Change through process

After maintaining a professional painting career for more than twenty years, my primary objective for graduate school has been to gain maturity in my painting. I was determined to expand my work ethic beyond self-imposed limitations. I believe growth and renewal can be achieved through the willingness to change, requiring self-examination, a search for new resources, and risk taking. I found my options were widely expanded by adopting alternative materials that required new methods for application. In my painting these changes redirected my focus toward the act of painting rather than the finished work. Taking risks and prolonging my painting process have enhanced the possibility of surprise and spontaneity and eliminated early resolution. This thesis is a discussion on my progress toward change.

CHANGE THROUGH PROCESS by Claudia Furnish Coberly A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine .Arts Department of Art The University of Utah December 1998 Copyright © Claudia Furnish Coberly 1998 All Rights Reserved THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL of a thesis submitted by CLAUDIA COBERLY This thesis has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be satisfactory. //- J- 9? //- S' 9t* I I ­3- 9)t C h a i r m a n : P a u l D a v i s < B a V lc i D o r n a n ( --------------- l- U.----------------/ ^ ---- ---------------------- Z.------------------------------------------------ /I Rev. THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS FINAL READING APPROVAL To the Graduate Council of The University of Utah: , . , , , . r Claudia Coberly 1 have read the thesis or _____________________________________________________ in its final'form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the Supervisory Committee and is ready for submission to the Graduate School. / Date Paul Davis Chairperson, Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department Nathan Winters Chairperson Approved for the Graduate Council Phyllis Haskell Dean, College o f Fine Arts Rev ABSTRACT After maintaining a professional painting career for more than twenty years, my primary objective for graduate school has been to gain maturity in my painting. I was determined to expand my work ethic beyond self-imposed limitations. I believe growth and renewal can be achieved through the willingness to change, requiring self-examination, a search for new resources, and risk taking. I found my options were widely expanded by adopting alternative materials that required new methods for application. In my painting these changes redirected my focus toward the act of painting rather than the finished work. Taking risks and prolonging my painting process have enhanced the possibility of surprise and spontaneity and eliminated early resolution. This thesis is a discussion on my progress toward change. ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................................ vi THE PROCESS IN PERSPECTIVE........................................................................................1 Background.....................................................................................................................1 Change ............................................................................................................................. 1 The Graduate Program................................................................................................... 3 Results of Change .......................................................................................................... 4 CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................7 LIST OF PRINTS........................................................................................................................8 PRINTS .....................................................................................................................................11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee, Paul Davis, Dave Dornan, and Bob Kleinschmidt for their critical guidance and patience. I am particularly grateful to Sam Wilson who went to significant lengths to sponsor me into the graduate program. Also I must thank Mary Francey, Bob Olpin, Tony Smith, Judy Stubbs, and Maureen O'Hara Ure for their willingness to assist me and to share their knowledge. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my husband, Dan, and my son, Jason, whose love and support made these two years possible. THE PROCESS IN PERSPECTIVE Background Since my 1966 graduation from Ringling School of Art in Sarasota Florida, I have pursued a career in art that has been both personally and financially rewarding. But after a twenty-year career in painting, dissatisfaction with my work forced me to examine my motives for being an artist. It occurred to me that my desire for each painting to succeed had become a habit. I was no longer asking meaningful questions and thus had placed superficial limits on my growth as an artist. My work lacked maturity, and I felt there was more I could accomplish if I knew where to start. Moving to Utah from Florida afforded me the opportunity to seek change rather than rebuild a career. My decision to abandon successful comfort zones and adapt to a new work ethic as a returning student has been rewarding, but not without difficulty. Change My commitment to change involved a transition of my priorities. It seemed necessary to find the heart of my creativity. Many of my artist heroes lived in the last century: Cezanne, Rouault, Rodin, Matisse, Degas, and Monet were my teachers. By studying them I began to understand how they have affected twentieth-century art. I found new heroes: Pollock, de Kooning, Frankenthaler, Dubuffet, and Tapies. They were artists who understood that the concept of "process" in painting was a means to reshape outdated perspectives and challenge historical precedents. I consider process, in the context of painting, as a kind of performance that allows "chance events" and impulsive moves to play interactive roles through the artist's immediate decisions. This permits the artist to change direction in a painting at any time. Process occurs spontaneously during the act or performance of painting. Through using contemporary materials and remaining vulnerable to process combined with centuries of art history, I discovered my options of originality are endless. The concept of process has become the center of my power as an artist. Process implies action that keeps me alert. I am more cognizant of the meanings of words like potential, productive, original, and successful. These words support the necessity to take risks, and these new experiences prompt me to ask more questions. If I focus on the "process" of making a painting without checking my impulses, the results are more spontaneous and authoritative. I begin to reshape fixed ideals and recognize that my life experiences are key to my process. What is it that I have treasured, collected, and remembered, and how could I paint about them? It became necessary to identify issues, events, and objects that affected me personally. These personal issues became valuable resources in my work. I looked around at what I have treasured and collected, and this self-assessment revealed that I have always been attracted to the beauty and feel of surfaces whether it was the shifting sands of the ocean, sun-heated rocks, an old brick wall, or a discarded shard of china. Familiar shapes and harmonious lines etched on surfaces reaffirm my respect for humanness and survival. I collect fragments of the past, fragments of my history; they tease my imagination and my soul. By placing value on them, I have transformed their history and changed their meaning. These objects have only the power that I have given them to revive memories and provoke questions with elusive answers. These fragments fill me with a sense of well-being, and their value has increased by using them in my process. The Graduate Program My first year resulted in three important lessons. First, I learned to push the boundaries of my comfort zone and be alert to the possibilities of changing direction in my work. Second, I discovered that bad paintings are just as valuable as successful ones; and third, I stopped painting for the potential viewer and thus resisted the desire to please everyone. It became clear that many responses to my work, including my own, were subjective: the decisions made about my work had to be my responsibility alone. I spent many hours worrying over how I wanted to paint. I felt like a chameleon who could change painting styles to suit the moment or my artist hero of the day. I realized that my efforts to develop maturity in my work involved accepting a visual language of my own. That language surfaced as abstraction. I was in my second year of the program before these lessons began to take hold and decisions based on process began to take precedence in my painting. I began collecting discarded objects for their variety in texture and photographing cracks on ceilings and old walls and scratches on brick or stone. Time and exposure to the elements caused complex layers of erosion. They became my reference library of textural surfaces and patterns. The appearance of various textures in my painting began to record my reactions to decisions I made or intrusions of unexpected elements. My interest in texture led to a search for new materials. While my early work employed mixed media of traditional materials like oil, watercolor, and pastels, I looked for a material that would work as an opaque binder for layering. I found a commercial wall compound that was compatible with both acrylic and oil. This mixture could be applied in layers and then sanded down or broken to reveal past layers. Due to the weight of the mixture, large trowels and knives became alternatives to brushes. Results of Change In the past, the painting process was a planned, orchestrated activity to insure the delivery of preconceived meanings. Now, process is the active component that contributes to the painting's meaning as it transforms through production. By setting aside control and allowing the element of "chance" to be a source of inspiration and direction, my painting process became a new way to mentally and physically interact with the media while working. By not focusing on success or failure of the painting, my effort is directed toward keeping fixed ideas at a minimum and actively searching for a connection in my first marks. Thus the creative response becomes the beginning of a communication between my instincts, formal decisions, and actions. A work undergoes continuous cycles of building up and tearing down. Each time this occurs, a new reality emerges to confront me. This process of destruction versus restoration becomes the painting's history and my experience. My decisions are both conscious and unconscious: intuitive decisions are realized after they reach the surface. The layered cycles eventually embody an arrangement of wholeness. When that occurs, the painting feels complete; I am no longer a part of it. The painting exists in a new reality. Thus I may recognize my intent or something that transcends it. The success or failure of the painting has nothing to do with its capacity to communicate an idea or feeling. The experience teaches me and becomes prelude to the next painting. My show, "Seductive Geometry," is the formal conclusion of my master's program. It is about process and history. The textures can be seen as responses to my mental activity We own our past even if we choose to disguise it, so my show reflects some of my history. As I worked, I began to see that suppressing my unconscious instincts always led me to oversimplify. Learning to trust those instincts, I now feel more in tune with life's subtleties and interaction with nature. While I did not give up my previous attachment to figuration entirely, I found a balance that I can live with. I wanted my paintings in this show to be seductive in the sense of how seductive humans are, and how much we are drawn to mystery and drama. Geometry, on the other hand, is structured and inflexible, which I connect to the sensation of being contained, separate, and fragmented. These paintings comment on the human condition at its best and worst and represent optimism and foreboding by revealing only parts of the equation at any given time. The question of intent became clear after I had completed several of the paintings. Working within the parameters of process, a variety of symbols emerged spontaneously. Among the most significant are the animated geometric shapes with legs, invoking allusions of humanness. Within these geometric shapes, mini-dramas appear to have a life of their own. Another recurring symbol is feminine lips that appear to inhabit a different space than the rest of the painting, playing a dual role as a voyeuristic commentator on the painting's content and an independent voice to the viewer. The spontaneous appearance of these metaphorical symbols empowered me to trust and accept the consequences of process. 6 CONCLUSION The production of work for my show progressed quickly after I accepted the alternate realities suggested by the symbols. They appeared naturally and became important to the work's content. My emotional responses to the symbols varied from one painting to the next, which created tension in the show as a whole. I was constantly challenged to allow elements into the paintings that my consciousness was not ready to entertain. It felt like a dream in which everything is real and therefore accepted. My conscious acceptance of spontaneous marks and symbols has become very important to working successfully with process. The terms "reality" and "abstraction" have become variable and unique to each piece. This show is a collective history of a past that I own, a history that was necessary for this process to be believable. My past successes and failures are threads that connect me with the present. Over the past two years, I have gained self-confidence regarding my life and my work. It would be difficult to separate the artist and the woman; they are inseparable. I have found in my graduate experience, like my show, that the whole is much greater than its parts. An important part of the process that will continue to redefine my perspective is the willingness to take risks. I found that success in graduate school depends on two things: first, it is the best time in an artist's career to learn how to take risks. Second, the entire experience must be based on a total commitment to change. The key is the willingness to change, whether or not change is necessary. LIST OF PRINTS 10 1. Shadow on a Bleeding Wall.. .Frozen on a Sunny Day Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 2. Lip Service.. Given to Life's Folly Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 3. Last Eyes.. .Beseech a Phantom Arm Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 4. Private parts.. .Humpty Dumpty Had a Mistress Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 5. Geometric Red Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 6. Scents of History That Did Not Exist Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 7. Red Stains a Broken Pane Combined process on panel 15"x 15" 8. A-Muse-Ment Falls Away Combined process on panel 15"x 15" 9. Rock Solitude... Significance of Gray Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 11 10. Rebirth of Old Desire Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 11. Voyeur at Right Angles Squared.. .Walking Window #1 Combined process on canvas 56"x 47" 12. Burdened Beast at Right Angles...Walking Window #2 Combined process on canvas 56"x 47" 13. Remnants of the Past... Significance of Blue Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 14. The Keeper o f...? Being Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 15. Pastoral Scene.. The Significance of Green Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 16. Ode to Joy... That Pink Cheek Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 17. Large Yellow Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 18. Secret Container Combined process on panel 15"x 24" 19. Cock Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 20. Heart Line.. Reaching Back to Stone Combined process on canvas 40"x 40" PRINTS 13 Print 1 Shadow on a Bleeding Wall. . . Frozen on a Sunny Day Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 14 Print 2 Lip Service . . . Given to Life's Folly Combined Process on Panel 48"x 48" 15 Print 3 Last Eyes . . . Beseech a Phantom Arm Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 16 Print 4 Private Parts . . . Humpty Dumpty Had a Mistress Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 17 Print 5 Geometric Red Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 18 Print 6 Scents of History That Did Not Exist Combined process on panel 48" x48" 19 Print 7 Red Stains a Broken Pane Combined process on panel 15"x 15" 20 Print 8 A-Muse-Ment Falls Away Combined process on panel 25"x 30" 21 Print 9 Rock Solitude . . . Significance of Gray Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 22 Print 10 Rebirth of Old Desire Combined process on panel 24"x 30" 23 Print 11 Voyeur at Right Angles Squared . . . Walking Window #1 Combined process on panel 56"x 47" 24 Print 12 Burdened Beast at Right Angles . . . Walking Window #2 Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 25 Print 13 Remnants of the Past. . . Significance of Blue Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 26 Print 14 The Keeper of. . .? Being Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 27 Print 15 Pastoral Scene . . . The Significance of Green Combined process on panel 48"x 48" U-s* 28 Print 16 Ode to Joy . . . That Pink Cheek Combined process on panel 48"x 48" 29 Print 17 Large Yellow Combined process on panel 36"x 36" 30 Spring 18 Secret Container Combined process on paper 15"x 24" 31 fh % ^ fe- jS Print 19 Cock Combined process on paper 36"x 36" 32 Print 20 Heart Line . . . Reaching Back to Stone Combined process on canvas 40"x 40"