University Campus Suffolk

At the end of last week I started working on my second 4x6ft canvas. I wanted to create a different sense of atmosphere compared to the first one. I feel like I have achieved this. However when I have been in the studio this week I feel like there could be more added to it. I have worked on it a little more yesterday and am starting to feel better about it, although I still think they are missing something, just not sure what!

Once I have both paintings on the wall I will see if I think they need more done to them. I think it will be easier once they are on the wall to know whether or not I should add to the painting.

Even though we are coming to the end of this degree project I am still finding artists work that is inspiring and also relates to my subject matter and me.

Thanks to social media like Facebook and Instagram I came across the artists Samantha Keely Smith and Jessica Oliver by accident.

After seeing a few images of both artists work it made me want to look a little more in depth at each artist and their paintings.

Samantha Keely Smith

Essex born artist Samantha Keely Smith paints ‘abstract ocenic landscapes’. She mainly works with shellac, enamel and oil paint, materials that I havent really used within my own practice (except from some experiments with oil paints towards the start of this project).

I found a quote from Smith which relates a lot to my paintings . . .

“My images are not at all real places or even inspired by real places. They are emotional and psychological places. Internal landscapes, if you will. The tidal pull and power of the ocean makes sense to me in terms of expressing these things, and I think that is why some of the work has a feel of water about it. My work speaks of things that are timeless, and I think that for most of us the ocean represents something timeless.”

My work is not based on any real place or copied from any image, what smith says really relates to me and makes me think about my work a lot more in relation to them being emotional and psychological places.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/04/internal-lan…

http://www.samanthakeelysmith.com

Jessica Oliver

Jessica Oliver is an artist from suffolk that is now living in london. Oliver works from the natural environment.

“When painting from landscape my intent is to represent the light, impact, immersion and energy experienced in nature. The viewer’s exploration of atmosphere and the visual and visceral surface of the paintings is my main focus, using abstraction to re-invent an experience of space.”

http://www.jessoliver.co.uk

http://instagram.com/jessoliver_

Not long now until our degree show and assessment and I’m pleased to say I’m feeling on top of everything! Last week we found out what space we would each have for the degree show and thankfully I got the space I was hoping for and imagined my work being in.

So now I know where my work will actually be going I can start to decide exactly what I want to display. I already know that I want to have my 6 x 4ft painting up. I have a smaller painting that Id also like to display however I have a feeling that it will look uneven and not balanced by having a smaller painting alongside a larger one.

What I had always imagined was to have two large canvases side by side, so at the end of last week I bought some more wood to get a frame made up and have another 6x4ft canvas stretched. I can start painting that this week and hopefully, that is what I will display along with my original 6 x 4ft painting.

Things I still need to think about:

• Names for my paintings.

• What work will I put in for the assessment.

At the start of this year the main idea I had was that I wanted to create large semi abstract seascapes that had a real atmospheric feel to them. This idea is something different to what I have worked on in previous projects, but it was something I wanted to put into practice for a while so my final degree project seemed like the best time to do this.

Throughout this project I have worked on large scale canvases, small experiments in a sketch book and back to large scale pieces again. The large scale pieces are what I set out to achieve but by experimenting and working in a sketch book to start with I have also created smaller works, although because of their size they do not create such an overwhelming atmosphere like a larger piece would, however I feel like they create a more serene atmosphere when compared to the large dramatic pieces. When I start painting I never really have a set idea of how I want the finished piece to look, this is because working from memory plays a big part in my process, and I don’t normally paint directly from an image. I find this really helps me to keep a sense of abstraction within my work.

Over the last week or so I have spent a lot of time in the studio working on some new paintings. I bought two 36 x 48 inch canvases and this is what I have started to work on. Although these are a lot smaller than my most recent 4 x 6ft canvas I still feel like I am working on a large scale compared to when I first started this project. The fact that I have been able to progress onto a much larger scale is something I am really pleased about, because at the start of this project the thought of working on a large scale was pretty daunting. I’ll post some pictures with a right up about these paintings in the next few days.