BACKGROUND

One of the two parallel development strands of my practice is to develop my narrative. It is my intention to maintain complete freedom in my making in this strand. Meaning that I am not going to overthink when making work here. If an idea comes to mind or something comes up and triggers a memory, then I’ll just go with my instinct and make work. I believe that is the best way to develop my narrative and capture as much of my thinking as possible through my art practice. Whereas the other strand of developing my style is a much more structured development path with planned explorations and experiments.

This piece of narrative work came about when I played one of my favourite songs from the 80s – Time after time by Cyndi Lauper. The song has always resonated with me. Its meaning is explained very well on this website:

https://neonmusic.co.uk/time-after-time-by-cyndi-lauper-a-deep-dive-into-a-timeless-classic/

The website describes this song as treading a fine line between hope and despair making it relatable.

This piece of work is a quick capture of an idea using my sketchbook and a digital drawing tool. This kind of work will form an ideas bank when I may come back to at a later stage to make more substantial work from.

Finished ‘quick capture’ work:

METHOD

I felt compelled to write down the lyrics, it was a way to experience the lyrics. I wanted to write in a circular way to echo the time clock mentioned in the song. I experimented with two versions, one to fit the rectangular page of the sketchbook and another in a circle.

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I preferred the circular version hence that image was chosen. A photo of that sketchbook page was imported into Adobe Fresco as the background of the piece. I wanted to overlay it with an image that represented the sense of moving from one place to another. I decided to use a blue IKEA bag which today symbolises moving one’s possessions around making it a contemporary and iconic image. Then a blue swirl was added using the Fresco digital paintbrush to represent the cyclical nature of my constantly moving around during that period of my life. Different parameter settings were tried for the Fresco paintbrush.

The image below shows the layers I created in Adobe Fresco for the finished work:

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REFLECTIONS

– Considering the process: This was a more informal way of making compared to my usual work. I liked it as I was able to capture my thoughts quickly. Then the digital Fresco tool enabled me to capture the idea quickly to come up with the finished work. In the past, I would have drawn or painted the IKEA bag which would have taken time and perhaps if I didn’t like the idea part way through then I would have felt bad about abandoning the work. I am still getting to grips with tools like Fresco and it’s a good way to capture an idea and I may well come back to work on this more at a later stage – either to build on it digitally or create a physical painting from the idea.

– Considering my narrative: I struggled with this one. Digging deeper can be scary as it makes one feel vulnerable or remember periods of vulnerability. When this song was on the chart, I was moving between boarding schools and temporary lodgings during the holidays. I didn’t go home to my family during holidays, just because. So seeing Lauper (in the music video) going back to her Mum’s in times of troubles (in her case a heartbreak) was heart warming but perhaps heart warming was not the most accurate phrase, it seems insufficient. I recently learnt a Welsh word ‘hiraeth’ – it means a deep longing or nostalgia for something lost or departed. I wonder if I could extend it to include longing for something that one didn’t have. Hiraeth doesn’t have an equivalent English word (according to google search and the person who introduced the word to me who was a linguistic academic). I like the word hiraeth and it fits my narrative here more than any other word I could think of.

– A further thought about the use of language… when the word ‘hiraeth’ was introduced to me (by a UAL tutor), we discussed how languages can influence how we think because we can only think or describe things such as our feelings in words that we know. This made me think about the impact of the soft power of colonialism where the coloniser brought their language to the colonised and in many cases replaced the native language completely. What part of the native culture has been wiped out and lost as a result? ‘Hiraeth’ is a good example because Wales is part of the UK and English is the language spoken in most parts of Wales nowadays as the dominant language. Yet such a powerful and useful Welsh word has no equivalent in English.

LEARNING

– Using Fresco has really helped me to develop ideas quickly, especially experimenting with the different paint brush parameters was helpful. I must use this tool more.

– One of my objectives for developing my narrative is to capture as many of my stories as possible as input to my main making process. Since I’m a fairly slow maker when making physically, I am pleased to have discovered this digital tool as a quick capture tool but yet enabling me to finish the piece to a more complete state than say a traditional sketchbook drawing. It was particularly useful that in this case I could incorporate my sketchbook work as part of the piece.

– An increasing understanding of my new word ‘hiraeth’.

– For my personal narrative development, I need to have more courage in my exploration. Music has always been a good catalyst for stories, I need to explore that more.

– For a wider narrative development, more thinking and research are required in the impact of language as a colonial soft power. What words can I think of in Chinese where there are no English equivalents? E.g. words to describe food and tastes since the food culture is so different?

NEXT STEPS

– Continue to use Fresco to quickly and informally make work. Capture as many stories as possible as a key objective for developing my practice.

– Consider other pieces of music as catalyst or memory triggers for my stories.

– Research more about words that I know and feel strongly about but have no English equivalent to see if it would help me to delve deeper in my narrative.