University Campus Suffolk

#9

Looked at a couple more artists recently:

Ying Mei Duan: http://china.southbankcentre.co.uk/artists/#yingmei-duan

Duan has created an eerie fairy tale land, in which the viewer is almost trapped in an enclosed space with the artist herself. She is sometimes singing, making sounds, or remains silent. Whatever the case, she makes an uncomfortable atmosphere within the environment – one of which I personally would have no intention of entering as I have no desire to scare myself by being taken off guard by this kind of intervention. I’m too much of a wimp for that.

Arthur Rackham: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/illustrators/rackham.html

An artist that I was told to look at by one of my tutors, but came across completely accidentally in a book I had borrowed from a friend – lucky!

His works range from illustrating Grimm’s tales to stories like Alice in Wonderland. Rackham’s work can depict gruesome creatures in great detail to correspond to the different stories, as well as the more ‘child friendly’ imagery, depending on the story.

I find myself drawn more to his horrific works as I can see the fine detail and beauty behind the initial horror of the images.

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#8

Now that the dissertation is over and done with I have been spending my time reading through fairy tales (mostly Grimm’s for the time being), and picking out scenes that I feel depict the more horrific sides to them and drawing out how I imagine them to be before I will eventually create more large scale work.

I am picturing my sketchbook becoming something of an intricate picture book that, when looked at properly, shows the misery and suffering brought upon the characters within the tales.

However it is sometimes difficult to ignore the more ridiculous tales that I come across while reading.

(Also: I’ve made the mistake of drawing 300 candles for the story ‘Godfather Death’ and am planning on doing the same image again digitally. What on earth am I getting myself into?)

I’ve finished the first of my large scale digital images, but haven’t printed it full size yet due to money issues (big prints are expensive!). However, I have it printed and mounted at A1 size, which still gives a good impression of what I have done for it. I’m really pleased and want to get more done because it’s more interesting for me to work this way.

Let’s hope these candles aren’t the end of me.

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#7

I have looked at a number of artists over the last few months, focusing on those that create the more intricate environments or are influenced by folklore, etc.

I have looked at:

Ryoko Aoki: http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=28546

Who creates intricate drawings on paper using pens and pencil. The detail put into the work gives the impression of the skeleton of the flower, as she very much works with outlines rather than the bigger picture.

The combination of drawings to create a larger image is particularly effective, in my opinion, as it shows growth in these minimalistic pictures.

Sandra Cinto: http://www.phillipscollection.org/exhibitions/2012-06-19-intersections-sandra-cinto.aspx

She creates large scale works that span the lengths of rooms – creating deep atmospheres of the sea and sky that envelop the viewer.

She uses very fine details in the lines of her work, creating waves and stars intricately, almost appearing to create a life-size environment for the viewer to enter, and it is this factor of pulling the viewer into the work that I want to adopt in my own practice.

Yun Fei Ji: http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/yun-fei-ji/

Creates traditional-looking paintings and drawings based around morals and moral problems.

I think that this kind of focus to the work is interesting as it gives an almost hidden meaning to pictures that are usually considered beautiful pieces of art – making them almost gruesome.

Simone Shubuck: http://www.kantorgallery.com/exhibitions/simone-shubuck/

She collages images together, creating the impression of a complex environment, concentrating on the use of flowers and nature.

She also depicts monsters and unnatural creatures within her work, giving it a more mysterious and almost frightening factor.

In my own opinion, her work is not unlike the Hindu imagery of their Gods – it is very detailed and beautiful, but gives way to the unknown.

Picasso: http://www.art.co.uk/gallery/id–a16-b196099/posters.htm

Picasso looked at the slightly more grotesque side of mythology – looking at the image of the minotaur, and then, as he did with much of his work, distorted its features, placing the body in awkward positions, producing an even more horrifying image.

David Hockney: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-publications-86/six-fairy-tales-from-the-brothers-grimm-illustrated-by-david-hockney-1295/

Hockney created a series of etchings, illustrating six of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, including some that are not so well known, creating images out of the dark shapes and figures, and making some quite dark imagery to go alongside the stories.

I think it would be productive for me to read more of the tales myself, in more detail, finding the pieces that would work well in creating the nightmarish environments I want to depict.

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#6

This is a case of getting my act together again. I’ve left this for far too long due to dissertation and things just seeming to build up all over the place. But now that that’s all out of the way I can finally concentrate again. Just because I haven’t been updating here doesn’t mean I having been making notes about what I need to post.

Backtracking some time, we had the presentations about our work and I feel that mine could have gone better.

I feel as though the tutors misinterpreted the intention of my work, not catching onto the darker, nightmarish natures of fairy tales and folklore that I mean to express, they seem to have honed in on and focused on the sexualisation of childhood imagery, which is not what I want to look at.

I think now is definitely the time to move away from the pretty little fairy pictures and concentrate on the dark environments that I always intended to create using the chalk pictures and sketches as initial planning for my digital work – though I am now unsure that creating custom wallpaper to display the large scale work is really the way to go.

Either way, I need to look at a wider range of material and move forward from there.

#5

I’m trying to get away from making pretty pictures of fairies and it has been proving a little more difficult than I had initially anticipated.

I took a look at Paula Rego’s work that makes reference to Disney and turns it into darkened, semi-erotic versions of the bright and sparkly films we see on the television – such as Snow White and Pinocchio.

The project I thought was the most interesting, though, was the one based on the ‘Fantasia’ film – taking the idea of the Ostriches and turning them into a series of quite masculine, almost scary images of ballerinas, rather than the abstract, anthropomorphic use of the ostriches in the film.

She makes the idea almost perverse – taking away any innocence that Disney placed into the stories, and twisted them back into the dark roots from which they originated.

Bearing in mind the dark roots, I’ve taken a closer look at Grimm’s fairy tales (and have finally gotten my hands on my copy of Andersen’s tales), and reading through a few of them it’s almost scary to see the difference between what we’re shown in films and what the stories were originally – I’ve said this before, but it’s amazing how much darker the stories in the book are! They teach morals rather than paint a picture of justice and happiness, and would not necessarily be considered suitable to be told to children in today’s society because of their content – I read the tale ‘The Pink Flower’, which tells of some particularly horrific scenes of a character being forced to eat hot coals until flames spewed from their mouth, and then was cut into pieces as punishment for his misdeeds (he was the villain, but this is beside the point). It makes me realise that even when good does win in these stories, they are not always the gracious characters we make them out to be – there is evil in everyone, and I think that it’s this message that I want to get across through the depiction of traditional Fae in my work. They weren’t always the nice little creatures that we think them to be today.

I’ve pretty much forced myself to make my work bigger so that I free myself up a bit and can actually create environments, rather than just a load of dancing fairies that don’t mean anything much.

I think that be doing this I can get a better feel for what my work will look like when I start to take it further and make it even bigger using my computer. By the end of this I want to potentially make detailed, digital images that will stretch the entire height of my studio wall – literally engulfing the viewer and making them part of the world that I am showing.

Fingers crossed that it will actually work out that way.

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