University Campus Suffolk

Painting Sierra

My painting seems as though it is progressing well, although building facial values from abstract colours is more difficult than I anticipated. In theory when painting something in an abstract style implies that the colours used would be arranged in a way that is contrary to the norm, which in turn implies a sense of randomness when applying the colours. However using this method to construct my portrait has given me a painting without any clear structure to the facial features- resulting in a two dimensional, unconvincing messy mess.

In hindsight my problem lies in the tonal value of my colours, when they are abstract this value is not clear and is often contradictory to how ‘light or dark’ I think the colour is. To remedy this I decided to photograph my work and print it out in black and white. By doing this I am left only with the tonal values and it becomes much easier to see where I am going wrong.

I think it is very clear from the photos that that the colours I’ve used are far too dark, dense and monotone in their value. Even though the face is made up of different colours; they all appear to be the same tone. In fairness even looking at the colour photo it is easy to tell that something is very wrong. I think it is much easier to see defects through a photo (whether black and white or colour) due to the fact that you can see the painting as a whole and see how the colours are reacting to one another as a complete picture.

My plan is to repaint the Light values (I say light values- there are no light values- what I actually mean is repaint the ‘extremely dark but were meant to be light values’) and make them substantially lighter. Then I will gradually build up the face tone by tone until the values are correct.

A Chosen Topic

Since I wrote that back in October, a lot has changed in terms of my art- I have completed a dissertation based around the sublime, with particular reference to the size/ scale of an artwork, given a presentation on the work I’ll be producing this year and above all started to produce work based around my chosen topic.

The topic I have chosen to explore is Colour. I say ‘chose to explore’, what I really mean is after looking back at my previous work the topic more or less chose itself.

While it’s true that the artwork I have produced in my past two years has varied greatly aesthetically and conceptually, there has been one underlying constant throughout- my use of, and interset in, colour. Up until this point my use of colour has been secondary to whatever it was I was exploring with my art. It was a bi product of my paintings and not my sole subject. I think my dramatic use of colour was either out of aesthetic necessity (as in my John Frusciante painting) or a subconscious inclination as with my more abstract works.

Whatever it was it seems like the perfect topic to base my next five months of work on. The topic isn’t so broad that its overwhelming nor is it too limited so as to constrain my work to any one thing. I plan to explore all types of colour in as many instances as I can imagine. I want to begin with a large scale portrait of one of close friends. The original image is in black and white, and at first it seemed as if painting the image in black and white (with complementary colours used to create more convincing tones) would be conceptually more appropriate- due to my friends bi polar disorder.

However after thinking about the painting, and what i want to address, it seems more fitting to use as many bright and contrasting colours as possible.

I’d like to start my blog with an intended post that I wrote back in October.

I recently stumbled across a short video interview by the artist Richard Serra. In it he answers the question ‘Why make art?’- or at least gives reasons as to why he chooses to. The question itself seems almost trivial- the obvious answer being, why not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWoiAf_qMA4

Why not indeed, art is after all a luxury not a necessity. I assume that most artists make art, or at least started making art, through their want to express something. In short they produce art because they want to. That’s not to say I don’t want to or don’t enjoy producing art. When I am in the studio and a painting is going well, a few hours can feel like fifteen minutes. I’ll sit there and paint, listening to whatever album or audiobook I am listening to at the time, and let my subconscious take over. Painting, for me, is the perfect balance between difficulty and ease. It’s challenging enough to keep my mind engaged but not difficult enough that I struggle to complete it or feel disheartened by the outcome.

The thing I struggle with most is to find a topic to base my art upon. Without wanting to psychoanalyse myself, especially not in a public blog, I cannot help but see parallels between my life and my art. In my life I have lots of hobbies or ‘mini obsessions’ as I see them. I flutter from one thing to another almost knowing that in a few months time I’ll have something new to keep me occupied. For example music production (dub-reggae in case you were wondering) is my latest craze; others being online poker, running, popular science books, autobiographies and various instruments. I have a few ides why this is the case, although I won’t get into that here- I’m already rambling.

My point is, that over the years, my art has contained all sorts of ideas and references to various things. However, none of them particularly describe me- at least not entirely. Richard Serra talks about studying his own “sentiments and experiences” and dealing with problems that were of interest to him when making art. I intend to do this except I have no ‘problems’ so to speak. My life is exceptionally unexceptional in most areas and as far as ‘experiences’ are concerned, they are also limited. As far as environmental, economical, political and social issues go, I would at best describe my self as uninterested. Not in a sociopathic way, just in the sense that if I was to go down that route when producing art, the resulting art would be a lie. I have a mostly nihilistic outlook on life and consequently producing art based around any ‘belief’ is also out.

I do however have a few certainties when it comes to my art, these are:

· Medium: Paint

· Paint on canvas no smaller than a metre on one side.

That’s it, I have two criteria to base my art upon. Good start I think.