— Read on www.youtube.com/watch

Looking back at his career now he has gone makes his life seem complete.

When Mary Oliver died last January I had the same feeling. The knot is tied.

They both looked forward John Baldessari said he waited to become bored that would make him work.

Mary Oliver Looked to the positive, she walks and writes. She gleans.

Different but both work for me.

Mary Oliver felt that a poem shouldn’t be complicated or it would not work. That was your job- make it accessible, simple and without artifice.

Baldessari talks about ”games”. He talks about the viewer. He talks about making it interesting. He also talks about feedback which has been a big positive surprise this year I have realised don’t like to talk about my work but do want to see what others think and about it what it gives to them- I so preferred the silent crit. Mark Bradford explained about how he wants to inspire questions and thoughts.

I think the audience is something that keeps the work alive or what’s the point?

I discussed this last year in a tutorial with Dan Coombs. We wondered why I wanted to return to Colledge what could I not do by myself in my studio. There were much easier ways of getting a qualification and paying the ’electric light bulb bills’ as Mark Bradford likes to call it. I had just been offered two jobs that I could have just gone on the way I was. We talked about what I found boring about my process why I was not happy with simply objectively painting what was sitting in front of me.

From my notes – Engaging the audience with something beyond logical comprehension. Would love to I replied. Magical elements we’re something I couldn’t give up. I feel there are connections between everything and I wish to make them visible in some way.

E. my tutor pointed out how much I engaged with my studio cohorts and just how important they had become to me, not just because they were wonderful.

It is a game of sorts and John Baldessari discusses the game.

In 1970 in a dramatic piece of performance art titled The Cremation Project he burned every painting he had made between 1953 and 1966 and baked the ashes into cookies that he displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s 1970 Conceptual art survey, “Information.”

He rejected what he had been taught, he felt called to push the bounds of art.

He counts Giotto, Goya, and Henri Matisse among his favourite artists.

https://www.ft.com/content/3a58622a-13c0-11e3-9289-00144feabdc0