Visualised and spoken-through: an artist’s reflective comment on his practice

Abstract

The article is a reflection by the author on his visual practice, specifically a form of drawing-based painting. A variety of methods that provide the content of the article, however, suggest that the practice itself is reflective. Several animations of the author making a previous visual work have been projected onto a new canvas, and, while tracing the animations, the author has recorded his observations into a voice recorder. The process of reflecting on the content of the voice recordings – excerpts from which are included as pictures – questions the assumed reflexivity of creative visual practice and shifts the emphasis to a more self-consciously reflective premise. While the voice recordings are a diversion, they also offer a creative extension to the practice that is informative of it and the character of the author’s involvement. A psychoanalytical reference provides a distinction between reflexive and reflective, and the article references theory of Bergson as both informative of issues of the visual work and enabling the author a less instinctual and more reflective approach that nonetheless concerns intuition.

Keywords:

• visual practice
• reflexivity
• language
• intuition
• movement
• memory