Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Noticing and Notation
(on being affected and deciding to paint)

By
Leah A. C. Koutroumanos
BFA University of Lethbridge, 2021

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
2024

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To my Mom and Dad for keeping every drawing, even the truly dreadful ones,
thank you for the endless support.
To my brother and sister for the teasing that toughened me up for critique,
thank you for the constant encouragement.
And to Penny.

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Abstract
Considering the potential of critical observation, the application of pigment, and the
function of surface, this thesis project is a series of observations from life. This conceptual body
of work consists of paintings, drawings, and artist’s books. I am interrogating material value
systems and engaging with the act of collecting. The recorded items include the minute, the
preliminary, the ephemeral, and the peculiar. Contingent on the impulse to understand and
record, the subject of the work is inquiry. Within the act of study, representational imaging
occurs without the influence of the camera as a tool. This serves to strain the relationship
between a captured moment and contemporary systems of image consumption. Affected by the
labour and time involved in rendering, the paintings and drawings are a record to the capacity of
a moment. These spaces left undone are for breath, for being made aware of nothingness, and to
contextualize noticing. The painted images are grasping at the poetics of the everyday, and their
materiality subsequently references a body in space.

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Table of Contents
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Acknowledgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Position and Reflection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Material Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Theorizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

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Acknowledgment
I reflect on the weight of occupying space and making art on the unceded traditional
territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (TsleilWaututh) Nations. In the wake of this privilege is a responsibility to thoughtfully approach the
painted subjects, and to consider the cultural or environmental implications of the chosen
materials. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to study on these lands and previously on
those of the Siksika, Piikani, Kainai, Stoney-Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina peoples. My education and
research benefits from the archives, collections, and instruction from fundamentally colonial
institutions. Through my shortcomings and biases, I am critically reanalysing the function of
these spaces and the motivation of their collecting mandates.

Note
(on notetaking)
Notetaking is the underpinning of my creative research and a foundational structure of
my artmaking. I am taking note to remember, to see deeper, and to understand. These
motivations take the form of written and painted notation. The paintings are a visual record of
my perception, elongated by the act of observing. The stretching out of these moments is
revealed by the accumulation of marks, allowing a singular experience to be fractured
infinitesimally. In this thesis document I provide support to the painted images, to the bound and
experimental books, to drawings, to installation, and to process as content. I use short excerpts
from my written notes to introduce the sections of this text. These statements situate my
conceptual practice as central to the making and interpretation of this work. They follow the
rhythm of my internal dialogue in the studio, a space integral to my material and pedagogical

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methods. These textual expressions manifest as a mosaic of sticky notes, as diagrammatic lists,
or as figurative line directly on the studio wall. This impulse stems from the capacity of my
memory and my susceptibility to wonder distantly while fixated on the immediately affecting.
My mind meanders while my body sits in place. In these moments, the weight of mental objects
and physical ones equates. Thoughts of beauty or grief reflect back on themselves when my eyes
lose traction or when my hand falters. In this text, the prefacing verses situate inquiry and
theorizing as driving forces in a deeply material entrenched method.

Position and Reflection
I am easily influenced and quick to love,
often on the outside,
previously heartbroken,
from a place I don't identify with,
living on someone else’s land.
I am anxious but eager, overaffected, and compulsive,
struggling to express, yet overly emoting.
I am spending energy to reason, process, recall, and focus.
I am in my head.

The idea of being visible, being perceived, is at the foundation of my most intimate
struggles and coarsest shortcomings. To express and to be understood, to speak and to be heard,
are each a distinct feat materialized by an anxious mind and untethered attention. I am theorizing
the subtleties of the everyday by embracing my impulse to fixate. My work is a product of a

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hyperactive disposition in which casual stimuli is overwhelming or too intensely experienced. I
am choosing to sit with simple subject matter as a strategy to handle overstimulation. By looking
outward, I am distancing myself from internal preoccupation, from shaky hands, and from the
shallow reverb of a heartbeat. This process is actualized by embodied notation, which embraces
my speed of output. The grounding capacity of my practice is making peace with processing
delay, learning to pay attention, and embracing the equivocal influence of my surroundings.
Notation serves to recall just a few of these significant moments, otherwise passed by hastily.
Through the process of making this thesis work, I have come to understand the function
and privilege of positionality. Well into this academic pursuit, I resisted the need to make myself
central to my art. If the work was not outright about me, then I questioned how my identity could
have a significant effect on its viewership. If the art is about objects, space, and their laborious
description, why might it matter who I was before that moment? Painting and drawing in this
manner have been my passion for nearly my entire life, so to sit with the question, “why me?”
was frustrating. In this academic setting, I have sat with and ruminated on each presumably
intuitive, superficially spontaneous, and apparently thoughtful decision I make. Ignorantly
accepted as random or impulsive, each move is a cog in a system, one in which I dictate and am
dictated by.

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Introduction
Over the span of my graduate research, my practice has evolved into a process of
identifying and asking questions. These are directed at the studio space as a site, collected
material culture, and the process of painting. Part of my artistic method involves making
representational paintings, rendered through observation. In relaying the images of objects or
space, I am demonstrating an impulse to represent. I am describing an effort to see and the
significance of going through the trouble of describing. This involves listening for subtlety
within the scope of my perception. Through a system of notation, and an impulse to record
moments, my research involves investigating perception as integral to an embodied process of
painting. I am asking what happens when poised to look profoundly at the already perceived or
accepted. Choosing the subject of my paintings involves gathering the affectual, outside of
distinct value systems, and recontextualizing their image. The loud is sifted through in the hopes
of uncovering the quiet.

(the before)
To appreciate, sit with, or care for the qualities of objects, I work to be receptive,
attentive, and open. I am resisting the intensity of everyday experience. I actively do this by
lending attention to lesser stimuli and challenging myself to notice. There is peace in the
singularity of an object’s image, in something that gets to exist sincerely or ironically, poetically
or analytically. Choosing what to paint is a mitigated value system based on these qualities. The
subject matter is not about specific matter but on the nature of matter. I am in search and service
of objects that hold with them the potential to affect.

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The resulting images establish precedence for what can be found within the noise. By
employing image, I am hinting at a very discrete slowing down of time and a simulated sense of
affect. This is a lexicon of visual knowledge which honours fleeting quotidian minutiae.
Over the course of this degree, each artwork has been an opportunity for precedence.
Each has been a reaction to and influence on another, leading to the understanding that my
practice is primarily one of inquiry. Using short descriptions in place of titles, I have mapped out
each piece to illustrate the chronological nature of my methodology:

Fig. 1. Artwork Chronology.

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Material Practice
I am attached to the affectual, the peculiar, and the ever-so-nearly unnoticed. I want to
see them and be with them. I want to care for a moment by spending time with the
smallest measurable data it gives me. When light is passing across the wall, and pigment
sits in the path of shadow for only an instance, next to nothingness, on the brink of
nonsense: I am there.1 In this capture comes a desperation for rationale. A concept made
concrete cannot exist outside of reason. The system, so carefully constructed, breaks
down. Rules are made, then broken.

In my practice, paintings are a record of thousands of micro-decisions. I am concerned
with the concept that each mark is a step towards resolve. Every minuscule touch has the ability
to skew, stain, and misrepresent. This variability raises the stakes of notation. The medium,
utensil and support are adversaries and colleagues not only dictating the virtuosity of rendering,
but constantly changing my theoretical relationship to labour, language, time, and perception.
Information is relayed through chicken-scratch brush marks that start slow and build. I am
contemplating the visual, allowing understanding to settle and confidence to manifest. The
layered accumulation of precise gesture is a result of proprioceptive ruminating.2
To visually satisfy is an underlying goal, an eagerness to relay care. Care is not a demand
for treatment but rather a chance to access the system. In the making, to take care of the objects;
to take care in building their image; to take care in preparing the support; to take care in

1

This is an anecdote about #27 on the preceding diagram. To explore the necessity of the object being present, it
was removed. All that remained as an image of the wall that surrounded it and the shadow it cast. Rather than
copying lines from articfical light, chasing the effect of the sunlight gave the shadow an identity that challenged my
understanding of objecthood.
2
Following the object's form, rehearsing a line.

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installation; is an attempt to translate a condition of warranted attention. I am asking others to
care about an object as it parallels my relationship to being seen. The painting becomes a space
to meet, feel, and be made aware of the encounter. Looking, seeing, and observing must
therefore all be defined, as they describe different stages of the process. To “look”, describes the
openness and active attempt to be met with objects of interest, those deserving of inquiry. To
“observe” refers to the study of form, actively learning, and questioning what is actually there.
To “see” is a condition of the experience, the resulting potential for understanding.

(system)
System is pervasive because it has the capacity to be infinitesimally complex.3 Each detail
leading to an even more minute one. System is an organizational tool; it is the answer inwaiting when asked why. It teases the margin of legibility, backing the authority of
intuition, denying the subsistence of the arbitrary. It is implied, applied, and challenging
to define.

I have been setting up systems for myself and demanding to see them through for nearly
as long as I have been trying to break and resist them. The choice to gently disrupt is a reaction
to working through systems, typically visually obvious, but contextually obscure. These are
usually watercolours of objects, alone, whole, centred, and legible. The oil painting contrasts this
by pushing the understanding of space, weight, and focus to the point of near dissolution.

3

I imagine this as sharpening a pencil under a microscope. Each shaving makes the point more acute, yet the still
blunt or jagged crystalline structure is revealed by a further magnifying objective lens. It reminds me that what I accept
as finite is dictated by limited perception.

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Painting and installation are strong visual ties within my practice. These are in support of
three methods of engaging with system. This includes watercolours of objects, systematically
composed with an ideal of control. It also includes oil paintings that resist control of the hand
and allow the material, the paint and support, to take-on control. They are spaces with
interruptions, layered, and questioning a rationale. Lastly, the daily practice of recording and
notation is system in its most laid out form. For this reason, the information is resisted, the notes
are written, the small paintings are organised but not laid. This collection of data driven
information is engaging with the discipline of bookmaking and the role of artist books.
The following is a diagram that lays out the system I am working within (fig. 2). These
are generalized steps in my artmaking process. Additionally, this is exemplified in a watercolour
from the series control is a brush, barely, (fig. 3).

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Fig. 2. Chart of Artistic Method.

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Fig. 3. From the series control is a brush, barely, watercolour, #23 on diagram (fig. 1), 2023.

Things
(the everyday)
The painted image is a signifier of a single moment, broken down into thousands then
realised as one again. The moment is sentimental and repetitive. It stood out, would have
been lost, and gets to be recorded. It is worth spending time with and remembering. It is
a fraction of the everyday. Everyday is not empty but immensely dense. It is unrelenting
and typically banal. It is the potential for each extraordinary experience. It is always
within reach yet endlessly ending. It is quotidian.

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I sat in my studio in early spring 2023, gently antagonized by a brick hanging from a
string. It is a mortar caked, partially painted, previously weight bearing piece of a recently razed
structure. From a series of paintings called oh beautiful infrastructure, (see fig. 4) this untitled
painting was an experiment in assemblage. My understanding of this philosophical interaction
has been formed by the writing of Jane Bennet in her book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology
of Things. With a somewhat animate sensibility, the brick demanded to be pulled away from the
floor. In these moments, I find myself observing myself. I am experimenting and tinkering. I
have found that an object’s relationship to space is best understood by pushing the boundaries of
how it sits, hangs, clings, or balances. An object seems most activated when the effect of gravity
and weight are brought into question. So, I placed the brick in a piece of scrap netting, hung it on
the wall, and eventually gave it a canvas backdrop. I contemplated and tinkered before I decided
on the composition. This painting became a moment of departure, where the oil medium facet of
my practice would become a source of confusion and surprise. When I bring an object of interest,
something typically stumbled upon or collected, into the territory of “study”, it transforms. The
identity of the object falls away when its relationship to space becomes more relevant. This
separation of an object from its function or meaning, is pushed further by the act of capturing its
image.
This painting exemplifies how I engage with “why” not “about.” The painting is about
why study a brick, why situate it just so, or why spend so much time with its image. The objects
are tools, playing a role similar to the brushes, support and palette. The mass-produced brick, net,
and canvas are detached from their matrix, and put into a space of unrest. The opportunity to
generate curiosity in this gap between knowledges is made possible by separating object from
meaning. I do not anticipate absolute disassociation between a brick and its social context. I am

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aiming to exploit the viewers recognition of the form and its signified concept. Further, I am
playing on their inclination to speculate about the nature of the applied relationship. By
employing peculiarity, drawing out a such narrative is intentionally tricky. In each step of this
image making system, I am considering how to place the viewer in a state of confusion without
veering too far into a realm of dissatisfaction. I want it to be clear in the composition that I am
making a set of decisions, not necessarily what those are or their justification.

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Fig 4. oh beautiful infrastructure, oil on partially stretched, partially primed canvas, #22 on
diagram (fig. 1), 2023.

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This painting became an unexpected interrogation of making and undoing. Where the
other works in this series explored the temporary dissolution of imagery, this painting challenged
the physical conventions of oil painting. As a place of departure, I am situating this inquiry
within minimalist thought and abstraction in 1960s painting discourse. I have looked to the work
of Eleanore Mikus as she scrutinized painting’s material givens (Staff 9). Her compositions, such
as Tablet 164 (see fig. 5), and much of the abstract imagery that came out of this era differs
visually from my work. I am interested in how they encountered and reassessed the surface as a
participating visual concept. Mikus was particularly keen on the resonance enacted by a worn
surface (Staff 11). In accepting the ridges and valleys of creased canvas and exposing the sutured
edge of the wooden frame, I am conceptually centering the material qualities of the support.

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See image at:
https://blantonmuseum.org/2017/09/25/a-lifein-tablets-eleanore-mikus/

Fig. 5. Mikus, Eleanore. Tablet 164. 25 Sept. 2017. Blanton Museum of Art,
https://blantonmuseum.org/2017/09/25/a-life-in-tablets-eleanore-mikus/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

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This is a way of engaging with the “real.” Rather than the object models being present,
the canvas structure is playing that role. In consideration of objects and their relationship to
metaphysical experience, my work is influenced by Bennet’s endeavour. It brings together many
arguments about an ontological view of spaces and the materials that fill them. The book has
many facets and approaches to understanding why people keep, care about and associate with
objects. Her description of assemblage has shifted my understanding of still life as a discipline
and object relationality. I am drawn to her description of matter as passive versus animated,
spontaneous, and entangled. This speaks to the capacity of “things,” and the value in considering
their agency. I appreciate how this brings the human body into the conversation of objects but
explores how their roles are distinct. Additionally, I am engaging with her fixation on
representation as detached from objecthood.
The philosophical interrogation of this text is foundational to the subject of objectoriented ontology, an idea that I both draw on and resist. My work is more entrenched in the
interaction with objects and the observation of their image. An important characteristic of this
pursuit is that they are not meant to allude to a greater identity or significance. To approach
representational painting ontologically, creates a challenging relationship to metaphysics, which
I navigate in the process-oriented and writing veins of my practice. I am drawn to Bennett’s
thoughts on this subject as it confidently describes objects as separate from human perception. I
would argue that the experience of being with things, the motivation to understand them, and the
impulse to represent them elsewhere in the world is wholly tied to perception.
Through her text, I have come to the argument that an object is independent from
perception until acted upon by “view.” I am using the word “view” to describe the experience of
being perceived and the scope of perception. To make something the subject of view is the

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context of my research inquiry. The significance of this act is integrally linked to the subjectivity
of the viewer and subsequently transformed when recorded. I am quietly subjecting objects to the
vulnerability of being seen.

Imaging
In this process of painting, notation is translation through imaging. Imaging is a fixed
view. It is making visible. It is the articulation of space onto surface. It is specific and
limited. It is the process of making flat, permanent, and didactic. It is searching through
space and deciding on a framework for visual language. In this process, the camera is
removed as apparatus. The imaging of objects and space is direct with the hand as tool,
the mind as interpreter, and the eyes as non-objective sensors.

In relation to being seen, the overtly representational image demands an understanding of
what becomes “view.” By reflecting on the camera as a methodological tool, I am defending my
material decision to paint. I am bringing into focus typically unnoticed compositional techniques,
from which representational imagery thrives and suffers. This is influenced by the visual
language of photography, a tool I am consciously resisting by studying from life. In this labourintensive process, the cadence and conventions of framing are brought into question. The lens is
referenced but not used, the role of camera is filled, the demand to see is satisfied yet
simultaneously refused.
My relationship to the photographic is informed by the writing of Joanna Zylinska. In her
text “The Creative Power of Nonhuman Photography,” she speaks to the role and
conceptualization of images. This is useful for my research as it considers the act of imaging the

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world from the perspective of photography not as a discipline but as a tool. Within a pre-existing
knowledge structure, images act as a method for perceiving and understanding the world. She is
considering the effect that the visual framework of photography, based on the parameters of the
apparatus and lens, has on the production of images. Zylinska describes this act through the
writings of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. In her argument, she engages with the concept of
image production as the potential for differentiation. The image, or way of seeing, encounters
itself in the world, revealing difference. She goes on to describe that captured images are a
fragment or cross section of a broader passage of existence. This implies the perception of
experience over time and the function of photography to stabilize this flow without losing its
traces of life. I am invested in this process as a means of breaking down overwhelming, or even
sublime, stimuli into manageable perceptible portions. This attempt at singling out a fraction of
experience, or cutting into duration, has the potential to demand relationality. To see only one
moment is equivalent to matter in a vacuum, to see one in relation to another constitutes flux.
The remaining image is therefore described as an interruption of flow, the document of that
movement, rather than a memorial or artifact of it.
She also speaks to the intuitive nature and commonality of the camera as apparatus. This
is relevant to my critique of its quick affirmation of singularity. In this context, singularity is the
simulation of one frozen moment relative to another frozen moment, making it possible to
perceive the uninterrupted passage of time. The images, mostly digital and perceptually
pervasive, (asserting themselves in our hands at any moment, without context) are alone yet
presented together. They are not relational yet in immediate association, disrupting the
perception of time, rather than interrupting it for the purpose of understanding. This pause in
experience makes me aware of the limitations of cognitive and sensorial capacity. The resulting

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images are therefore more than representation and less than things. They exist in a middle ground
of matter and form.
I am comparing this understanding of photographic structure to the methodology of artist
Andrew Grassie. He makes images about the discipline of photography while instantaneously
denying the nature of capture. By labouring over each rendering using tempera paint, the work is
able to refer to storytelling, cinematics, and narrative, while being filtered through the language
of painting. Grassie’s works are precise but matter of fact, formal but still staged. He uses past
projects and the studio space as the subject, thinking retrospectively about practice and himself
as a character.
I am situating my work in relation to the series, Still Frame (see fig. 6), from 2020, where
Grassie presents this developed imagery as a cohesive exhibition. The work is important to my
research as it demonstrates the function of scale, repetition, and installation as a compositional
technique. The choice of painting is relevant as it points to labour, time, and the function of
camera as apparatus. Each repeated image calls into question the value of reproduction,
representation, and the experience of looking. These are subjects that I am working through,
however distinct from Grassie’s work given my relationship to the photographic image. I am not
working from photographs; however, his work demonstrates how the role of the camera is
undeniable in contemporary image making. The comportment of visual language is swayed and
resolved by the camera's intuitive framework. By continuing to paint despite this influence, both
Grassie’s and my work play on confusion, perception, and the legibility of a two-dimensional
image. By referencing the linearity and cadence of the camera roll, these paintings question the
act of image making, describing place and moment.

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See image at:
https://www.tique.art/exhibitions/andrewgrassie-still-frame/

Fig. 6. Still Frame. 2020. Tique Publication on Contemporary Art, Berlin,
https://tique.art/exhibitions/andrew-grassie-still-frame/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.

Relating to my choice of ordinary and quiet subject matter, many of Grassie’s paintings
seem awkward and unremarkable with reference to the subtlety of light. In contrast to the
conventions of painting, he makes multiples of the same image, referencing the snapshot and
making the viewer aware of the slow nature of his method. The resulting images feel frozen in
time because of the opportunity to compare. Pushed further by the small scale, both our paintings
are about the experience of looking, capturing, and obscuring view. Grassie takes this concept in
a slightly different direction than mine when he forces questions about what is beyond the frame.
I am, however, interested in how this method pushes the viewer to question the surface of the

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picture plane and the framing. Additionally, I am considering how he approaches the concept of
one-to-one representation. In his work, this occurs between a painting and a photo, not “life.”
The photo is therefore the subject. By referencing the transformation of “archive,” the photo is
the object, but still a part of a larger body. The result is imagery with a similar relationship to
context which my work is presenting.

Subject
(interruption)
Everyday is interrupted by the poetic. Poetics activates perception in place and moment.
It is the encounter that demands being aware of a body in space. It is slipping on ice,4 the
static shock from a doorknob, or the warmth of the sun in august. It is being affected by a
weed between pavers5 and distracted by the tapping of crow’s feet on an aluminum roof.

To be affected by the minute is inherently accompanied by an immense influence of the
grand, impending, and existential. A strategy I have developed to manage this immense feeling is
to dial in, slow down and breathe. The effect this has on the imagery is a parsing down, giving
the images similar space to breath. The result is emptiness. By resisting overwhelming sensation,
I found myself trying to get as close to nothingness as possible. I did sketches of threads and
rice-sized fragments of glass. By indulging and prolonging the lull between moments of anxiety
or pressure, I am facilitating an interruption of the everyday.

4

Based on an anecdote from Professor Jamie Hilder.

5

Based on an anecdote from Professor Randy Lee Cutler.

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Interruption is not always a beautiful, poetic, or productive thing. Sometimes it is the
emotional nudge or physiological turbulence that result in tail spinning. Sometimes these
interruptions thwart attunement and the system abruptly destabilizes. This is reflected in the
installation process. The work is interrupted by gallery architecture,6 by remnants of the making,7
or by the models themselves. These decisions are meant to be subtle but sophisticated. The
paintings are surrounded by surprises, confusion, and exterior influences.8 This is a result of
gauging the obvious, the visible, and the satisfying.
As a model for interrupting text and situating it in relation to the discipline of poetry, I
am looking to the work of Jen Bervin. In her limited-edition artist books, she pushes the subtlety
of tone and tactile materiality to present a tailored, yet quiet object. In her work The Desert
(2008) (see fig. 7), she makes the viewer aware of surface by physically intervening in printed
text. Her machine-sewn redaction is an interruption of the mundane gesture of reading. I am
engaging with this play on bodily senses in which the seen, felt, experienced, and understood are
rarely straightforward. To see something and then make it unseen references the impact of
visibility and what happens when our confidence or expectation of legibility falls apart. I am
considering how the potential for obstruction brings language into question.

6

Pillars, windows, ledges, etc.

7

The fabric that protects the paper from the oil of my skin, pencil drawn notes, etc.

8

Daylight, movement, etc.

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See image at:
https://www.jenbervin.com/projects/the-desert

Fig. 7. Bervin, Jen, “The Desert,” Jen Bervin, 2008, https://www.jenbervin.com/projects/thedesert. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.

(beauty)
Poetics is an opportunity to access beauty. Beauty is singularity, experienced then lost.
The moment is affectual because it is noticed then passes. Within this brevity, beauty is
perceptible only when punctuated by the grief of loss. It is contextualized by nothingness.
It is the encounter with newness, revealing that more of the same does not excite. What
remains is the ordinary. Beauty is gratifying then immediately humbling. It satisfies, then

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leaves. And in its place is emptiness and blankness. This tabula rasa which desaturates
sensibility is activated by grief. Grief of no longer having, of being denied. In this
polarizing is perspective; of what can be had, known, lost, and missed. Beauty is discreet.
Beauty is a verb.

To recall or sit with beauty is a privilege. Beauty allows for the perception of an affecting
moment because it sits in relation to the banal. It is understanding why one thing or moment
affects while others may not. Each brushstroke, hue, or form is placed in relation to another.
Beauty is therefore a tool for revealing difference. Difference acts to reveal variability and is the
reason for repetition. Perceiving these nuances makes legibility possible.
Painting through observation is an antagonistic play between subjectivity and objectivity.
Revealing truth or representing honesty is virtually impossible. This is complicated by cultural
connotation and visual sensibilities such as beauty or intrinsic value. A beautiful object is
challenging within my process as it distracts from any inherent objecthood and further clouds
objectivity. The thing loses its identity and self-referential potential when its beautiful qualities
are louder than its fundamental vibrancy. My practice involves attuning myself to the quietest
disruptions, to bring them onto the same playing field as the typically beautiful.

A leaf,
whose beauty was to me never in question,
was to another, just a leaf.
This jarring influence fractures view,
spreading doubt through the system.

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I am however motivated by the question: what can painting do for an already beautiful
thing? I am teasing the multitude of definitions for beauty and the unexpected objects to which
they are applied or not.

(narrative)
To be intercepted by such a falling leaf, that it detached, following its evolutionary skill
of prioritizing the larger body, exactly when you happen to be there. I question if this is
happenstance or a grand narrative, however this difference is arbitrary. The power to
affect is dictated by attention and a willingness to care. It makes me feel like a
background character in the life of a leaf. This thought is a method of perceiving the
existential by challenging the boundary of the inconsequential.

As a collector of trinkets, bits, and peculiar things, the urge to collect must be tempered.
This inclination to covet, keep, and linger is constrained by practicing detachment. This is a
process of separating myself from objects and recognizing difference. The space made between
gives way to the unexpected, to learning, and to newness. This manifests as confusion,
contextualized by satisfaction. In this emotional separation is the opportunity to explore more
objectively, still influenced by the histories and stories of each object, but not bound to them
conceptually. This is important because it is my relationship to narrative. In a representational
painting, the need to associate each image to a moment is key, however problematic. Using
shadow and layered spaces, I am aiming to present a sense of captured time that is affected by

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each object's story, but not confined to that as a subject. I care about the sonder9 of the inanimate,
how it came to me, and how I felt compelled to keep it. The involvement of narrative exists in a
middle ground between why and about.
My need to assign narrative is so intense that I have begun altering the visual framing and
interacting with the physical support of the painting. Exemplified by the painting of the brick
(see Fig. 4), the canvas surface is no longer a singular plain but rather it is coming to terms with
its own objecthood. Physical layers of time are visible in the creases from stretching and restretching and from the empty staple holes. It is implied that the fibres took on the form from
repeated stress and prolonged tension. Each wrinkle is an extended gesture, marking points in the
timeline of making. This self-referential quality is tied to the imagery with the inclusion of
registration lines that mark the visual field, the unprimed margin, the clear gesso background,
and the draping that reveals the frame. These material interruptions are meant to confuse. I am
laboriously painting an illusionistic space and then intentionally disrupting it to cause tension.

(difference)
Difference is an invitation for perspective. It is becoming aware of your body because
you perceive what is beyond it. It is dependent on openness and capacity. It is unfixed
and fleeting, observable only in contrast to the permanence of the body.

Comparable to the synesthetic experience of the steam from a kettle hitting your cheeks,
the velocity of a train rushing by, or a foghorn reverberating in your chest, the phenomenology of
sensation is grounding. Usually missed, these moments are opportunities to respond to our place

9

This is the perception that the experience of others is equally as complex as our own (Koenig 7).

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in the canon of knowledge formation. Light, shadow, and texture are the visual elements I use to
transpose a fragment of this affective experience, of collecting and caring for things. The
painting is an invitation to honour the scraps, bits, flotsam, and junk of which our value systems
cannot easily entertain.
I am deeply affected by Magali Duzant’s artist book, Light Blue Desire: A Manual for the
Color Blue. This text is an expansive description of the colour blue in the form of an artist book.
In the final portion of this text, the author gives an additional comment on the process of
recording and the feat of capturing the colour of the sky. Speaking to the creation and use of
cyanometers, she describes the determination to measure “blueness.” This impulse to possess and
control could be critiqued as a tool of western imperialism, which her brief caption does not
reference. However, I see the value in relating back to the drive to represent honestly because it
reveals limitation. To sit with the sky as a singular moment, endlessly visible and changing, is to
become aware of subjectivity and its pervasiveness. Contrary to the motivations of HoraceBénédict Saussure and Alexander von Humboldt, whom Duzant references, the pursuit to
represent the “scattering of light” or the texture of a leaf is to sit with failure. Studying is
therefore a practice in pushing my tolerance for mistakes, for erasing, and for redoing. The result
is a surrender to the differences.

Inquiry
Inquiry is contingent on curiosity, on acknowledging the limitations of knowing. It is
being comfortable with the vulnerability of learning, of asking to understand. It is sitting
with the non-tangible, the less-than-defined, or the trials of questioning what is already
accepted. To inquire is to invest in pedagogy. Pedagogy is a commitment to process, to

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making and undoing. It comes back around and talks about itself again. This practice,
although ouroboric, is not fixed. It expands outward again to reconsider the already
assumed.

In my practice of collecting and learning, I spend much of my time seeking out and
spending time with objects, light, shadow, and space. The objects are often small, lesser,
residual, and referring to process. I have questioned why collecting is important and why I chose
to paint. This is demonstrated by presenting a slide box with my scraps and bits carefully
organized, (see fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Slide box with collected bits, #19 on diagram (fig. 1), 2023.

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Collecting is the critical moment. It sets into motion the collaboration with things. By
literally filing away my scraps, I am bringing them into a new context where only form and
relationship to the other remains. Through installation of found objects, Mark Dion is bringing
into question dominant ideologies around collection, taxonomy, and value systems within
institutions such as museums and universities. These knowledge sets shape an understanding of
history, how information is shared, and how the natural world is perceived. He challenges
convention by working through the language of classical archeology and the scientific method.
Often nearing mockery, he is making the viewer aware of the histories and systems of
organisation that are understood and likely blindly accepted. The conceptual driver of his work is
to compare what might be considered objective versus subjective and rational versus irrational.
In his work, Cabinet of Marine Debris, (see fig. 9) from 2014, Dion uses the historic
features of Wunderkammer to call into question why and how material is collected. The
juxtaposition of organised detritus in the place of culturally significant artefacts is a tactic in
questioning the authority of science, taxonomy, and collection. He is using humour, irony, and
metaphor to emphasise and challenge the biases engrained with the western pursuit of truths and
universals. This challenges the viewer to reconsider the effect that keeping and presenting
material culture can have on collective knowledge, especially about nature. This is an element of
his work that relates less to mine. Dion is using the voice of “nature” to examine what can be
deemed “neutral”. He goes even further to evaluate how ideology is tainted through assumptions
based on desire, fear, and self-interest.

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See imgaes at:
https://art21.org/read/big-question-whodecides-what-stands-for-nature/.

Fig. 9. Hanson, Genevieve. Cabinet of Marine Debris. Oct. 2019. Who Decides What Stands for
Nature, Art21, New York / Los Angeles, https://art21.org/read/big-question-who-decides-whatstands-for-nature/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.

Dion uses nature as a social category, rather than something to be just categorised and
used. In contrast, I am employing aesthetics and the visualisation of data. Both our practices are
driven by a methodology of collecting and organising that leads to a distinct value system. We
are both looking to point out the pitfalls and weaknesses of knowledge pursuit, and the
dangerous potential for lies within knowledge production and reproduction. I feel a kinship to his
work as he pursues these subjects not as a pseudoscientist but a dilettante of inquiry. We are both
working to find what is worth questioning, what is unquestionable, and what requires suspicion.
This is a mode of interrogating structures of knowledge-keeping based on retrospective
criticality. Questioning power structures associated with the institution requires active curiosity,
unapprehensive confusion, deliberate concern, and dissatisfaction with available understanding.

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35

(to keep)
I have always struggled to describe the objects I typically paint because of how I interact
with and describe the objects I collect. My system of categorizing is unfixed yet the boundaries
are typically profound. This ontological approach is demonstrated in the slide box. Each thing
holds a similar value, plays a similar role, and receives a similar treatment. They exist outside
their original purpose or significance, and they have been recontextualized by the encounter.
Collecting is a system in itself, deserving of a dedicated thesis. In summary, the encounter is an
assessment of what that object holds in it: an interaction with a person, an act of care, or a
moment worth remembering. It might have fulfilled its function and now its future is unclear.
Choosing to keep ends many of these questions as it presupposes finality. The collection is a
coveting, a relationship, and an attachment. The objects are protected, and all transformations are
accidental and predestined (based on an inclination towards linear time). Breakages and losses
are examples of further interruptions. They are likely welcomed given it is not the result of my
own carelessness.

Theorizing
Theorizing is a fracturing of the presumed, the understood, and the not-yet-properly
interrogated. It is grappling with the noticed. It is the callus on my left middle finger from
each resting brush. It is the place in time that a shadow implies. It is a blank sticky note
on the wall, and the frayed corner of a well-loved book. It places consideration as the
central issue. Opposite to the expanding fractures of difference, theorizing is a
narrowing. It brings one specific idea into question. This process requires situating the
subject as focal, as layered. To theorize the mundane is a conscious overstepping into the

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36

boundary of the peripheral. It is a fixation on the barely there and the otherwise
unimportant.

This thesis unknowingly became an endeavour in learning to sort. I learnt to evaluate the
small in place of the large, exchanging the demanding for the quiet. The peripheral has become
the subject of focus, although contradictory and bound to theoretical space.10
Returning to the work of Duzant, specifically on the experience of the colour blue, in
which I am heavily invested, she brings into question what is “real.” The colour of the sky has
become a case study in my practice of theorizing. It has challenged how far questioning can be
expanded outward. Duzant goes on to explain how the blue of the sky seems stable but is
actually unending and unbound. To grapple with an abstract concept such as the sky is to
rationalize perception. The sky can only truly be what someone’s capacity allows them to
understand. This rarely naturally occurring colour, almost always reflected or refract, is not
material or tangible. It is, however, described in images and language in a nearly identical way.
This level-playing field for representation is a valuable dialogue for painting. In the earlier
moments of searching for an object or the encounter with the sky, I consider: what can be asked
of this thing and what can painting do for it? This question is consciously rhetorical.
In the work, sitting with it, 2023, (see fig. 10), I presented 150 attempted representations of the
sky. Through this process, I was able to describe two specific moments from each day over the
course of 75 days. The assembled body of hues acts as a description of that period of time. Each
holds the represented information of the time of day and the season, laid out as a verse.
Materially, they are indexical of the tired body that painted them, the concentration of water, and

10

As focal points are assigned by attention, peripheral status should be negated.

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37

the commitment to portray accurately. Each recorded moment is not translated, but rather
interpreted, synonymous, or referential.

Fig. 10. sitting with it, slide case, panels, gouache, notebook, canvas, #25 on diagram (fig. 1),
2023.

Returning once again to Duzant’s text, I am using her examination of the colour blue as a
model for the expansive capacity of language. Using historical, linguistic, and cultural
references, she explains the variable role that a colour can play in formulating perception. On the
subject of “blue,” she highlights how having names for widely experienced concepts alters the
ability to re-imagine and re-produce them. It is far more challenging to represent something that

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lacks formal or concise language to accompany its mental queue in one’s mind. She goes on to
illustrate the effect of lyrical subjectivity on the perception of colour. This brings up a question I
often ask myself in the moments after painting: do I have the words? I am considering if the
correct language is available to accompany the field of view I am aiming to represent. In the text,
this challenge is explained in a linear way. The more a concept is experienced, the more people
try to understand it, eventually representing it, and subsequently finding its place in their
vocabulary. She presents this in relation to the social and emotional effect that a colour can have
on people after it has carved its place in language.
Returning to Bervin’s work, I am interested in translating her attitude towards textile
process and drawn-out labour, as it relates to the structure of language. The suturing allows the
viewer to contextualize care in relation to destruction, and refusal with revelation. In both
Bervin’s work and my own, what remains after the gesture is language that demands grappling
and rationalizing by the viewer. The revealed language becomes a process of poem making,
leading to a slowing down and recontextualizing. Sometimes manifesting in my compositions,
writing by hand plays a significant role in my notetaking practice. Opposite to this, Bervin uses
industrial printing and sewing machines to distance the gesture from the body. Embodiment is
made possible by the involvement of the hands when engaging with the book form, which she
pushes further through the tactility of the threads. My investment in an embodied material
practice is further validated when the artwork is returned to the hand.
By questioning the convention of a book as a container for knowledge, the words are no
longer surface level. In terms of the presented subject, this work is in reference to John Van
Dyke's book from the end of the 19th century where he praises an arid land. This is relevant to
my thematic pursuit as it is a model for “less” to become the subject. In my work this presents

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itself with mundane or residual objects. In one of my artist’s books, Pressed Between, (fig. 11),
the pages hold a collection of small sea glass fragments. They are quiet and detailed. This is an
example of a series in which images of the mundane are repeated to draw attention to the
object’s individual potential.

Fig. 11. Pressed Between, watercolour, thread, canvas, loop, #17 on diagram (fig. 1), 2023.

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Conclusion
(the after)
I argue that my paintings, although teasing finality but never quite arriving, are
translations. My methodology of painting involves breaking down the object’s image from
observation, then reconstructing it on a two-dimensional plain. To filter through subjectivity,
emotion, and bodily limitation, animates the interaction between eye and object. The resulting
image is a fragmentation of moment, a breakdown of language, and a documentation of the
interaction.
To simply look is equivalent to small talk. To paint is the meaningful dialogue between
object, eye, mind, and hand. The resulting image is an iconography of encoded abstractions. By
painting, I am breaking down an image into its most basic formal elements and building towards
an illusionary rendering.

I am ritualistic and spiritual.
I am content within parameter, routine, and minimal stimuli.
I am a learner and striving to unlearn.
I am someone who feels, thinks, overthinks, and ponders.
I am working to pay attention.

I am affected by material. It is revealed in how I set down my tools and arrange
mementos on the wall, and it reaches beyond my painting practice. It affects how I choose apples
at the grocery store, why I travel a beach from one shard of glass to the next, and why I fill jars
with dried, spent tea bags. Because the choice matters, the search matters, the act of keeping

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matters. This sensibility generates a demand to navigate space with sensitivity, mindful that the
potential to excite may be hidden behind more of the same. I have always been seeking out the
banal, the otherwise underwhelming and that which a pre-existing value system has already
blinded perception.

I am a painter because it’s what I have always known.
I am a practitioner of language, it’s the lens that orients my perception.
I am often lost in vast blank spaces, grasping at sentiment.
I am settling quietly on the surface, reminding myself to breathe.

Relating to the experience of anxiety, this act of grounding through observation is a
coping mechanism. I exercise patience, allowing me to break the cycle of cause and effect in
which I often cannot function. I work to stop, think, and process properly. This has led to my
practice of constant reflexivity and peripheral analysis. By allowing myself the chance to think
and not be rushed, I can see far clearer. In these moments, I am able to be with the poetic, the
beautiful, the singular, and the gently crushing. Rather than fighting to ‘keep up,’ I am
embracing breath.

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Response
(confluences)
This document is evidence of trajectory. It is a collage of my stubbornness, insecurity,
and boldness. I struggled to separate the repeated gesture of writing about my practice, from the
material investigation in the studio. At a certain point, anxiety was muted, and I allowed this
separation to become immaterial and undefined. My interdisciplinary inquiry has required
pulling from, entertaining, and grappling with an overwhelming number of disciplines and their
socio-historic implications. I acknowledge that my work engages with areas of study, such as
poetry and bookmaking, each requiring substantial future study. This document, as academically
satisfying as I could manage, is an extension of my material and philosophical practices.
However, painting is still the catalyst. I have to be entrenched in form, saturation, light, and
texture. Painting is the language that I know best. However, by being required to produce this
document and diving heavily into the features of language, I found an appreciation for how text
may compliment my studio practice. Where my painting exists quietly in a creaking house, my
writing is the unanticipated ceramic dish crashing against tile floors.
For the thesis exhibition, I managed to distill these creative trajectories into three main
categories. The textual work is where my philosophical thought is laid out simply yet deceptively
entangled. The compositions on a table are a description of system, referencing process. These
are illusionary but resisting conventional display and therefore reducing their referential
capacity. The hanging painting is a demonstration of a moment before, of one that never
happened, and of painting colliding with its muses. Here is a place for the “real,” after having
been previously questioned, to assert itself again as objects pinned directly to the surface. Here,
the system falls apart.

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The relationship between these pieces and the space around them was initially anticipated
as a confluence of theoretical understandings. This absolute finality of my research was
somewhat naive. I soon realized that the three facets were meant to approach each other but
never collide. Installation interventions allowed me to blend the streams of thought into the
architecture. The preexisting circumstances for display allowed me to let go of control in an
extremely controlled way.

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Fig. 12. From thesis exhibition: reaching for a slowing down, coming to terms, Rollodex of notes
and watercolours on custom plinth, 2024.

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Fig. 13. From thesis exhibition: making light of the quiet, starting to slip, oil on canvas and
pinned readymades, hanging from the ceiling by a string, backlit by daylight, 2024.

45

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Fig. 14. settling in the in-between, being reminded, oil on canvas and watercolour on custom
table, 2024.

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Works Cited

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press, 2010.
EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=nlebk&AN=600144
&site=ehost-live.
“Big Question: Who Decides What Stands for Nature?” Art21, art21.org/read/big-question-whodecides-what-stands-for-nature/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.
Duzant, Magali. Light Blue Desire: A Manual for the Color Blue. Conveyor Editions, 2018.
“Jen Bervin.” The Desert - Jen Bervin, www.jenbervin.com/projects/the-desert#2. Accessed 23
Nov. 2023.
Koenig, John. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Simon & Schuster, 2021.
Staff, Craig G. After Modernist Painting: The History of a Contemporary Practice. I.B. Tauris &
Co. Ltd, 2013.
Stella, Lizabel. Tablet 164. 25 Sept. 2017. Blanton Museum of Art,
https://blantonmuseum.org/2017/09/25/a-life-in-tablets-eleanore-mikus/. Accessed 28
Apr. 2024.
“Still Frame: Andrew Grassie.” Esther Schipper, www.estherschipper.com/exhibitions/948-stillframe-andrew-grassie/introduction/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2023.

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Vu, Mimi. “Artful and Stunning Cabinets of Curiosities, Decoded.” The New York Times, The
New York Times, 25 Feb. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/t-magazine/mark-dionsculpture-tanya-bonakdar.html.
Zylinska, Joanna. “The Creative Power of Nonhuman Photography.” Photographic Powers,
2017, pp. 132–154, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10938.001.0001.

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Appendix A
(on dedication)
If I had the luxury of tangents and a better economy of this word count, my dedications
would easily be pages long. I would thank each of my classmates for their influence on my
practice that will remain for a lifetime. Each conversation, critique, passing comment, and
follow-up contemplation have been the most potent form of theoretical practice. Thank you to
everyone that patiently waited as I filled a sticky note or looked for the appropriate space to
scribble on the studio walls.
Thank you to Beth and Jamie, for your time and patience, for lending perspective and for
quietly screaming the obvious when I so often could not see it.

Appendix B
(love letter to the studio)
The studio is a place where affecting is a three-dimensional contract. Where everything is
a tool and the nothing is concrete, the space needs to respond and evolve yet be constant and
predictable. Here is the place the story is written. It is volatile, messy, at odds with permanence,
and desperately attempting containment. This is the challenging reality of objects of interest.
They become sorted and enclosed, so they can play their new role unaffected by process. They
are equal to the tools,11 the consumables12 and the substrate.13 Each ebbs a complementary
wavelength with treatment unvarying. A found leaf receives the same reverence as my favourite
brushes.14

11

Literal: brushes, knives, toothpicks, awls etc.
The paint, tape, oil, water, etc.
13
The canvases, paper, and walls.
14
Writing “brush” in singular form feels equivalent to choosing a favourite child.
12

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Appendix C
(a thought on “place”)
I have become grounded by the consistent pace of this city. The Chinese dry goods being
rolled onto the sidewalk each morning across from my window, the garage door of their shop
acquiring graffiti then a week later being painted over and the cycle restarting again the next
week. I found solace in the crows, in their work ethic and structure, everyday commuting in and
then traveling home together. They are a constant. No matter the events of a day, the sun will
start to set, and the crows will pass over. They are a hyperbody of feathered airfoils and a
mythical fraternity. Seeing the river of black specs made me aware of time passing, adjusting by
daily minute increments, reminding me that the seasons are changing.