Sometimes a very simple question could start a very complicated and long road down the memory lane. A couple of days ago at the Private View for our exhibition Progression at the @dcontemporary gallery a guest asked me how I make my work. After explaining a long most-likely-boring-for-everybody-else-but-me process, a question came that I had never heard before from a non-artist, “And how did you get to that process?”

My immediate response was about my interest in photography and painting; that my dissertation was about it; that I always wanted to combine those two media, but was trying to avoid painting over the photographs, the technique that many artists successfully use, including my favourite Gerhard Richter; and on and on and on.

And only this morning while thinking about this question again I started to analyse how I actually did get to that process. It was my last year at the Art Academy London (AAL) where I was finishing my BA (Hons) in Fine Art. I had a graduate show coming in a couple of months. It was so painful to sit in my studio knowing that I din’t have anything new or exciting to show or write about, and that I most likely will fail and never graduate. Then while looking at some of my old work I remembered what happened during my mid term presentation 3 month prior to my filling miserable. “Keep the images, change the narrative,” said Sue. At that moment, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got back to the process of photo transfer, feeling that this might be the path… to somewhere. The images I was suggested to keep were the results of that process. However, I also knew that photo transfer is not enough, and I had to do something with the images. I did not know what or how though. First, I started combining them digitally and producing tons of them weekly. When wonderful Alison and Julian , my tutors and graduate show curators (bless their patient hearts), would look at them on a weekly basis they would just quietly say only two words, “Keep working.” Then I took a break from the photo images and got back to painting. With oil and acrylicI I tried decalcomania technique that I felt reflected my interest in establishing new life in a new place. (The word decalcomania comes from the French word decalquer meaning ‘transfer a tracing.’ And people who move do ‘transfer’ their lives.) I painted abstracts and city scapes, and sometimes even nothing, but still enjoyed playing with the oil paint and colours and taking pictures of it. I liked some photo images of my work more than my actual paintings. I started to realise that paint and colour is what helps to express my emotions and that is what my photo transfers lacked. When Julian one day asked me “How did you make it?”, and Alison a week later said “Love it, what is it?” I knew I was onto something. They both encouraged me to continue experimenting with it by still making more. And when they became interested in the question of how I was planning to present my images, I finally exhaled, happy that I came up with my own process and the work that I could put in my grad show. Having 4 weeks to go before the show, I stopped ‘making’ and started researching on surfaces and printing.

Below are thumbnails of few images created during that process. And here you can find the final outcome of my process. https://www.marinamitchellart.com/abstract-1