collage | Ariane Zurcher

The Creative Process is the Point

by Ariane Zurcher | Jun 21, 2022 | Art, creative process, Painting | 5 comments

I’ve been busy. With my gifted studio space I am making good use of it. There’s no wi-fi, so I tend to just work and not stop to make videos or write posts, etc. As a result I’ve been less visible than usual, which has been a good thing to do from time to time. Regroup, rethink, reprioritize, and in general concentrate on what I like, what I want and less on what I think I “should” be doing.

Painting has taken me back to beginner status. I’m just figuring things out, testing out the materials, seeing what would happen if I try this and then what about that?! It’s both anxiety producing, scary and fun all at the same time. The anxiety and fear is rooted in “other”. What I mean by that is it’s all about comparing or wanting to be farther along in the journey than I actually am. Learning a new medium takes time and determination and a willingness to make a mess and not have things turn out “well”. But that’s what learning is all about, process; the process of becoming familiar with the unfamiliar, the process of seeing what will happen if, the process of creating without a net, without expectation of an outcome, without needing things to be a certain way. Learning isn’t elegant, necessarily, but it can be a lot of fun if I can keep myself from leap frogging to an expectation, an end result. iSo that’s where I am right now. I’m learning.

And every now and then, something I was about to rip up and use for collage looks better than I initially thought, and so I keep it and make notes about what I like, what I don’t like, what could be improved upon. I might even annotate it in my sketch book, play with other ideas or just leave as is and move on to something else.

Right now I have two pieces I’m playing with. One is devoted to playing around with ink and seeing what I can do using different things and the other is devoted to putting down a collage layer and then painting on top and mark making. For some reason I’m drawn to charcoal and yet kind of dislike it at the same time. Not sure what that’s about, but I keep picking it up and using it and then not liking the results, so I’ll explore that a bit more and try to figure out what I like about it. I already know what I don’t like about it, but why do I keep going to it? That’s what I want to explore as I think there’s something there that’s worth investigating.

I tried to do some photo imaging and it was somewhat successful, but I’m going to refer to the interview I did with my friend Leslie Fry who showed me this process and I taped it, but need to rewatch to see what I’m doing wrong. I like the idea of photo transferring and have watched a bunch of Youtube videos on it, but I need to practice doing it more. I like what it evokes, I like that I can use images that are meaningful to me and then paint over them with just a little bit still peeking through. I like how personal the piece then becomes. The bigger point though is that I’m trying stuff out and seeing where it takes me, because after all the process is the whole point.

So that’s me. Explorer. Learner. Seeker.

What about you?

Acrylic on Paper

by Ariane Zurcher | May 31, 2017 | Art, creative process | 2 comments

Last month I went to Hudson River Valley Arts where Jane Davies was teaching a week long workshop. I found Jane on Pinterest, which led me to her website where she has tons of videos showing her process and work. As with most things I find interesting, I soon became obsessed and began systematically going through almost all the videos she has created. When I saw that she was teaching at Hudson River Valley, a place friends have urged me to look into, and an easy train ride from New York City, I decided to sign up.

It was above and beyond my expectations. First of all Jane is a fantastic artist and teacher, which is not always usual that one leads to the other. But in her case it does. She gives great demos, has a sense of humor, is smart, talented, and she plays the ukulele and might even sing, if encouraged to! The class was full, with 18 people, all strong, interesting women from various parts of the world, including Chile, Quebec, Germany, and Norway! I didn’t get permission to post photos of any of the other women or their work on this blog, so I’m just posting photos of the work I did while there.

We began by exploring lines with different mediums and then moved on to making collage papers that we would then use in our work for the remaining days. Making collage paper is a rabbit hole one can easily become lost in! There are so many ways in which to combine the paint, get it on the paper, scribble, smudge, streak, spray, dribble and the end results can be wonderful. Here are a few of mine.

Reluctantly and with Jane’s encouragement we began using those papers in our work, while also incorporating a variety of techniques that Jane demonstrated. These first two photos are two of six pieces I worked on simultaneously. The other four are still works in progress. They are collage, acrylic paint, and ink and measure 11.5″ X 11″.