The gallery wants a statement for the wall card and I've been staring at a blank page for two days
Small gallery in the Croix-Rousse asked for three paintings for a group show in October. Fine, yes, I said. Then came the email: "and 150 words about your practice."
I have painted for twenty-five years and I cannot write 150 words about my practice. I can tell you the pigment I used in the shadow of the left arm, I can tell you it took four sessions to get the edge of the table right without it looking cut out with scissors. That is not what they want. They want me to say that I "interrogate the domestic." I do not interrogate anything, I look at it for a long time until it stops being boring.
My daughter read my attempt and said it sounded like a dishwasher manual. She is sixteen and she is right.
Anyway, I put down: I paint what is in front of me, slowly, until the light in it is correct. That is 14 words. The other 136 I am still negotiating.
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This made me laugh and then feel a bit sick because I have the same blank-page problem every time someone asks me to write about my own work. My honest thought is that the four sessions on the edge of the table is exactly what they want, they just do not know it, because the person reading the card wants to know why the painting is the way it is. "I look at it until it stops being boring" is already a statement. Maybe write the 150 words as the thing you would actually say to a friend standing in front of it, and let the gallery person do the "interrogates the domestic" version if they insist. Good luck with it, and congratulations on the invitation, that is not small 🙂