I have found, finding artist’s to relate to my work was difficult in the beginning. Most of the time I do not generally think about the artists that use the same style, colour, technique or process.
The aritsts that I have been looking at most recently are Frank Stella, Tiff Manuell, Ian Davenport, Howard Hodgkin, Robert Rauschenberg, Bernard Frize, Zebedee Jones, Sarah Morris, Christopher Wool, Lee Krasner, and Fischli and Weiss.
The thing that most interested me about these artists are that they are all very different, some of the artists are about the colour used, the process itself and texture. With having all these various different artists I always able to use processes and techniques that I have not used before, so with that in mind I began to experiment with some ideas. The one technique that I wanted to use was creating texture within my work, I have noticed previously looking back at my artwork over the years that most of it is quiet flat. I was thinking to myself that if I added texture it would add a different dimension to my work, the only problem was that I like to use acrylic paint which drys quickly and is not easy to move once applied to the surface. But I still went ahead and tried to create texture with just acrylic, the result in doing this was that the more paint I added the more shiny the surface got in the end the fabric almost became a vinyl texture which is not bad but not the look I wanted for my artwork.
Using Ian Davenport as the next artist to inspire me, I decided to use his technique of dripping paint and I used my acrylic paint watered it down and then began pouring it on to the canvas. When I began using this process I noticed that I would have to create several layers of drips to get the texture that I want. I think in the end I created about fifteen layers and it did create a depth to my composition because you could see each layer but in the end it was not what I wanted as my end result.
