Back to Reality.
Looking back to my previous blog I was about to embark on a realist work in oil on canvas. The image I have used is a still from video footage of a homeless American man during an interview on the streets.
Over the past week I have begun to paint the face loosely with a thin acrylic wash, building up the shapes and volume of the face with light and dark tones. Having started the painting with a loose acrylic wash I can already see that some areas of the face could be left completely unpainted with background showing through. This element of transparency reminded me of an article I had read during my research where a celebrity photographer Perou spent time with some homeless young people in Liverpool and Manchester, asking them to choose significant locations from their life stories. He photographed the young people in their chosen locations and used a transparency tool to edit the individual, making them look almost invisible and ghost-like.
This transparency and invisibility is a common feeling amongst people who find themselves homeless and is an element I wish to explore in this painting. I aim to leave as much unpainted as possible leaving only enough painted areas to make a recognisable portrait. This lack of visual information makes the viewer work to make sense of the face forcing the viewer to look at the subject for much longer than they usually would. The overall transparency of the image represents the everyday experience of the neglected and ignored. In contrast the painted areas will describe and explain a part of who is actually there. I have chosen to paint in the eyes as the eyes are obviously the most important area of contact, an opportunity for the viewer to make a connection with the person I am depicting.
The images attached to this blog show my most recent progress.
Link to Photography Project by Perou – http://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2011/nov/18/perou-photographs-youth-homelessness
