Where Good ideas come from...

A good source of ideas and the steady flow of creativity go hand-in-hand.  A couple of books that are worth reading, is where good ideas come from, by Stephen Johnson, and the book "the natural history of innovation" from Riverhead books.  An alternative source by using the web and going to the Tate modern (take shots) from 2011 is a documentary on Gerhart Richter by Adrian Searle.

It's always worthwhile to try to develop a cross pollination of ideas, to try new mediums, change the language, and create different forms of expression.   This can sometimes come from being more flexible in how I work,  but at the moment I seem to want to continue to explore the activities of drawing and simple painting alone.


I was shown an interesting video by my year tutor Bob Partridge, which in fact  is a sort of take or parody on the explorer and pioneer  Ansel Adams,, whose photographic work during the late  1890s and the discovery  of the  Yosemite Valley and Grand Canyon's  in the United States.   In Bob Partridge's film.  It provides a story, like a utopia, and as a pioneer himself,  and shows him in a ploughed field, which suggests he is battling against the hot sun  pulling something like a plough, but in fact  what he has done is he created a film on the basis that he made his own  society from a "Tabular Rasa", in the same way that the original western pioneers worked.   In fact, as the camera pulled away from him, it shows Bob  in the harness, but instead of a plough that he is pulling  is he is pulling  a fully constructed camping tent.   This lends itself as an image of the pioneer and compares it against the myth of Sisyphus,  by showing the absurdity of pulling a tent like a plough.

 This exploration into the absurdity of life, of being is a regular theme in post modern art. .  Other examples can be seen at websites such as www.creativebloq.com  www.mutu.com   www.blueblu.org

 "preoccupation" text: "cover it up and build it high.".  This is another exploration into the absurdity of life  and of the everyday  with a view of various drawings  submitted up upon that theme . Another example of my course tutor Bob Partridge and his work  can be seen in the film  "the closure of Tegal Airport", in which Bob provides an Alan Bennett style narration , but touches upon the idea that everywhere you go in life you take something of yourself to it,  your experiences etc  with you,  but also derive experiences and something material almost fr from the experience.