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.
