when tom introduced sarah as someone with a wealth of knowledge, he was not exaggerating. I experienced this first hand in the workshops I did for the PPD last year, and also in the Raphael drawing project. every time you are with her it feels like it is impossible for such an amount of information and knowledge to fit into one person, but here we are. I wish I had the capacity or strong memory to hold all that knowledge at once and be able to recall details in any moment. In her talks/workshops I'm always furiously dropping down notes because everything she says is valuable but it's also a lot of information at once. anyway, this talk was especially valuable because I feel that she introduced what she is teaching at the British museum perfectly, the emphasis on drawing from masters, drawing from drawing, the artistic process being as important as the context, etc. and she also drew the points further in more clarity than before, so it was really useful.
transcription and translation were main things sarah talked about in the lecture, and I think this helped me widen my perspective on recreating an image that already exists, or an image that belongs to somebody else (e.g. a film still) (in this case, I edited in my own photos in the image and brightened it, so it is already manipulated in the first stage, then it will be further changed in the painting stage, and hopefully after it's done, all those abstract emotion will pour into the panel as well, changing the meaning or 'empathy' to the original that sarah also emphasised on. she was saying how there is always a value in drawing from drawing (old masters) because you humanise them and see them as they are in the process of art-making, and you become empathetic to their practice/artwork. you see how they solved specific abstract problems that you never would have experienced if you had not observed the work so closely and really tried to understand it. that's how I felt about the Raphael drawing. I understood first hand what she meant by all this. it really is a magical feeling. you feel like you are living on the same timeline, instead of that old master being so high above in the 'hierarchy', so high you cannot even access it. that's how I always feel when I go to big museums like the national gallery the other day. But I understand now. so, I don't feel as guilty about using other peoples' works as inspiration, which is exactly what sarah wanted to do with this talk, she said, to take the guilt out of this. you will never have an exact perfect copy of the original anyway, it is impossible (and if you did, what is the point).
She also mentioned a quote about taking inspiration from a lot of sources/artists, the more you look at the more original your work becomes...I guess even old masters take a lot of inspiration from others, like when Raphael was sketching from michelangelo's painting. I will continue to translate things that are inspiring to me to something that is my own and not feel guilty about it. I think it is beautiful the way artists are able to show the viewer what the world looks like from their eyes - obviously they'd have to include what surrounds them - so in a way it is impossible not to translate anything cause you can't make an exact copy especially if you are changing mediums. when you are translating from a piece of artwork, are you translating a translation? I don't know if I'm misinterpreting the idea of translation but it seems to be able to cover a lot of ideas.
I also liked the thing she said about how anyone, really, could be called an art historian, for example that artist (daisy) who references older history paintings and combines them with contemporary events, usually distressing ones - it shows that history, it doesn't necessarily 'repeat' itself exactly, but the same inequalities still exist, and this 'time' thing, like the quote she mentioned about it being one whole thing, is all the more relevant. It is translating an old history painting to something relevant today, something that is more accessible/readable in a contemporary context, and that broadens my perspective a lot because now I feel more confident in looking wider in my references in history in the future. everything relates to everything it seems...