On a previous post I discussed the process of ‘finishing’ or ‘completing’ the wrapped stone paintings I have been making-with the cairn on Harcles Hill. After retrieving the wrapped stone, I would take the canvas back to the studio, stretch it over a wooden panel, and apply an oil paint glaze. I’m now not convinced that this is the appropriate method.
The concept that underpins these Contact Paintings, is akin to what Donna Haraway describes as ‘becoming-with’. A making-with non-human agents. So this studio-based intervention at the end of my process might add in an unnecessary human-made step. Why not simply retrieve the canvass and acknowledge it’s own becoming-with the landscape. There is perhaps no need to ‘finish’ the painting, and perhaps the less human intervention, the better. I want the landscape itself to have more agency over the object, and for the painting to tell the story of a more-than-human community, rather than the outcome of individual expression.
I feel an inherent and irrational need to make the object resemble a ‘finished painting’ - whatever that means, or to make it look visually appealing in some way. Really, this doesn’t matter. It is beside the point whether it looks like an agreeable aesthetic object or not, more that it resembles the becoming-with that orchestrated it’s making. It only needs to be what it is.
