I really am beginning to wonder about some aspects of my current project, presenting a personal artistic response to the experience of Italy during the Great War. My initial response to the idea of working in this area depended upon the belief that war and its consequences would be something that everybody could grasp (to some degree) in the imagination. I had not appreciated back then just how culturally specific some aspects of the war were, and this goes well beyond our simple ignorance in Britain as to what happened in other parts of Europe during this period. Symbols present a particular problem, in that they often require quite an extensive appreciation (often subconscious) of their meaning.
As a painter this presents me with a real dilemma. I have often made the point that we do tend to over-explain our work, so that it is not uncommon for visitors to galleries to be offered screeds of explanatory material that can perhaps stand in the way of people actually looking at the art. How much explanation will I need to give in order to provide an avenue into a “reading” of my work, without lecturing people, and preventing them from making their own responses to it?
We are only at the start of the project at present, and I am working on only the third item in the series. I can see, however, that this is going to be a continuing debate with myself, and might well involve some preliminary and experimental showing of items to people, to discuss their perceptions. I do ask myself whether what I am painting will make sense to viewers, or whether it will just be nonsense.