For my first blog post I want to share some work I have done over the three years of being at University of Suffolk and show how my work has moved on and (hopefully) improved.
I began studying at University of Suffolk immediately after sixth form, with no idea of what direction my practice would take, and it’s fair to say that my ideas have changed multiple times over the past couple of years!
After our initial 12 weeks of first year where we experimented with each medium: painting, sculpture, printing, lens based and drawing, we were left to work towards any subject we wanted. As my only experience of studying art was from GCSE and A Level I was used to being given a title to produce work from, but as I quickly realised, university is very different! For my first year I based my work upon concerts which is one of my main interests. My final piece was a large scale mobile phone which I made out of cardboard, I also did a lot of print work based on this theme.
When I started second year I wanted to begin with a new idea as I felt I wanted something that I would enjoy making work on more. One of the ideas I worked with was drawing animals, mainly endangered animals, and working with ballpoint pen. I really enjoyed this but the idea behind the work was lacking. For my professional practice module I also stuck with this theme, I went to the RSPCA and took some photos of their animals and drew some of their dogs for them. The drawings were then put into a raffle to help raise money for the charity.
Part way through second year I realised that this idea wasn’t going to keep me focused for the rest of my time at uni and so I again changed my idea. I began with a simple idea of drawing small everyday objects but large scale. I worked with charcoal which I found to be a lot more free than ballpoint pen and meant I could easily draw large scale. Once I got started on this idea I started to enjoy my practice a lot more and found myself in the studios working a lot more often.
I have now started my third year and I was originally planning on continuing the idea of drawing small ordinary objects large scale but from looking at an artist who I found online, Anouk Griffioen (who I found from searching for large scale charcoal drawers), it inspired me to think of a new idea where I could base my work upon myself (more about this in blogs to come). The work will still be large scale and mainly charcoal (I think!) but this idea could lead me in many directions and could ultimately be more meaningful than work I have previously produced.
