Artist Michael Landy came to UCS not long ago, and talked to us about his art career from when he had a piece of work selected on the BBC TV show ‘Take Hart’, and how his career went from that until now. One particular part about his work that really interested me was he done a series sketches of his dad and other close relations to him.
At the National Portrait Gallery a display of portrait drawings by Landy; selected from a larger group of drawings of friends and family, this is a project that occupied Landy for over a year. He drew someone every day, for eight hours, seven days a week.
Before the talk I was thinking about doing this idea to document my emotioins each day, I am yet to start this, but I am going to start in the next couple of days. The only time I am going to draw is when I feel is the right time, what ever triggers a certain emotion that I felt needs to be transcribed onto paper. Some days I feel up and down and I feel I need to draw the people who trigger my emotions, or even objects. It may not even be my whole face I need to draw maybe a cheek and toe nail. I am not going to keep the sketchbook full to the brim of friends, family and personal objects, anything that come to mind.
I have not started the final pieces yet, so I feel documenting my emotions until the preparation for the final show would be a great way to show how the paintings I create develop into the how the paint looks, the colour etc.
Today I went into the black space in the studio and projected my video onto the wall to see how it looks in a dark closed environment. The experiment went really well however the only problem I did have was the connection between the laptop and the projector, which was really slow. I sat down on the chair and I made sure there were no distractions around me so I made sure I was in complete darkness. I had my headphones in and I was listening to the track that I wanted to be played with the video, which was the Einaudi Ambient piano piece called ‘Nuvole Bianche’. I felt almost exactly how I wanted to feel, but the only thing that did not make me comfortable in my surroundings was the chair, so I should really find a much more comfortable chair or maybe a bed?….just so all my focus is on the video and the music playing, also feeling welcomed and contented.
Looking back at my dissertation I talked about how Nauman’s room installations worked and were so effective to the subject going into the space. I looked back at the Raw Materials exhibition at the Tate Modern and the piece ‘Anthro/socio’ shows how I would like my work displayed into a dark environment but in my intimate space rather than being largely open. For the degree show, I know it’s open for the public, ideally for me one person in the room at a time would be what I would prefer but I know it won’t work that way just because I don’t want my work to be shut away from everyone else, so I may have to think about these things more. Also in terms of space I know I want a small-boxed room, but like I mentioned previously I don’t want to hiding away from everyone else. So at the moment I know what I want to paint but I need to think of my other options if I don’t get the space.
During the experiment I photograph stills of the video, I could not see any of the space around which was really effective. One thing that I was not sure about was how clear the paint looked on the wall. the video was played in HD but I think in terms of the scale of the projection it was too big. I did like the idea of the whole envionment and intimacy in the room but I am now considering whether to go with the video or let the painting and the sound speak for itself rather than a sequence of close-up stills combined all in a time framed video. Like John Cages 4’33” that was a time-based performance and I do think it’s a great way of letting the audience focus. If there was just the paintings and the sound present, the sound then becomes the time frame instead of having the video, it would then still become a time based performance.
Also in my previous posts I talked about my painting ‘Falling Into the Abyss’ at the Marylebone Parish Church in London and I talked about how I felt that I wished I painted it a lot bigger as the emotion is not that strong. I projected the painting onto the wall and on a bigger scale it does to me create more of an impact. Also I experimented this with the painting ‘Invidia’ (the green painting of my friend Laurel) and even though I was happy with the size of the painting as it was, projected on a bigger scale does look even more effective. So now I know in terms of scale I need work large, like Chuck Close’s portraits.
One final thing I have noticed the colour of the paint does not seem to matter that much now. The texture of the paint and the sound seem to be the dominant force at the moment. Colour is still really important to the pieces, but I am not going to make it obvious what the emotion is just painting blocked colour…the sound may then not be needed.
Reflecting back to the previous Bacon post, I found a video of Bacon talking about how he uses photography in his work. He was inspired by paintings by Van Gogh, Valazquez and many more artists and he also works from photography by Eadweard Muybridge. From a book I looked at in the library there was a page that contained photographic imagery of a subject he painted and there about six photographs of her face form different angles. When you see the painting next to the sourcing images you can see all the angles he painted from.
On the link attached on the bottom is a documentary on Bacon’s work on The South Bank Show and he talked how he paints. ‘Not illustration of reality, but to create images which are concentration of reality, and a short hand of sensation.’ Francis Bacon. Bacon finds painting straight onto the canvas makes it less of an illustration, because he think if he drew out the figures of the subject make it into an illustration. He thinks it’s more effective to attack the canvas with the paint straight away. I felt that this worked for me when painting the portrait of Anna and my self portrait, it was less time consuming and I felt the more paint I apply without the outline the more intruiging it is when the subject gradually appears through onto the canvas. When I paint someone I usually struggle to decide to choose between about ten images. Working the same way as Bacon would help this more.
But with my final pieces that I want for the degree show I know I eant another self portrait done potentially as the main piece to have a very detailed face of a really powerful emotion and blur out with another face (like using a slow shutter speed on a camera) to create an effect that looks like two completely different emotions. I’m quite photo shy so if someone was taking a picture of myself I would want to look away, so I know I want that to show in the painting. I need to take photos soon!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfTgEKQj0Dk
Bacon and Photography
Going back to the last few posts, I talked about Hambling’s installation ‘War Requiem’. I mentioned about doing a video of my textured self-portrait and I have now created one and uploaded it to youtube. The video is 3 minutes and 31 seconds long and I added a sequence of photos of my painting starting from the bottom to the top and then finishing with the painting as a whole. Originally I was going to combine my own composition to the video, but I felt that as this is an experiment, I would add a song that fits well with me and with how emotional I was that day. The original photograph, which I took myself, was a day I felt upset and angry and I wanted that frustration out onto the canvas. The song I chose is ‘Nuvole Bianche’ by Ludovico Einaudi, listening to the piece and watching the video in progress, I felt that it is the perfect song for me. I personally felt the movement and the colour of the paint fit very well together.
Yesterday I went to record the song on piano using a recorder and a midi cable so no background noise could be heard, but some problems occurred. The cable would not work, so the only other option would have been to play it with the background noise. I felt that the background noise would confuse and distract the audience. The perfect environment that worked well for me was it to be played in a dark room on your own, sitting back with your earphones in and watch the video full screen and focus on the movement and the colour of the paint and listen to sounds on top of it…..also play the video in HD so the texture of the paint is clear as it can be.
Next step for me is to create that environment in the black space in the studio and set up a projection of the video and create that exact environment. If no one can see or feel the same of how I felt that does not matter so much to me, I know everyone is going to react differently. After I’ve done that experiment I’m going to make the three large canvases that I would like to be in the final degree show, if the projection experiment work I may sway towards that idea, so we will see what happens. Due to copyright for the audio I would have to find a way to record the song myself, but for now I’ve attached a link for the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdDDY5nVA3A
Talking to some people at the UCS show at Marylebone Church in London, it was mentioned that my painting has a haunting religious element to it and fits well with the surroundings . I did find it strange seeing the painting in different locations, my thoughts change each time. In my second year I painted my hands holding water and my thoughts were not to make it symbolise any religion or anything, more to capture the abstraction of the water. As that painting developed it emerged into an installation participation piece, where the audience can express their thoughts when they see the painting.
Going back to what my peers said about the Del Rey painting at Marylebone I remembered an artist I researched not long ago. Akiane Kramarik is a child prodigy artist and poet born in the US who says that god gave her the ability to paint and see all of these places that are not real, she then paints these visions onto canvas. One painting in particular that felt relevant to what I’m doing with my work is the piece ‘Filtering Self Awareness’, for a final piece I would like to paint maybe a self portrait with a similar composition, full of different textures.
Recently I have been looking at Francis Bacon’s work and was really interested in how he uses photography to create his work. I found out by someone from the art staff that when creating a portrait like his ‘Self Portrait’, he looks at different compositions of someones face from a few photographs, and then paints sections from all the photographs. Bacon found that the perfect picture is not a copy of reality.
I’ve also looked at Bacon’s portrait of the Pope the Innoncent X or commonly known as ‘The Screaming Pope’, solely based on how much power the paint has to the viewer, well with me it had that impact. The expression of the subject and the streaks going down the canvas bring that emotion out alot, I felt that it gave it a sense of movement of him screaming so load it shakes the canvas. Bacon used the same composition as Valezquez’s portrait of him a few centuries ago. Also its also been known that he might of been inspired by a painting done by Titian titled ‘Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto’ 1558 which shows half of the subjects face hidden behind a transparent curtain and visually looks like how the lines were created from Bacon’s version.
