in perception than basically anything else, so I simply avoid the use of photos.
Josh Gomez recently showed me a video of Giacometti. I believe the film itself was in French so of course I couldn't understand a word of it but it was amazing to get to see his work and even watch Giacometti paint, which was, to say the least, frustrating. I love his stuff, but watching him was a chore. Not sure, I can adequately explain this without hand gestures. Ha! What I saw in his work in these videos though was completely new to me. I suddenly became aware of how he was seeing. In, "A Giacometti Portrait," by James Lord, Giacometti was constantly saying how hopeless it was to capture a likeness. When working from life, as I said earlier, you must capture a series of moments and attempt to align then in a static singular one. Giacometti could not do this because he could never escape the fact that everything changed constantly. In his work, you can see the layers of images over and over and over. He captured a likeness hundreds of times over without ever cleanly bringing them together in a solid whole, which created incredible results. His work captures time (though I don't believe he intended it). His works do not look like photographs and yet here again are paintings that are more true to perception than one, because they are experiential.
I am beginning a new drawing today. It is a blind self portrait. I wanted to do it life size, but it looks as though it will actually be quite a bit smaller. The piece itself will still be 3' x 6' though and I'm excited about it. I have been working to get everything set up this morning and so now all I really need to do is put pastel to paper and let it happen.
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