Blind Bouquet - Sam Paine
A few years ago a friend asked me to propose an ‘obstruction’ for an art series he was working on. Blind Bouquet is the resulting artwork:
In The Five Obstructions exhibition at Dubbo’s Western Plains Cultural Centre, I created five works based on sets of rules or ‘obstructions’ set by five contemporary artists. The exhibition borrowed its name and concept from a Lars von Trier film, in which a filmmaker is challenged to remake his classic short film under five sets of obstructions provided by a colleague. My goal was to disrupt my fairly traditional painting practice through the influence of contemporary artists' ideas.
Blind Bouquet – acrylic and modelling paste on plywood
“Create a painting without viewing the canvas until the work is finished.” Performance artist Tom Isaacs
I used modelling paste to thicken the paint so that I could feel where I had painted and let my hands be my vision. This piece was the most daunting challenge for me – it was not the most technically difficult piece, but it took away my most common tool for judgement and decision-making, loosening my control over the result.
