Afrodizzia (2nd version) is a painting made of acrylic, oil, resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on canvas. It is almost the same to Homage, part from the fact it has a collage element to it showing African faces within the piece.
I really like Ofili’s style and the way he approach each artwork, with a decorative narrative giving it a vibrant and colourful pattern which doesn’t overpower the work but also adding other elements and materials to each of his pieces in the form of not just using paint but collage as well with the musicians faces which is shown and displayed in Afrodizzia, it brings the piece forward and makes you really look at the story behind Ofili’s work. I also love that elephant dung is featured in most of his artwork showing a sense of the ugly world but the decorative pattern of the swirls showing beauty and light making the works balance and flow within one another and the world we all know today.
Ofili’s work relates to my own work in a similar style of using decorative, pattern and bold and bright, powerful colours to use for my backgrounds and the swirls are kind of like my dots displaying the same rhythmic movement and action in both myself and Ofili. Also when it comes to his elephant dung it can be compared to my nail work of showing the ugly side and adding darkness when using the fluorescent paint and the dots showing the beauty as well as using the element of light within my work therefore showing a link between Ofili’s type of style and mine but in the way different because is work is always full from the top to the bottom of the canvas but I like that fragile almost harmonious approach to my work making the viewers really look closer at every dot and punch hole to really see and understand the contrast of the piece and image within the paper.
The sketches done at Ipswich Museum lend to be linked in with one piece of my work in the form of the mandala lion piece called Lionel, not only is the image taken from a tattoo but the idea of the brush strokes came from the Ipswich Museum visit with the lion sitting on top of a rock and its furry like mane brushed around its face, in this I found the idea to link not only dots within the image but brush strokes as well and this may lead to create similar patterns and shapes not only with the backgrounds but the images themselves. I found the stuffed animals and skulls more interesting than the rest of the artefacts within the museum because they always feel so alive and the detail of those animals are perfectly preserved and that is the feel I want the viewer to feel when they are looking at my work. So I started to bring the dots closer together but still maintain that sense of really looking at the image in order for it to be visible and abstract as well as if transforming the viewer to another time and place, within a different world. I chose again to change my media to ink and it gave a strong and powerful contrast to the sketches and gave character to not only the dots themselves but the object making it have texture and giving off a statement as well as telling a story within the sketch making it new and bold. Also I chose to play around with using the ink to create strange and wonderful backgrounds in the forms of dripping the ink, bold circles and even flicking it on the page with a brush, this has inspired me when it comes to the backgrounds of my much larger pieces. I found that the colours I chose were simple mostly black, blue and red because I didn’t want to overpower the page and the dots were really solid when using the ink that I found that just sticking to three of these colours made it look clean and eye catching.
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Visiting Christchurch Mansion and Ipswich Museum I was inspired to look at just simple but exciting objects that could inspire me to create ideas for my much larger pieces, using these images as a starting point and maybe looking at new materials and media that will develop and extend further throughout and within my work.
The sketches from Christchurch Mansion really made me look at the shape and lining of the object and it became quite difficult to transfer that into dot form so I found out I had to use different colours for each and separate section of the object but I found it was rewarding because it made the pieces vibrant, bold and visible to the eye. The media I chose was not paint which has been the main material throughout my work but instead I chose to use felt-tip pens it gives these drawings a softness effect and a kind of childlike texture, such as when your children discover the art of colouring something in, it makes it fragile and rare. Also I chose to do old objects such as the toy car and the ancient tea pot because I wanted to create something from something old by transforming it from line and shape to a mere simple dotted piece.
Working on this piece was quite difficult and also a really fun experience and those little dots really gave the piece character and emotion. It wasn’t easy when it came to take photos because the dots were so tiny but the detail of the lady was exactly what I wanted a simple yet meaning behind the image and the pattern itself.
The lights also gave a kind of movement to the piece and within each of the dots making the lady bolder and more powerful as if she herself was moving and in the darkness the lights also became a sense of pattern giving the piece as a whole a decorative feel to it.
Chris Ofili goes on to say ““Often in the end a finished painting would be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath, I tried to think of a way of working where all of those layers could coexist without cancelling each other out. All of what comes before is just as important as the statement on top” (Ofili, 2009, cited in Tate, no date) that even though there are different elements, materials, textures and contrasts they all must work and coexist together to create something whole and that works well within the piece itself.
This quote relates to work because during the piece called Lionel I found that I had to update myself to the painting adding different layer on layer and changing my decisions throughout the progress in order to get to the finish piece, these changes were good because it made the piece more vibrant and less messy.
This piece went through a series of changes, with a blue kind of like cloud background done with a sponge it gave off a soft and flow effect but it became difficult for the image done by black dots to come through. I decided to put brush strokes over and within the dots so the image of the lion was more bold and solid it also gave the piece another texture and contrast but I feel that from now on if I was to add a background to a piece, I should dot the image and then do the background around it making it not as messy and crowded but flows to create one polka dot piece.
After looking at tattoo images I chose to just look at images that I like and really focus on the pattern and decorative line and go in to depth on the different kinds of patterns and shaping that can bring forward my work and make it even better.
