As I become increasingly immersed within my ‘Every photo we took at the beach’ series, I can not help but recall the photographs of Martin Parr.
Whilst his images of a seaside resort past its prime are quite different to my family photographs, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two next to each other. Parr has claimed, after backlash about his photographs, that he just pictured what he saw. What I like about this is the fact of capturing everyday life and the inbetween moments which I have reflected on previously.
I hope what I can also capture in my own series is this reality of family life and not just posed, happy faces.
Throughout this project I have tried to become more focused on process instead of heavily on concept which I normally do.
With this in mind I have documented some of my processes including etching and painting drips!
By doing this I feel I am beginning to understand my work a great deal better, thinking about how best to achieve a concept through the process. I find some of the unintentional marks which I have made when making my work are quite exciting and I am definitely starting to acknowledge and appreciate this element in my project.
When using the drip technique in my painting I attached plain pieces of paper underneath to catch the drips and make backdrops on which to create drawings/prints etc. I have quite a few now so I think I would like to experiment with some more monoprinting on these and see what effect this creates.
Looking back over my past blog posts I realise I have not discussed in much detail how my 22 etching series was getting on.
I have now completed all 22 prints, although some will definitely need re-printing. Some of the images I used also don’t work as well as I’d hoped within the print format and so I need to revisit the photos from this particular time in my life and select another image to create an etching print from.
I believe I am getting into my stride regarding how I approach my etchings and my mark-making techniques. There are a few prints which are quite heavy with marks and the image is more difficult to read. I think I prefer the prints which are slightly more simple and thought out in terms of how they are executed.
Pictured in this post are all 22 etchings on my studio wall, as well as a few close examples of a few of my favourite prints.
It has been a couple of weeks now since I had my last crit and I have been so busy etching away that I have not yet had time to reflect on it. I definitely think that in the last 2 weeks I have been thinking in greater depth about the best ways to further my work, both the print and paint aspects.
At the very beginning of my use of anaglypta wallpaper in my work I had always thought about printing onto it. It is only now that I have felt it is the right time to do this. In previous posts I have reflected on my worries about my etchings being too illustrative and did not know how to solve this problem. Printing onto anaglypta seems to make perfect sense in this situation to take my prints more into the realms of fine art.
In terms of my painting, I am unsure about the strength of the drip technique and relevance to my subject matter. A part of me feels that the painting just on its own is not working for me and that this is the time to start to bring the print and paint elements together.
I need to start thinking about the combination of paint, print and the anaglypta paper which I want to remain a strong presence in my work. I want to experiment with applying paint to the anaglypta in a variety of ways and then printing on top of it. Perhaps I shall start by creating little pieces to try a few things out and then see where it takes me.
Now that the majority of my ‘22′ (2014) series is completed, I have decided that my next big series shall be named ‘Every photo we took at the beach’ inspired by the seaside cabinet at the Museum of Childhood as well as my trips to the beach as a child. I have already begun etching plates with these images and am still compiling a file with all these types of images in. At the moment I believe I am at around 50. Needless to say this next series will be over double that of ‘22.’
In previous posts I have reflected on my wish to use anaglypta wallpaper in more of my works given the relevance of such a material to my childhood memories.
Following both my initial experiment on this paper and then working with the drip effect in Britannia Pier (2014), I decided to experiment with the wallpaper further by using a family photograph of my sister and I at the beach.
At this point I am still finding my feet regarding how to get the best out of this material. I feel there is a great deal of scope for where I can take this including using the anaglypta wallpaper in my print work also.
The particular piece pictured in this post is, in my opinion, incredibly rough and merely demonstrates my experimentation with the anaglypta paper and acrylic paint.
There seems to be an unintentional thread in the last few paintings I have done in that there is no detail in the faces of the people within. Whilst the scale of the pieces and also the nature of the drip technique do not allow for precision, I quite like how this also reflects the unknown identity of the people within.I need to think about this concept a bit more and see if I can refine the idea. I still feel currently that my prints are the stronger works so a great deal more experimentation will be need to bring my paintings up to this standard.
It was back in September when I first started using family photography in my artwork. I had selected one image of myself standing in the back garden of my childhood home. At this point I was thinking about my own identity and how I could relate to old photographs of myself, whether I’d recognize the little girl within.
I began to create a piece of work about this which was originally earmarked for an exhibition outside of university. This painting, however, remained for months in my studio space untouched and unfinished.
My initial intention was to create a painting which was both expressive and painterly, hinting at the presence of a figure but leaving her identity unknown. Only the other people within the studio would’ve known it was me as the original photo was tacked to my wall space.
I had decided to paint the figure in various tones of grey with shadows of black and highlights of white. The contrast between this and the bright colours of the flowers was pleasing to me, however, it was when I began painting the white and pink flowers when the figure became overpowered. Despite the use of bold colours which popped out of the canvas, I wanted the figure to have a discernible presence in the piece. I felt that the white flowers were too harsh against the green background and just didn’t fit with the rest of the painting. Not knowing what to do I left it, hoping to return and know how to fix it.
A few months down the line I was beginning to spend more and more time in the studio. One day I decided to paint entirely over the white flowers with white paint in the hope that I would be able to see things clearer once they’d been removed. I then used a drip effect to blend the white into the rest of the painting. Even though I had enhanced the amount of white on the canvas I was just glad those awful flowers were gone!
I left the painting for a week or so after this, still unsure of how to finish it. When producing my initial experimental drip paintings it was brought to my attention by a fellow student how I had adopted a similar dripping process as was used on the canvas. It was at this point where I knew what needed to be fixed. In my struggle to remain painterly and expressive at the same time, I had blended the paint too much and the figure had lost a lot of definition. The bright flowers at the bottom were also obscured by drips of white paint from my previous session and did not pop as much as they had previously.
I decided to drip shades of yellow and green over the painted white section to reduce the harshness of it. I then applied more paint to the flowers and allowed the paint to drip from these too. The painting became more and more relevant to my current work referencing the inability to recall memories and acknowledging how little I can actually remember about the past.
The last part to tackle was the figure. I didn’t want to lose her in the painting anymore than I already had. I decided to carefully add drips of black and white to emphasize shadows and highlights of her form and bring her more to the forefront again. It was miraculous how a few drips of paint here and there made me feel so much more positive about this painting and seems to bring together my initial thoughts from way back in September and the ideas I am dealing with at the moment.
