Collaboration presents challenges to pride, identity and self-scrutiny. Collaboration reveals our habits, predilections, taste preferences, and personal limitations. Confronted with a process which denies the illusion of personal control we open to discoveries which are inaccessible when we work alone.
My recent collaborator was artist, Max Dunlop. We are practiced at collaboration but, we still find surrendering to the work and will of another simultaneously frustrates and liberates our imagination.
As I work on a painting which I know I will surrender to another artist to complete I become liberated to experiment without regard to a final product’s purpose and effects. I am free to swim in any direction. As I receive a work from Max which already has a direction, an identity, and ambition I try to discover this new work and interact with it rather than superimpose my will on his piece. I try to follow this gift of a new direction, of a different point of view. I am free to interact with qualities which are not mine. This inherited image offers me a chance to expand, to add to my vocabulary. Here is a perceptual challenge. Can I work with what’s in front of me instead of what I wanted or expected? Can I invest my imagination in a work which is out of my scope but, accessible to my imagination and touch. Can I carry it further?
In collaboration I have found two treasures. One is the unencumbered beginning with its freedom to go anywhere because, I am not responsible for the conclusion. I cannot and will not finish it. I must let it go to another artist. The second is the gift is discovering another point of view, another quality of touch, another vision. In the second case I must react rather than freely generate. Reacting demands looking, compassion, attention, contemplation if the collaboration is to proceed as the a unity of two rather than the triumph of one.
Below are examples illustrating the process of our most recent collaborations. They include imagery from my recent trip to Ireland. Max’s images include images from his neighborhood (Ridgewood/Bushwick), industrial sections of Queens, New York , and Austria.
The examples are presented in sets of two. Each set first shows the work as it began just as it was passed from the originating artist to the finishing artist (step one of each collaboration). The second image in each set presents the final artist’s efforts ( step two of each collaboration).
Example 1. Beginning by Max, Dingle Peninsula,24×24
Example 2. Step 2,same painting, by Me, Dingle Peninsula,24×24
Example 2. Beginning by David, Queens Industrial,24×24
Example 2. Step 2,same painting,Finish by Max,Queens Industrial
Example 3.Beginning by Max,Bushwick Underpass,24×24
Example 3.step 2(same Painting),finish by David,Bushwick Underpass
C G Gardner
You and your collaborator share the same surname. Any relation?
Sharon Mazurek
What a wonderful idea – to share creativity on a work. I can’t wait to try this with our artist’s group to see what wondrous works are created.
Elaine
So very interesting.
Do you know immediately how you or Max will change the painting. It looks as if Max uses pallet knife. True? That must be challenging using different techniques. Are either of you happy or unhappy with the finished work?
Sylvia Keller
Collaboration in the corporate environment is called “Team Work”, the purpose is to get as many different points of view together in order to achive a better result.