Contextualisation

26/03/2013: Francis Picabia - Transparencies

My practice has been greatly informed by the work of Francis Picabia. I am greatly interested in the concept that reality, story and the forthcoming can all be veiled from view. Picabia creates overlapping outlines over background images, often using Roman Frescoes as resources for this. He refers to these pieces as his 'transparencies', and I find this style to add further depth to the image and also insight. The outlines seem to add the more personable unseen to the background, showing interior thought.


(To right: 'Mi', 1929)



I have experimented with the new notions of space that layers of images and outline can infuse. These ‘transparencies’ add extra dimension and address the visible and invisible in an intriguing way. I want to use layers similarly in my own work.
 

(To left: 'Otaïti', 1930. Oil paint and resin on canvas. 1940 x 1303 mm)

28/01/2013: Lucian Freud - Figure, skin and colour

Freud takes so much care over the tones of skin that he cleans his brush between every mark. The play of colours across the flesh is so realistic because, even though they are still painterly, every skin tone is captured. Through angles, translucency and shadows I find this to be such a believable reflection of real person. I find myself really drawn in by it.

I want to look at the role of light and colour as it is used across the figure and skin. The expression that can be experimented with through these has always interested me. It is often the difference that ensures a moment with the sitter is truly captured.


(To right: 'Frank Auerbach', 1975-6. Oil on canvas)




30/01/2013: Matisse - Colour and portrait

Colour can be used to create great effects across skin. Matisse often uses colour alone to describe an image. In particular complimentary colours are usually present in his pieces. Shadow and light are commonly illustrated chromatically through these means. Cool and warmth are also often translated into colour. The artistic drama that this allows intrigues me. Colour as a key means of expression ensures more information is passed onto the viewer - about how the painter analyses his sitters and what he choses to represent of them. I want to experiment with complimentary colours and paint portraits limiting my palette to just these pairs of colours. I also want to experiment with background, be that a generally colourful background, a wash that reflects the person painted, or an under colour that affects the whole piece.

(To left: 'Green Stripe', 1905. Oil and tempera on canvas)

 

09/02/2013: Roy Lichtenstein - Line, colour and shape

Lichtenstein found there to be two opposing approaches to painting:
'spontaneous release vs. controlled application, via its very DNA, the paint stroke.'
I really like this realisation of contrasting forms of expression. The two pieces I have chosen here epitomise these juxtaposing styles. I want to experiment with how combining these methods can create exciting and dynamic works.

(To right: 'Landscape with figures and rainbow', 1980)

 

Colour can change emotional response and an artist can use this to guide the affect they want their work to have on the viewer. I want to use this in my pieces so that colour can be relational to any feeling I want to give off. I began to experiment with colour as an expressive background to small linear painted drawings over the top. I developed this further into my large life model layered painting.

Lichtenstein also often focuses on the concept of a ‘pregnancy moment’ in his paintings. He considers this to be the point in a story where, if captured in a still image, it is possible to assume what has happened before that time and what is likely to happen afterwards. This is often the case in his comic strip pieces, where it is very easy to learn the context of the piece just from looking at the image alone. By calling it a 'pregnancy moment' it refers to the point where the story takes a big change, a key turn or development that sums up the whole scenario. I want to incorporate this idea of a key point in a narrative that gives insight to the rest. I think Lichtenstein's concepts could have a significant bearing on my practice.

(To left: 'Laocoon', 1997. Oil and magna on canvas)

 

20/03/2013: The Guardian TV Adverts - ‘Points of View’

Through looking at the ‘Points of View’ adverts by The Guardian I became really interested in the idea that when we only have a narrow view or limited understanding then we can misjudge what we see. These adverts show a scenario from multiple points of view and these each change the perception of what is really going on. However, only with all of the information is it then clear and we realise we have been judgmental in assuming our previous understandings. We should always wait until we have a wider view of a situation.

(To left: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3h-T3KQNxU)

Only the whole picture can authorise a fair judgment or understanding perception. I really want to create a painted series that explores our influences, what affects, inspires, influences and sways us.

23/03/2013: Percy Shelley - Hidden realities

I was inspired to look this up following a film involving the words in its title. Shelley in his 1818 sonnet noted:

‘Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Call Life:  though unreal shapes be pictured there,

And it but mimic all we would believe

With colours idly spread, behind, lurk Fear’

(Whole poem: http://readytogoebooks.com/PS-sonnet9.htm)

It contemplates what life appears to be, and what we value as important and real from it, when in reality this is not the case. Although exploring true values, such as love, may make us more vulnerable. This would be the case with loss or heartbreak, as the protagonists' of the film discover.

I have considered how portraiture might be used as a vehicle to contemplate what life appears to be, and what we perceive as ‘real’ from it, when in reality this is not the case. Through layered oil images I want to explore what a portrait is and a young person’s realities that might be unapparent from a straight “mug-shot”.

23/03/2013: Magic Realism - Concealed truth and ominous narrative

Through looking at magic realism the idea of an unexplained and slightly ominous narrative was initiated.

(To right: 'Bedtime Aviation', by Rob Gonsalves)

This, along with my interest with theatre art after studying it for my dissertation, helped my intrigue in the sense of the hidden. I really like the revealed and concealed nature of the theatre curtain, in particular in the work of David Hockney.

 (To left: 'The Actor', by David Hockney. 1964. Acrylic on canvas)
 




05/04/2013: Emma Talbot - Hidden story

Talbot creates pieces that represent hidden rooms of emotional reality. She depicts the concept that we cover these realities with the facades of whatever people perceive from our outside appearance. Talbot uses an almost dollhouse like form to show this, with the building face removed. Her pieces show the happenings and emotional states of parts of her own life; her pieces are small auto-biographical visualisations. I wanted to use a similar peeling back to reveal the interior state of mind and memory behind a person, and I like the idea of this being a self portrait.


(To right: 'Winter House')






06/04/2013: Picasso - Abstract shape as representational form

Picasso has used angular lines and blocky shapes to capture forms and a play of space. The effect of this often turns natural forms into hard pieces of a jigsaw that all work together in creating new abstract images. I think it could work really well if I used forms abstractedly in this way to represent a narrative. I could experiment with how slotting these shapes together creates unique dynamic scenes of story.

 (To left: 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon', 1907)                (To right: 'Ma Jolie', 1911-12)







13/04/2013: Gustav Klimt - Pattern and playing with space
 

From studying the work of Klimt I have become very interested in how pattern can alter our natural perception of perspective. By overlapping planes of space in different ways the pieces fully capture the eye's attention, pulling focus over the entire image. As well as being incredibly aesthetic, Klimt's pieces are also intriguing experiments into a portrait's relationship to its background because of this. Boundaries are merged and space is confused.

(To left: 'Wasserschlangen I', 1904-7)                    (To right: 'Die Jungfrau/The Virgin', 1913)

I would like to play with how pattern effects space perception. I want to consider it as a method of externalising internal debates, the patterns I use representing something hidden about the portrait. Not in a dissimilar way to the work of Picabia, this could be the more literal effect of veils parted.

 

28/04/2013: Griffith and Kingelez - Multi-dimensional work

Griffith exhibited small shelter constructions made out of materials on hand. I like this relationship of influence between mediums. I really like the work of Kingelez because each material used changes the significance of each part of his models. He creates miniature imaginary cityscape environments that partially fulfil a want for more influence over life. These artists made me contemplate the idea of creating mini sets and theatre spaces that I could paint from.

(To left: 'Maquettes de villes', Kingelez)                                                                   (To right: 'Shelters', Griffith)




16/04/2013: Social Exploration - Report on how crucial support is for young people

I read the 'Action for Children' report "Growing up" and found it very interesting and enlightening. It focuses on how best to support young people towards a successful and confident adulthood. It stresses the importance of helping the UK vulnerable to break though injustice, deprivation and inequality, so that they can achieve their full potential. The key points of this report are how 'problems that are usually manageable with support can, for vulnerable and isolated young people, turn into a crisis'. Family, school and social peers can all protect or leave a young person exposed to experiences that lead to feeling worthless, a lack of aspirations, low self-esteem and other unresolved underlying issues. Help must be given in these circumstance to help them become successful and confident adults. I have found these issues of vital importance for a time now. I really want to use my art as a means of exploring the circumstances a young person can face and the levels of vulnerability they can be left open to.

(Taken from: http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/media/848585/growing_up_-_transition_to_a_successful_adulthood.pdf)




29/04/2013: Mark Manders - What makes a self-portrait?

 I have been contemplating the concept of what a self portrait is. Is it a reflection of person? A mirror image of a face? Something that captures the essence of a person? Or perhaps a revelation on what is behind the individual? Mark Manders creates works that he calls self-portraits, in using random surrounding objects to form experimental and very abstract diagrams, almost maps of a figure.





This new language for creating self-portraits formed from on-hand materials has greatly influenced me. It is the idea that you can write a face using objects and it will be seen in a totally different way, it allows the viewer to add their own thoughts through their personal relation to the random objects used. This led me on to want to explore what really makes a portrait and whether, through creating my own language of images and narrative, I could try similar explorations. I could use these ideas to see paintings of social circumstance purely as portraits that have a variety of layers and depth into the reality behind the face. This would even bring me to consider which is the self portrait: the background or face?

(To left: 'Self-portrait as a building', 2002. Pencil on paper)

(To right: 'Finished sentence', 1998-2006. Self-portrait made of on hand materials, iron, ceramic, teabags, printed paper)



29/04/2013: Portrait Theorists - Ideas of the what constitutes a portrait

I have studied a number of concepts of what a portrait is. It is accepted as an 'artistic representation of a person' that has the ability 'to display the likeness, personality and even more'. It is seen to allude to 'an individual human being actually existing outside the work', generally as a means of 'communicating something' and even to 'drag out, reveal' and 'expose'. Further considerations include that a portrait can capture a 'subject's individual 'essence' or 'air'. However, I am most interested in ideas of it being 'an individually recognizable visage and an expression of inner life, implying a sense of self-identity'. I want to focus on this by using a typical "blank" portrait or "mug-shot" and then layering it on top of a narrative that tells more about the individual than that which can be understood from just a face. This will allow me to truly explore the limits of what a portrait could be, alongside creating pieces that are dynamic and insightful. 



I find portraiture and life drawing the most enjoyable aspects of my art and intend to continue the theme of social and educational disadvantage through these outcomes.