Fuck Advice

Half way through grad school, one of my professors told me that the graduate committee thought I should stop painting and start making conceptual art.

I’ve always found that the strangest sort of advice: instead of working with my interests, with what I am doing, the advisor tells me to do something else, something I am not doing, something I have not even considered doing.

The committee meant well. They had heard about a stunt I had pulled. But the ruse had not been about creating a piece of conceptual or performance art. It was a private rebellion against one of my classmates who, instead of voting for more studio time for our second-term class (studio time had been choked out in favour of theory courses in the first term), she motioned for us to do research and presentations of important contemporary artists. This person never produced much in her own studio, so her proposal was hardly surprising. She was an academic. She loved collecting information. And now she was asking the rest of us to spend time doing the same so that she could add our information to her database.

My classmates, who all saw it coming, and who all wanted more studio time, asked me to vote against her, which I said I would if they promised to back me up (they often complained about her behind her back but agreed with her in person. I was the only public dissenting voice). But they caved in the end and then complained bitterly to me afterwards. Tired of their inability to voice their own wishes for themselves, and tired of being left to twist in the wind, I closed my ears and came up with my own plan – The Donna Hay Revenge Plan. If I could not have more studio time, I sure as hell was not doing more unrelated-to-my-interests work for the edification of this particular colleague.

The Donna Hay Revenge Plan went like this: Donna Hay is an Australian chef with a fleet of fab cookbooks to her name. The defining aspect of these cookbooks are Patrina Tinsley's photographs. Patrina Tinsley employs a very narrow depth of field, which brings the dishes closest to the viewer into sharp focus, while the surrounding dishes quickly drop away into fuzzy, dreamy soft focus. All this is true (except the photograph below, which is mine, not Patrina Tinsley's).



Everything else I said about Patrina Tinsley in my presentation, and about her painter sister, Eliza, who does not exist, was a bald-faced lie. I photographed Patrina Tinsley's photographs from one of my Donna Hay cookbooks and ran the pics through a few very simple Photoshop filters so that they looked like low-res images of paintings. Then I invented the story of Eliza and Patrina Tinsley. Eliza went to art school while Patrina went to chef school. Patrina, however, was interested in more than just cooking; Desirous of presenting her food in performative ways, she and Eliza collaborated to create food events to which they would invite artists and the general public, and for which Patrina would create aesthetic feasts for the eyes and gourmet concoctions for the stomach. At these events, Patrina would photograph all the dishes. And Eliza would make paintings of the dishes after the event, displaying the paintings at the next event. And so it went, event after event. I talked breathlessly about how Eliza and Petrina’s events were attended by other famous artists, most notably from the Arte Pauvera movement (artists whose names I now forget). I explained that for a while in the mid-to-late '70s, the sisters were the toast of Australia and Europe.

I illustrated the story with my Photoshopped images, telling the class I had downloaded them from the Australian National Gallery’s website, which was why the painting images were so hard to read as paintings: it was due to the low-res nature of the image. How I wish I still had these images to show you, but I can't find them on my computer. Dammit! They were so bad they were great!

I followed the sisters’ careers right up to where they are now: Petrina no longer chefs but has become Donna Hay’s food photographer. And that is actually true, the part about being Donna Hay's photographer. While Eliza is considered the Mary Pratt of Australia, and is well-collected by the Australian National Gallery. I gave my colleagues the website URL in case they wanted to go and look it all up.

My presentation was excruciatingly boring. It reinforced my status in the program as a boring painter who was not remotely plugged into the latest contemporary art scene. My nemesis took copious notes. The only person who knew what I’d done was a professor who was a close friend. He told the grad committee a month later and, based on this stunt, they thought I should trade painting for conceptual art.

“Really?” I said incredulously. “Well then, why don't you tell the grad committee I'd be happy to oblige if they would just kindly let me know which projects they think I should undertake.” Honestly, what did they think???

But I did not take this advice. I returned to my studio and worked for anther year on my Chuck Close project, surrounded on all sides by people who did not believe in the project and who did not care much for painting, some of whom begged me to stop.



God I had fucking chutzpah then . . . I trusted my gut, I believed in my self and I kept on trucking . . . and my final project was great!


Pink LizChuck is on display on the third floor of 401 Richmond. (Grey LizChuck burned in my fire.)



I am now in a similar place -- surrounded on all sides by people who mean well, people who think I should do this instead of that. And instead of standing my ground and believing in my own crazy ideas, I find myself reduced far too often to a confused puddle of tears -- what am I doing with my life? What am I going to do???? But every time I call out for help, many of the answers I get back just don't look like me. But the fault is mine. The best advice I got this week was from Dale who said, "stop canvassing your friends and start trusting yourself!"

The other day, I was in 401 Richmond and stood in front of Pink LizChuck, all 9 feet by 9 feet of her. She's huge and "blousy," as one of my profs called me. She commands the wall and all the space in front of her.

And I wondered, where can I find that Liz again?