I have been trying to do a ‘Daily Doodle’ of my thoughts as a way of practicing ‘scribing’ and also because it fun 🙂
These are the images so far…..my favourite so far the music one above.
These the only three pieces of work this year and they were all submitted.
The selectors took the two drawings..have to work harder on paintings 🙂
The full list of exhibitors here:Â http://nottinghamcastleopen.com/
Bit of a shock to system this. I knew my artistic output had ‘slowed’ but as I can only find one canvas and two drawings from the whole last year it not slow it slithering to a stop.
Mostly the result of the gradual wind down of the Multimedia course and its attendant crap ( not from students I would like to make clear) and the failure of NTU SAD to recognise anything else I did..and an attempt to bury me in graphic design…
I did not have much time to paint I was too busy trying to save my job until I gave up trying and did something I enjoy instead i.e. creative writing which fabulous…and such a relief at least for a year….I due to return in June 2015..we shall see…
The Moogee show ready for taking to Lady Bay for the weekend. This is my third time in the Lady Bay show. First time was in 2003 just after I had moved here and was a kind of retrospective. Then again in 2005 (I think) when I showed in the Church Hall and revealed the Curse of the Moogee.
Now it is going to be all Moogee in one form or another culminating in the M.A. illustrations for James Elkins.
I have decided to go with an all black and white theme as the room is decorated that way so it kind of makes sense.
The show starts Saturday 12-6pm and Sunday 12-6pm. Look forward to seeing some of you there :-). Woof.
I am showing here in my oldest friend…almost as old as me ..from school Stephe Hitchman’s house :Â The house overlooking the allotments 11
Mark Green (Drawing workshops) Hannah Hitchman (Illustrations) Shaun Belcher (Illustrations)
Further details here:Â http://www.ladybayarts.org.uk/festival-2014.html
All works inspired by the great Roger Price
Before I started on the Nottingham Trent University M.A. by registered project I already had three fairly well-defined practices or is it PRAXIS. I had painted in oil for ten years and drawn regularly, I had written poetry which published as ‘Last Farmer’ (Salt Publishing 2010) and I had spent ten years or more writing songs and performing as my alter-ego Trailer Star, Â By the Lincoln Collection show of 2008 this morphed into a strange amalgamation of songwriting and painting in the Suit of Nettles project.
However none of this work was ‘research-orientated’ I just did it in a foolish Picasso/Miro-esque way you know like people had done for thousands of years before Research Exercises were even invented. BUT….as my M.A. was funded by my venerable institution and was supposedly part of ‘continuing professional development’ I set to on the chosen path for me of ‘MULTIMEDIA’ by registered project.This made sense to my peers and bosses and sort of made sense to me that was until they closed down ‘Multimedia’ department and informed me that the reason for that was the word ‘multimedia’ did not mean anything. This came as a bit of a surprise as we had done well to survive the mis-management from above and indeed our employability was nearly 80%. Indeed it had more to do with managerial self-promotion than common-sense but this was not apparent at the time. Whatever, it will be over soon (2014) but the M.A. carries on. I am now in a process of rationalising how my M.A. proceeds and alongside it I have created a separate ‘research’ praxis which uses cartoons to examine in detail the whole justification and deployment of postgraduate study in the arts. I now call this ‘GRAPHIC RESEARCH ‘ and a blog details all the work I am doing in this field.
https://shaunbelcher.com/research
Meanwhile the first year of M.A. ‘TRACK’ blog details all the work I did during my first year of ‘development’, all of it in the area of MULTIMEDIA AND ‘new media’.
I also started to paint again (at a low level) and this detailed in my second year M.A. painting related blog ‘Blank Canvas’.
https://shaunbelcher.com/canvas
So as it stands I have three simultaneous reflective journals done during the past two years..I wonder if any or all count for my M.A? In my opinion the cartoon research alone should qualify for a degree let alone the rest. I am going to stretch my examiners and supervisors patience to the test now by suggesting that I revert to PAINTING as the sole focus of the final year and use it to test theories of what research is and what practice is against each other. As the whole dichotomy of practice V research is what I questioning then physically separating the two and attempting both separately looks like a valid way of testing my ideas. This makes sense to me and in conversation with James Elkins I think makes sense to him. We are both examining the apparent contradictions in postgraduate fine art delivery, he from a theoretical ‘research on research’ angle, and myself from a physical practice versus research theory angle.
Simples Meerkats. If you are confused by all of this just try reading Pessoa whilst standing on your head…..
