When I researched and wrote my dissertation on the figurative work of Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville I was convinced that my work would move towards large figurative portraiture. Over the summer last year I did research and plan my own large figurative piece of work in response to their work. However, I soon realised that the composition wasn’t working and the figures were unbalanced so I reprimed the canvas, covering the figures, and began another work which explored the idea of how the human form can be covered and concealed. This was to begin my own interpretations of figurative representations using paint.
I started the blog when I was making work describing how pattern, skin and body form could be brought together in my paintings. This moved to body forms in clay and bronze and the covering of these 3D forms with pattern and patena. Asking myself if the expression of mixing pattern and texture expresses a change in the perception of the figure viewed? Comparing shapes and their connection to image expression and its rendering and I think it does.
Moving my work forward again I investigated if different colours also give a change of “atmosphere” (the feelings that are taken from viewing the image).
Overpainting of original portrait painting reminded me of a pair of artists (Jean Claude & Christo ) that I became familiar with at the start of my course, their work at the time was about wrapping large objects but when I re-looked at their work I found the early work of Christo, was about wrapping magazines. I included a video clip of him unwrapping some that he had stored for some 40 years.
I used previous discarded portraits that I considered failures at the time as the base image to work on and change. Which, after a recent seminar on “Failure”, I now consider as “fruitful failures”! a term coined by Michael Landy in a video we watched.
Also another phrase Michael Landy mentioned was “creation and destruction are part of the same process” which I think rather aptly describes the process I have used. I concentrated on the discarded portrait paintings used them and overpainted them in dark colours (for the effect I wanted to obtain I think the darker overpainting works better to express how I want the finished work to feel, the dark side of what we keep hidden perhaps) and then by removing areas revealing the original as fainter traces of the faces, giving the appearance of an old wall fresco. As these old frescos were usually painted directly onto forms of lime mortar and were lighter in appearance I overpainted the next two works in white. This gave a totally different sensation when viewing the faces. These seemed more haunting faces.
Having mentioned the faces similarity to wall frescos and the way these images erode and degrade, my tutor suggested I look at an exhibition held at Tate Britain about Iconoclasm which explored the history of physical attacks on art, particularly religious, that was about removing the image of the representations.
iconocliam-at-Tate.jpg, 2015, 229 × 228cm.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/art-under-attack-histories-british-iconoclasm Tate Britain: ExhibitionArt under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm, 2013- 2014.
This type of covering of the human form was about erasing what the defaced figures represented be it religious, political or other aesthetic reasons and has been happening for centuries, as early as the Romans and Egyptians.
Questioning how to take this work forward and not just making repetitive images, I got to thinking back at the previous years 1 and 2 drawing and paintings, I realised that my work has always been about exploring ideas of identity and how we express ourselves as individuals to others but also how much we conceal. Looking at other artists who also explore similar ideas in different mediums will inspire a direction and is the way forward for me. This led me to look at the “cut piece” by Yoko Ono’s. This performance of hers was about her wearing layers of clothing and inviting the audience to participate by cutting away parts of the cloths, removing layers to reveal what was underneath. An affect that Marlene Dumas expresses as layers of paint that I interpret as a mask like expression to the faces.
Perhaps I could wrap one of the overpainted canvases, one of the darker ones, with paper not paint and reveal parts of it by tearing away areas instead of sanding. I made a short video clip of me tearing away the strips. I even liked the way the torn away pieces formed an interesting pattern on the table.
I moved this further by adding more than one layer of paper onto another old canvas and peeling parts away to reveal two birds. This didn’t work well as from a distance it was a very confused image and closer up it was messy. It’s a process that doesn’t fit with the ideas I have for this body of work but I might re-visit later.
I have though seen the work of artist Patrick Kramer, a hyper-realistic artist, who makes paintings that give an almost 3D quality to the image. Looking at this work gave me the idea to make a painting that is a representation of my work that was created by tearing paper away in strips. I hung both of the canvases next to each other to compare them. The tromp l’oeil version will need more dark shadows adding and more painted “creases” in the paper. The idea is good but the technical challenge of making it work and be a realistic comparison will be very tough but I love a challenge.
