Caitlyn Manning

This practice-led painting project titled Gesturing the Grid, explores the idea of wrestling as it relates to the painting process, and the reception of the painting. The notion of wrestling is multifaceted. Here the term embodies trust and intuition, struggle, duration, maker, observer, canvas, and paint. As a means for a painting to arrive, the project investigates how new sensations can emerge and morph into new possibilities. Tussling between intuitive decisions in and around painting techniques is key to the practice because decision making at an intuitive level allows painting to unfold as a responsive activity. The intuitive nature of the fluid gesture, in relation to the structurally sound grid, creates a counterbalanced companionship within this project, allowing paintings to shift between Smooth Space and Striated Space. Anticipation upsurges awaiting the painting’s arrival and re-arrival. This relates to the notions of Affect and Emergence, where our perception is always engaged and ready to transfer sensibility to what is emerging and unfolding before us. In this practice the painting emerges out of the dynamic relationship between myself as the maker, and myself as the receptor, where mindfulness is used to maintain the importance of these two positions. A new power dynamic that I call the wrestle materialises when I step back and see it through different eyes. This relationship feeds and sustains the practice by providing the opportunity to generate new relationships between colour, gesture, line, and the grid. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Brian Massumi, Jan Verwoert, and Amy Sillman have proven to be invaluable theorists in this research and will continue to inform my ongoing practice.