I take an auto-ethnographic
approach to Contemporary Art Practice at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives, Cornwall
where I am based. As a phenomenological
site of specific interest to my reflexive studio practice is the patina of
paint found on the floors, walls and doors formed by weathering, light and
occupancy - the fishermen and the artists.
I use the studio as both an instrument and a conceptual framework to
develop my inquiry into the notion of fragment as generative phenomena.
What makes the loci of
place? Art making perhaps, or physical
histories and cultural products whose temporal presence is often cyclical,
mirrored in the drawings on paper, their material agency embedded in the
building itself – unfinished and infolding.
The painted image evokes the
notion of fragment and is the fragment at the same moment. In this place the painting operates as both a
singular process and from the patina a source of many authors, a hinge, from
artist to artist. “It is the fragment
and fragmentary state that are the enduring and normative; conversely, it is
the whole that’s ephemeral, and the state of wholeness that is transitory.”
(Tronzo, William. 2009)
Clare Wardman, 2012
'Tatuitpo', oil on canvas, by Clare Wardman.
