An Experiment with materials.
Since the beginning of this project I had a set vision of painting realist portraits. After a very useful and informative critical review of my work with some fellow peers and tutors, it was suggested that I should consider working with other mediums and not restrict myself to painting.
After giving this some thought I decided to revisit my passion for street art which perhaps offers the most contemporary form of portraiture.
One artist has always interested me with his distinct use of materials and unorthodox methods of creating a portrait.
Vhils – a Portuguese street artist who turns plastered buildings into iconic works of art. He begins by coating brick walls with plaster or white paint and then carves away specific areas revealing a very detailed impression of a face. However, what interested me foremost was his interest in turning ordinary people into icons.
“They are all people I have met briefly in cities where I have created murals. I like the idea of turning ordinary, common people into icons, to contrast this with the need people seem to have to create icons in the first place. Instead of creating icons out of people who have changed history, like what Warhol was doing with Mao and others, I take an ordinary person and try and make people think about the ordinary citizens who struggle every day to eke a living in contemporary society.” (Vhils, n.d. cited in Lazinc, n.d.)
This theory of turning the ignored and everyday person back into someone of value and status is crucial to the concept that underpins my work.
After accepting that I could not throw myself at the nearest brick wall and start painting on it without getting arrested, I thought of a material that I could work onto, something I could paint onto and carve away at. My solution, with its obvious connections and connotations with homelessness – Cardboard.
I had found some corrugated cardboard lying around and of a fairly large scale. After scavenging the cardboard I painted a white ground over it and then painted one of my found images in a stencil style in black paint. My strategy was to paint the image using three tones, the white ground as highlights, the black for the darkest tones and for the middle tone my plan was to tear away the surface of the cardboard to reveal the bare corrugated cardboard underneath.
Embedded is a speeded up video of me blocking in the darkest tones of the face.
Having reflected on my previous portrait work I have felt that my more highly finished realist work may be more appreciated for its technical construction than for its subject matter. I was looking for a way for the subject matter to be more prominent as it holds more importance than my technical abilities to paint. I felt that a whole show of purely realist work would not capture the breadth of the issue I am trying to tackle. It is possible that I may incorporate the two together but I shall be governed by the overall look, design and tone of my degree show.
Ok time it’s to experiment!
Ref: Lazinc, n.d. Vhils. [online] Available at: http://www.lazinc.com/artist/vhils [Accessed 06 March 2014].
