The Purpose of the pursuit

Last week was the opening of my first solo exhibition at a cafe space in Hextable, Kent. Here are some of the words I shared at the opening evening, in attempt to explain some of my practice and what I am trying to do in my art making. The purpose behind my pursuit.

As a means of introduction, I am Esther, a painting and printmaking student based up in Glasgow. I study at Glasgow School of Art, heading into my final year in September. Full time art study has been wonderful; the art school holds is such a creative place and I am learning a lot - different techniques, ideas and ways of thinking, but what I love most is learning how other people see. I have become even more convinced of the necessity of art in the lives of all humans.

I make mainly figurative work, lots of portraits, some landscapes and still lives, paintings of other corners of everyday life that attempt to celebrate the ordinary. I am drawn to paint the mundane things, figures and faces, overlooked moments that are really beautiful. Painting them helps me linger a little bit more; they feel like a small rebellion against the quickness of today.

Storytelling is very important to me in my artwork and especially in my portraits I want to share some of the story of another person. I really try and capture their character and essence through layering oil paint onto a canvas. I think I am drawn to portraiture because, di!erent from a photograph, it holds the resemblance of that individual but also the fingerprint of an artist, a sort of weaving of stories together.

The exhibition and my publication are both entitled ‘noticing’ because I think thats what I do in my artwork (and in the whole of my life!). I like to make paintings and prints about the things I notice, to propose that we slow down from the efficiency obsessed hurry that seems to carry us along. A pause. A gratuitous gift.

C.S Lewis’s words on friendship have always stuck with me as I think that they sing true for my desire to paint and make beautiful things. Talking about friendship he says that “It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival.” It wasn’t always going to be art for me and I really struggled to justify my pursuit of painting full time. But as I paint and read and think more I definitely echo what Lewis says but of art - that survival exclusively wouldn’t necessitate art, but to live a full and beautiful, colourful and rich life would.

The subjects or ideas in the paintings are probably not very new, but I hope that in standing in front of a painting in which brushstrokes have been placed to compose the form of that which you already know, you might see it afresh. Maybe we can wonder a little more at ordinary things. I hope that we might be prompted to slow down and notice more.

In putting together a body of work and making a publication, I have learnt a lot. The publication is a collection of the things I see and think, notes on living, documents of what I see, words strung together of thoughts had… I suppose all of it is me sharing how I see the world, which I think is one of the greatest functions of art: to communicate the way you see.

If I could encourage you to do one thing it would be to get a sketchbook or notebook, one small enough to carry around. Draw and note-take and train the muscle of curiosity. That’s where all of my artwork begins, with curiosity and interest enough to make a drawing or painting. See where it might take you.

So I guess I pursue art making to document the ordinary, to celebrate beauty and to make discoveries about the world. G. K Chesterton talks about things having a purpose beautiful in design to us: a maker behind this handiwork that I want to document and a value in the things of this world. That we should live as if things have had a “hair breath escape” from wreckage, that we might look upon them in humility, with thankfulness and wonder. This is what I seek to do with my art making and I think it makes too for a incredibly valuable survival in this place.