Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Back to Basics program / JULY 2023
Danielle Robitaille
Canada
About
After having worked as an architect during my professional
life and practiced painting in parallel, a few years ago I
undertook a MFA in order to develop a personal artistic
practice. From the beginning of my master's degree, seeking
to understand what motivated me, I decided to problematize
the notion of emotion and to make it the very heart of my
research.
As my main project during the MFA, I have developed a
procedural practice by which I carry out a daily mapping
of my affective state. Each day, I score 64 groups of words
(hesitation, guilt, hope, etc.) and then visually translate the
collected data according to a color combination protocol.
The chromatic richness that I obtain, although it is from a
digital source, allows me to reconnect with the pleasure of
manipulating colors that I felt in painting.
The daily examination of my affective state requires a time
of pause and presence to oneself that I associate with
meditation. In order to deepen this link, I will participate, in
2023-2024, in a short graduate program on meditation and
the creative process.
The Finnish list
I used my time at Arteles to carry out two projects. The first
one was sharing my daily emotional mapping project with
other artists who wanted to participate and explore that
process for themselves during their stay. I used their data
to make personal portraits of the artists as well as a group
portrait. The exercise gave rise to interesting discussions
on the emotional variations we go through and their
representation using colors.
For the second project, I prepared a list of seven activities
that I should do to improve my emotional state (including
meditation, taking time to do nothing, etc.), but which I
usually resist. My stay at Arteles allowed me to immerse
myself in those activities and observe their impact. In a large
frame built using wood taken from pallets stored in the barn, I
recreated a calendar of the first three weeks of the residency,
using an embroidery circle for each day. On each circle, I
attached a strip of paper for each of the seven activities
that I managed to do during that day. As I have transcribed
a sentence from my personal diary on each strip of paper,
the whole work constitutes a diary of my stay at Arteles: it
begins with observations, mainly concerning the immediate
environment of the residence, then continues with the moods
aroused by the course of daily life, the company of other
artists, the time available, the preparation of projects, etc.
I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the
Arts.