My Final Year – Degree Practice Digital Sketchbook

Notes taken from crit with Gary Colclough on 15th April 2021.

Images discussed.

Watercolour pigment granulate on a rough surface brushwork is beautiful
Nature and natural forms growing incrementally and organically marks overlapping not working methodically a sculpture that’s being formed growing emerging and accumulating in a space
The use of materials and colours, the language of painting
Transparency
Painting mediums
Opaque or transparent physical properties of the paint make them more staining and pigmented
Names of pigments in paint t or o or square
Site specific or 3d
Birdsong, sound being included in the actual installation?
Katy dove – lyrical landscape
Painting as a movement or works with light
Good documentation
Material look at paint and pigments more stain sculptural relationship

27/05/2021 – I really enjoyed the crit with Gary, he is an endless fountain of knowledge and I love to gain another view of my work from him. The main thing I took from this was to explore the transparency of the paint and materials i was using in my ‘Transient Convection’ piece as this was what he enjoyed the most about the work. I had a look at my own supplies and played around with creating layers of transparency over the paint as shown below in a more recent image of the work.

Image of ‘Transient Convection’ (2021) Elgin Thwaites

Notes taken during the virtual visit from artist Graham Crowley:

Surrealist artists use lighting to make the landscape look realistic

Graham uses lighting in his work

Imposter syndrome keeps you driven and keeps you prolific.

Read the essay I don’t like art on his website

Approval and disapproval why do you like/dislike it

Warmth and disapproval subverts authorship and don’t take it personally

Painting is a discourse and we can all engage in it

Lecturers have control and dominion over our work we are shaped by them

Sharing the principles of humanity and the art market can never grapple with

The YBA’s are nieces and nephews of Margaret thatcher

In Islam the depiction of animate objects or people is a sin as it mimics Allah’s creation of life. Calligraphy is accepted and architecture. (Claimed that Muslims were ‘afraid’ of art, but I disagree)

27/05/2021 -Although I found some of the things Crowley said to contradict themselves, the visit from him was useful and through provoking. It was interesting to see the way he worked, applying layers of paint onto each other, working in a very traditional way. He used the process of abstraction and removal, using masking tape to cover layers of paint and worked over it.

Images shown for the Crit

Notes taken from the Crit:

Variety of lines and mark making that engages the interest

Large fluid strokes, short marks, long marks, drippy marks, big swirls

Remind of under the sea

Tree of life – following it through time

Relationship between up and down and left and right flows to the next one

Movement is lovely, as if it’s alive and is moving

Because it isn’t a white cube you have to follow it around

Insides of the body, cavity the way systems flow through the body

A colourful mri scan

The piece changes depending on where you stand as the entire wall is used – the scale is that the entire wall is a canvas

The colours are vivacious and lively the different tones and shades make it imperfect like all living things

Micro – enlarged microscopic structures and macro – landscape

Imperfection – the drip and chance, deliberate marks and allowed the medium to speak for itself

Wind currents and energy blue leads in like a murmuration – starling

Scale is very effective

Confident use of materials and engagement with the architecture of space

Similarity between congruous and this one but this has more confidence

Tactile and makes me want to touch it – follow it around and touch it with the hands

A lot of white currently – evokes a particular feeling and reading – less white would make it feel different

Tactility of the mark making – trace it as a feeling compelled the audience to want to experience it

Surrounded by a hug extracted from reality and placed into a space that has been created

Exciting

I do not stop at the end of a surface i carry it around a corner where does it go ?

Simple and elegant way to draw the viewer in

Done through the physicality rather than the aesthetic. Awareness of colour and mark making

Performance drawing Matthew barney drawing restraint

Imagine the motion of the hand that is required to make the marks traces of movement

Frances Elise railings stick walking around a square in London metal fence noise

Stating that I’m there in a transient way  Japanese painters, Jackson pollack, calligraphic, Carolee schneeman hair on the wall to mark make

Great documentation gives a real sense of the space

Undulating and ethereal

Permanent ephemeral feeling it can vanish touch it before it goes

Squiggle away like a wisp or sprite

Pigment is used more in one side then the outside fades away into the wall itself

Fish shoals and herring moving in schools then disappear

Time lapse video

Oscar fissinger animation

Meaning – life and being alive

Poetry of line and colour

27/05/2021 – I really enjoyed this crit with the L5’s. I found the idea of using a time lapse interesting, and i gave it a shot. However i found after filming myself for half an hour that I work very erratically, moving all over the place so much of the shot was of me moving around or I was hidden behind a wall. I might use some of this on my social media platforms as documentation though.

Images of mural development 17 March 2021

27/05/2021 – Very early documentation of ‘Transient Convection’ (2021) in the studio.

The next idea I have for my work is to create a mural in my space in the studio at university. I look to fill the whole walls with paint and colour, like I did for ‘Transcend the Cube’ (2021) but on a much larger scale.

Initially this was all the planning I did as my work is spontaneous and usually mostly unplanned. I went into the space with all my materials that I owned so I could be influenced by them alone. I firstly went with a grey pastel and started moving my body around the space making marks on the walls as I moved. These initial marks would be the baseline for the direction of movement of the next layer of watercolour paint to sit on. I moved on to making larger marks using chalk on a stick as an extension of my body in the space.

27/05/2021 – This was of working was hugely successful. I would definitely start a work like this again. I saw repeating patterns of grey line in the space which I followed with colour, tracing the movement of my body with paint and chalk initially. I then used scrunched up paper on the coloured pastel layer to make a depth of background colour in some areas which I found to be effective.