Please respect the author. The theoretical ideas/concepts expressed here in relation to the work of artist Jamie Hume, as evolved from and or related to noted theoretical sources should be credited to the authors/artists' work with art theory.
IDEAS
Copyright Jamie Hume
2&3D Water Media My mother attempted to teach me water colour. Mortified, I walked away wondering how anyone could work with it. I decided to use pen and ink. I loved the idea of the quill pen sometimes using real feathers. I am fascinated with the evolution of tools and technology.
Using my pens, India Ink and the colourful Pelican inks on paper, I began to explore use of brush and water to bleed out the inks from the line work I had done. From there the use of ink washes deveoloped naturally through experimentation.
My first set of water colours paints was actually a tiny set of temera paints from China. These included Chinese White, not a traditional western water colour paint, and a very 'hot' pink. By this time I was working with Harumi Board.
During this time I used, Water Colour, Tempera, Gouache and later some small amounts of acryllic together, as Water Media. My experience with Water Colour began as a drwing technique evolving naturally towards painting.
My interests lay in exploring inwardly; thought forms, the collective unconscious, automistism, visions, mystical experiences, contemplation and meditation without the use of hallucinegenic substances.
During this period I suffered a heartbreak that stopped me painting. This was the first time in my life I 'could' not' create my art. My hands shook to much and I could not focus. One day I just took a spray bottle to my paint with a utility knife and laced into my boards literally saying out load something to the effect of "No one will take my art from me, no one...". After this cathartic outburst of energy, I sat staring at my boards. They began to buckle and 'delaminate'. I watched the paints move and work their way through their layers. A thing of interest and beauty lay in front of me. I was calm. After this I began working with Water Colour 'Forms'.
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Water Colour Objects or Forms : Matt Series
I began to see the process of preserving works on paper in matts under glass as a form of alteration and obstruction of the experience of the art itself. Framing and matting create a zone of influence that envelopes the art not only a form of protection. Appropriating the matt as an art object was a statement of defiance against: tradition, against boundaries, against my own feeling that I was suffocating in the name of protection. Working with discarded archival matts, I moved the work into the matt, so that the matts, fully liberated from their confines, became a fully realized works of art. This was during the 1980s.
Deconstruction and Delamination
Deconstruction as explored by the French phylosopher Jaques Derrida in the 1960's, reffers to a way of exploring literature that attempts to reveal structure as illusionary and at odds with layers, upon layers of nuance in each work that defy ideas of boundary. Great for spherical thinkers!
In my deconstructive works, I look at various threads as I take appart my initial focal points or subjects. I strive to reveal the spherical nature of thought.
In terms of mediums, the term medium itself is restrictive for me. I have always endeveored to defy those boundries whether in subtle or more blatant ways. So, by nature, I consider myself a deconstructive spherical thinker.
The archival matt series and related works did exactly that in the 1980's and further to this, with the Artists' Dress works done in the early 2000's, were a more material continuation of this train of thought than other theoretical works I created before. I went back in order to go foreword using the same archival matt board as in the 1980's to create some of the works.
The term delamination, is I use literally and unleash to go further as used in more material mediums rather
than literature.
In Verses On
The usual working surface of a drawing or painting is called the ground. It is a blank slate from which an artwork is built. Theories about the ground and meanings of materials where the ground is created or determined to be all ready are interesting to me.
One of the ways of which I have explored these ideas is via the concept of In Verses On. When I state the medium used to create what may appear to be an oil painting for example, it may say; oil in plywood or, it may say oil on plywood.
Two very different approaches to material and composition. In essence, the oil in plywood has no ground at all and is a Mixed Media work not, an oil painting.
The Framing Edge
The Framing Edge was a concept touted by the
Art Critic and Theorist Clement Greenberg. I was exposed to this idea as a tween at the Art Gallery of Ontario after we moved to Toronto. At some point while my father was working at the gallery, I viewed the work of Jack Bush and the Colour Field painters. I felt drenched in the great spans of colour as energy. I loved them with a passion. I remember staring at one work by Bush and observing the way he had placed his bands of colour around the outside edge of his work and that the centre of the work was negative space yet colour. I was entranced. My mother who was also an artist, gave me talk on composition once in a while and she had drilled into me the idea that everything is connected and related in some way. She had also taught me about the importance of balance in the use of positive and negative space. I was fascinated.
Later on, I got involved through my fathers obsession with archival framing of works on paper with ideas of preservation and obstruction, redistribution of ideas of focal points and the meaning and content of materials used in and around works of art. I had through work with a visionary dream I had had, begun working on circular works using negative space at the centre and placing all representational elements reaching in from the outer edges of the compositions. These were called the Iris and Humanity Ring Series. I was criticized a great deal for doing this by numerous people, but I continued to defend my work.
Empty space is not empty space to me. It is a spacial statement related to Jungs' ideas of the Collective Unconscious.
These works were done on the matt board made by Domtar called Harumi Board.
Word Frames
Using both related and unrelated text and imageryI explore the framing edge. The text that forms that edge of course has edges of its own and may or may not be directly related to the image in the centre of the framing text.Text and visual imagery merge in layered and in largely stream of consciousness threads forming newthreads and mass.
X-moment
The focal point is traditionally a singular element in formal artworks. Here the artist plays with multiply focal points, movement juxtaposed with resting visual resting places."The natural gaze of the human being is not static. Our eyes are always moving. Perhaps this is a driving force behind our desire to capture moments and create stillness."Folded Paper Paintings; and the tradition role of drawing in painting.Briefly, I fold drawing papers creating drawings that are in the paper, verses on, the paper. This is the preliminary stage of a variety of Mixed Media paintings. Traditionally, paintings are created on surfaces where they are intended to remain. As a child of the museum, I was fascinated that any painting could be removed from its original ground and placed onto a new one in order to preserve it.
"The natural gaze of the human being is not static. Our eyes are always moving. Perhaps this is a driving force behind our desire to capture moments and create stillness."
Folded Paper Paintings; and the tradition role of drawing in painting
Briefly, I fold drawing papers creating drawings that are in the paper, verses on, the paper. This is the preliminary stage of a variety of Mixed Media paintings.
Peeling Away from the Ground
When I began to experiment with acrylic paint as a teen, one of the things I was fascinated with was that I could peel it off of the garbage bags I used for splatter protection when painting. I tried using it as a collaged medium, but also attempted to make it into sculptural forms the way I had water colours.
These paintings of mine when complete, have no ground. They are simply placed somewhere. When this happens, the nature of the paint being to cling to something, it is hard to keep the painting liberated. They eventually get harden and succumb.
The focal point is traditionally a singular element in formal artworks. Here the artist plays with multiply focal points, movement juxtaposed with resting visual resting places.
creative JAMIE HUME