University Campus Suffolk

This is a revamp of an old painting I did last year. My theme has been to mix earthy materials such as chalk, dust and tissue with paint and make a three dimensional piece of art inspired by the natural world. It’s not just artists that influence me but all the people in the studio. The urge to make work and be better is such a big push and this piece shows what I can do given an hour or two and a quiet studio.

This is a combination of all the techniques that I have been using. Here you can see dripping, dust sprinkling, palette knife scratches, pouring and the same use of earthy colours and textures.

Writing this I worry that my work is so process based that it lacks any meaning at all. But to me this series of work I have created is my first honest showing of my technique and interests and how they are interlinked.

These images are of a darker state of mind, a feeling of isolation yet warmth. The attempt of light coming through he dark facade that is shown upfront. Deep browns and black make for the majority of this canvas with the warmer tones coming from tan and yellows. My earlier posts study that of a journey made by my paint and all my pieces have this in mind. My aim is to capture the path that paint/chalk/water makes when let free of their hold. This is the justification of my work being very spontaneous and every piece is a one off, how posh that sounds.

I have also realised recently how much music influences my work and how I have a certain playlist I listen to whilst making work and maybe this means something. My work mirrors that of the somber relaxed music I find essential to making work, musicians such as Coldplay, Ben Howard, London Grammar, Paolo Nutini and The XX, all easy listening music that is kind of acoustic and intriguing. They all make you think which is why I believe they connect with me. Like art, I love delicate voices and singers such as Ellie Golding and Birdy who both have angelic qualities. It’s like my art could have been a song, there is the beginning of my thoughts, the middle and climax, and the after thoughts, where you reflect on what you’ve heard or in this case seen. A nice analogy I think…

Is is my work progressing enough?

is music something I should look into?

earthy materials?

brick dust?

should I film myself making art?

The next few weeks are going to be jam packed….

The auction is drawing near and the works have been hung this week and advertised. I think the biggest worry is that people won’t understand and therefore buy your work. It’s not so much about rejection as I feel content with my own work which I guess is a good thing.

My work has recently been moving very quickly and expanding into an exploration of natural materials and paint. It follows the relationship they have with one another and the role in which I play in creating the outcome that eventually becomes the art.

I have been using chalk and acrylic paint, along with a lot of water and some pretty strong acrylic paper. I find that the wetter the paper the less work I have to do to create a reaction. The acrylic paint becomes consumed by the water and forms a ‘lake’ which dries with a deeper edge and a pale inside which is quite pleasing to the eye. This is a strong contrast with the dust elements I am using and the sand texture. Mixing both delicacy and industrial techniques and feeling. These small pieces on paper show the bond between the chalk dust and water that has been an ongoing theme I have wanted to try. I like the way the water carries the dust down the page and they move together.

I find the smaller art is for me, and even within the smallest works, it’s the tiny delicate areas I enjoy the most…finding beauty in the smallest of places. I also feel the amount of water I have used has given a new vibrancy to my work, as if it is almost glazed. Interesting because that could be a nice effect to cover my work in a sort of PVA glaze. That would then be cementing the trace I have captured, keeping it forever.

These me middle images of my sketchbook show the diversity in style and scale I have been looking at. a lot of my sketchbook works comes from dipping paper into the excess water I have and using what’s left of my palette from that day, I like this because no two pieces are the same or even feel the same to me, and it gives the mixture of whatever I have used that day a chance to run, to esacpe, to show itself other than in a plastic cup, but as art…

In a recent post I talked about working with steel which is still an idea I am pursuing. I have bought some metal and glue and am all set but what’s holding me back is the reality that it won’t be the same effect I am so keen on. It’s something brand new and scary. But exciting also.

For me this project is about my exploration into visually commentating on the relationship between paint, water and the earth (in some ways).

These images are of recent works I made in response to viewing some mixed media images online. I was inspired by the brick dust and earthy materials for these paintings and used chalk to create the textures on the surface. Once again I used masking tape to have a clear sharp edge within the work although I enjoy the fact that some paint slips underneath the tape and ‘escapes’. The theme of this project has become very process based and is a journey almost of the life that I have with the paint and what we can create together; collaborating with chalk, sand, glue and hopefully soon metal.

Process is very important to my work and in the end the journey is more irritant for me as it makes the art what it is. There is an attraction for me in watching my work creat itself and knowing that there is a chance of something beautiful as a result.

Rothko is a constant in my research and practise and this piece to the left has all the colours of my work this week, blues and yellows, very fresh but still natural. The colours of the sky and the sun, and the sea; the areas of the earth…

No. 6 (Yellow, White, Blue Over Yellow on Gray) is a physically simple piece of art yet pyshcologically it draws you in and holds deep emotion, like all Rothko’s work.

For me what I take from Rothko’s art is the ambiguity of his subjects, is it landscape? Is it abstract? Are there figures?

The colour is the subject and each person interprets it in their own way and each person gets out of his art what they put in; almost a mirror of your self.

Beautiful…

Another area of exploration I am currently looking into is the way I hang my work and which way up they should go. my initial thoughts were to nail my paper pieces into some chunky sheets of wood or steel, for a natural or industrial feel. This is still an idea I am yet to try. As is turning my work so that they go against the force of gravity, something I have never been keen to do but may try. The act of ‘dripping’ is all to do with gravity playing its part as well as me and the paint. Dismissing this would change the aim of my work completely. It would throw off the viewer. I don’t think I am ready to commit to doing this just yet.

These pieces, although on paper and not of something skill based, these are the soul of my project and show exactly the relationship I want to portray. This is the beginning of my final works. Yay.

A slightly unrelated blog post.

Recently I have seen many films about art and it’s affect on the world, starting with Monuments Men and just last week The Book Thief.

Art in film has always been a major influence on my life and as an avid cinema goer along with most of my family, my dad and brother mainly, it’s a joy we all share. Film has a way of sweeping me into a world away from reality just for an hour and a half, where I can forget my worries and be a part of someone else’s life. Just like art, the role of film is to transport you to a new exciting place. This is what art does to me also. Looking into the paintings of Turner and Rothko just to name a few, can bring your soul to the surface and give you a life changing experience.

Monuments Men told the true story of a group of older gentlemen enlisted in the American and British army to help regain art that Hitler had stolen during World War II. The overall feeling of the film was that art is worth a lot to many people and can change us. Two men died in the journey to recovering the art and by the end of their story you felt that it was worth it; the achievements of the worlds greatest creative souls needed to be saved. Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child statue, Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man and many other world famous pieces of art were all included and as a whole reconfirmed my love for art, both classical and contemporary.

The Book Thief, although not so much about art and more about books, still holds that same message that creativity is important for us as people. It is a form of expression and what is most unique about both art and writing is that no two people will respond the same. It is the most individual way of showing ones self to the rest of the world. The Book Thief follows the story of a young girl who gets adopted by a family in Germany during once again World War II. The family take in a young Jewish man hiding from the Fuhrër, and the man and girl bond over their love for books and together they steal and read books whilst he is in hiding. This touching story, although fiction, could be just as true as any other War story. The importance of a creative outlet once again the main message.

Although slightly irrelevant to fine art practice, I find that film, especially art in film, can help inspire me creatively, as does reading. The emotional attachment of art and books to many people not just in the film but in the cinema screen, is a great influence in my life, to carry on loving art, both viewing it and making it.

The Kerlin Gallery has been a big influence on my research recently giving me Callum Innes and more currently Elizabeth Magill, Mark Francis and Phillip Allen. All of these exhibit elements of paint and a relationship with paint that I wish to convey. I have realised that this relationship between my hand and the paint is what my work is all about, and how this is remembered on a canvas.

Elizabeth Magill is a classic contemporary nature painter focusing on trees and figures. Her work mirrors that of Peter Doig slightly in her application of paint but has a haunting aura within some pieces.

“She is a painter of prodigious versatility and inventiveness whose work has always drawn from a wide range of visual sources. While she has often integrated photographic materials and processes into her painting, in a number of novel ways, her primary fidelity has been to the medium of painting, in all its bewildering variety. Recently she has moved gradually away from her idiosyncratic revisioning of the tradition of the romantic sublime and entered a more personal zone creating a series of strange and compelling ‘mindscapes’.”

I think this perfectly describes Magill’s approach to art and nature and the strength in her process. Her piece Angel (2012) is a beautiful example of her use of nature and texture. The two elements of my work throughout my entire degree. Her work in this piece especially is dark without being bland. It holds an emotive speech within it.The deep blues of this work almost represent the dark night sky, the starts and almost an enchanted forest. Which I guess it could well be.

Mark Francis’ work is fun and vibrant and not far from work I have been making myself; incorporating shape and dripping together. Pyxis (2013) is not only a vertical study of line and shows some use of dripping, it also complements the relationship between orange and blue, another key element of my most recent work. The addition of a circle to work can be seen in my industrial series mentioned earlier in this blog. I think the contrast between a line and a circle is very strong and works well in Francis’ work.

“Over the past thirty years Mark Francis has made paintings of singular optical intensity — powerful, apparently abstract combinations of concentrated patterning and stark colour contrasts that are in fact principally based on what the unaided human eye lacks the power to see. His work draws significantly on discoveries about the form and substance of reality that result from technologically enhanced vision. “

This analysis shows the power of Francis’ art. His work is undoubtedly abstract but also has a scientific beauty to it; capturing the ‘under the microscope’ elements that make it Interesting and beautiful. This close up aspect is one of my main focuses.

Phillip Allen, another new interest of mine, is a painter who has a very unique way of blending weird shapes and somber pastel colours with dripping and texture. His art is a mix of abstract and animation works which sounds weird but kind of works.

“In many of the paintings made by Phillip Allen over the last decade, a vivid and ebullient graphic clarity contends with more convulsive painterly features. His paintings have often presented brightly coloured, interconnecting volumes or repeating, distending patterns within more mutedly toned, wide-open zones. Bordering these spaces at the upper and lower limits of the canvas, Allen’s trick has been to lay down richly abundant lines of curling impasto paint: glorious blooms and bursts of multifarious colour that thickly combine to frame and deepen the visual drama at the centre of the picture. But what we see is never quite clear, never entirely ‘contained’. The graphic elements often offer hinting suggestions of buildings or other tall structures — they sometimes resemble wonky or wildly implausible monuments — but the precarious, piled-up shapes also at times allude to letters or numbers, as if a kind of coded communication were being proposed. Invariably, Allen shows us something being assembled — there is recurrent piecing-together of basic elements — but the results depart thrillingly from rational organisation, towards a more dream-like, open-ended and associative way of imagining a world.”

This bond of the two different artistic approaches is inspiring and very different from me and my work but all the same a good influence. All three of these artist I will study further and will hopefully curve my own practice.