There’s No Place like Home

My research into mug shots has led me to look at the Victorian baby farmer Amelia Dyer. A baby farmer was a woman who would take in infants for a fee. She would then arrange for the infant to be adopted or care for the child herself. No adoption ever took place. The little babies taken into Dyer’s home were then murdered by her.

Desperate young women had no choice but to give up their most precious things  in an age when unmarried mothers were condemned morally and socially. As there was no effective birth control this led to a huge growth in infanticide, so baby farmers were needed in an era when tiny new-borns were commonly seen abandoned in filthy streets. The act of giving up a child for a young woman must have been heart breaking, but I wonder if deep down the mothers knew what lie ahead for their little ones when they handed them to Dyer?

Initially I have been looking at Dyer throughout her life and have made small studies on paper. Personally I feel that researching Dyer’s background and the era is important and all part of the process of creating work. Her crimes were committed in the home and it is this unsettling link with domesticity and crime I plan to focus on.

Study sheet drawings

I always feel a bit uncomfortable when I say I have the D word. People sometimes look at me as if to say ‘don’t use that as an excuse’ and then I feel like this.

Recently I read this article by the artist Doug Spellacey, he talks about his experience of being dyslexic.  “If I’m having a conversation, I won’t be able to think of a word. It can happen to anyone if they’re tired, but it happens to me every day”. His description is exactly what it is like for me. Yes, a great big chaotic muddle of words lives in my head and this can make life difficult.

I had a crit this week with tutors and fellow students and I don’t think I explained myself very well when I was talking about my work. A positive of blogging here is that I have time to think and write down what I’m trying to say and the feelings I want to evoke when people view my work.  The crit was helpful and got me thinking about how others see what I am doing. I just wish I could have found the words.

Now let’s not mention that word again.

Alexander McQueen, razor shell clam dress.

Metamorphosis was an ongoing theme for the London fashion designer Alexander McQueen. This is also a subject I have explored in my own work.  I was very pleased and lucky to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition, Savage Beauty, at the Victoria and Albert Museum over the summer. The demand for tickets was so great that for the last two weeks of the exhibition the museum remained open throughout the night.

Savage Beauty, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

McQueen was a man with a cinematic eye. Inspired by Hitchcock, Victorian England and nature, he created a fusion of art and fashion. The dimly lit rooms of the show were filled with strange female forms that were disturbingly beautiful. Feathers, clams and fabric was bound and draped over the bodies of mannequins.

Cabinet of Curiosities, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

One of the most striking rooms was entitled ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’. In the centre of the room a mannequin spun slowly, surrounded with walls crammed with imagery. My brain was bombarded with McQueen’s theatrical creativity. Screens showing his fashion shows, bones, butterflies, feathers, flowers, colour, texture along with the sound of a typewriter all added to the intensity of this eerie room.

Savage Beauty has to be one of the highlights of my year. I was taken into a dark fantasy world and challenged to think about the link between beauty and horror. Some of my mugshot artworks are of women who are beautiful despite having committed horrendous crimes. This has started me thinking about preconceived views of women, motherhood and the home.

Savage Beauty, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

‘I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. I have to force people to look at things.’ (Alexander McQueen)

Paula Rego. (2003) Come to Me [lithograph]

Paula Rego is an artist who has influenced my own work since I started university. I remember when I first saw her work, and being drawn into a world of haunting imagery. She uses the familiar – mothers and daughters, dolls and animals, and then reinterprets what is familiar to us all into something darker.

Paula Rego. (2003) Getting Ready for the Ball [lithograph]

I wanted to experiment with my ink drawings by adding colour. This work is purely about how colour would lay over black ink on a canvas. I looked at Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre illustrations by Paula Rego. She illuminates the work and conveys a mood by adding colour over her imagery. This is something I wanted to achieve with my ink drawings.

Preliminary ink drawing on canvas

Adding colour to the canvas

I have used coloured acrylic inks over my black drawing, which I’m very pleased with. Adding colour seems to make my drawings more unsettling. There is something strange about old photos which have had colour added. They look historical but could have been taken yesterday. It is this oddness I want to evoke in my own paintings. I shall now try colour on a mugshot drawing.

Sarah Bale. (2015) Poison Flower [acrylic inks on canvas]

Annie (2015) ink and acrylic on canvas

I want the viewer to sympathise but also be fearful of this depiction of the psychological shattering of Annie.