artist process

16 - Hannah Tarr—Focusing on Process over Product in the age of Instagram by Vivian Liddell

Hannah Tarr on how Instagram has affected her process:

I’ve deleted the app. I’ve like told myself I’m not allowed to go on it. It just makes me sad. …

I’ve found that I see other people’s works sneaking into mine and I see mine sneaking into others that follow me too much lately. And I’m wanting to kind of be more secretive and under wraps at least until I have enough that I feel like I’m ready to show, or I have the opportunity to show a bunch of work. And then it’s unleashed and it’s gonna wow everyone and be awesome… 

But it’s weird. I think I look at things differently. I measure up myself differently and my own work differently. I think about the product instead of the process a lot more. Because I’m just seeing these images; I’m seeing so many images. ... And I’m like “Oh this is good” and “I like this painting”…  But I don’t think about what it is that gives me the subtle joys. Why I love painting is surprising myself and making little jokes in my head and having fun with kind of what turns up. And Instead when I’m like “Oh my painting looks like this” or “it needs to be this”— I get too focused on the end result. And I think that that’s a product of looking at too much right now, but not in person…

 

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12 - Zipporah Camille Thompson—To the Moon and Back, Searching through High and Low by Vivian Liddell

Zipporah Camille Thompson on collecting source imagery:

I’m not to the place yet where I’m actually going to take my own photographs of landscapes—that’s something that I want to start doing. But what I do, is I start to kind of collect these found images—be it Google images or other sources on the internet—of different landscapes, different surfaces of the moon and then those become sources…points by which I can then abstract. …

So some of these (idea boards) then get a title and then they’re reference points for shows. Some of them do not have titles, and they just exist as boards...idea boards. And the beauty of it not being online…when you make them physical, it’s like this small, kind of curated, specifically for this thing‑ that I can then reference every day without having to find my laptop. …

One image then might inform, like one texture with another texture. And because I use so many different textures and layers, I think that that’s especially important— for me to see the connections.

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