University Campus Suffolk

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter has been an inspiration of mine since my abstract flare began during the second year collaboration project. I felt a prominence of bold colour and experimental lines throughout his work which really began to relate to my work. Richter still now is influencing my practice for similar reasons.

Attraction to Richter’s Work

· Colour

· Colour pallets

Colour is something that I absolutely adore when it comes to painting. Bright, bold and often irrelevant and unrealistic colour is a theme that has informed my practice over my artistic years. Over the past few months I have been trying to control my use of colour within my work and make sure that the work is a representation in my own way of what I see and am inspired by. This combined with my love for strong initiative colour is beginning to guide me in the right direction to find the middle and what does justice for my work. Richter’s work shows an insight of both colour groups, i.e. bright and extravagant, as well as toned down and earthly.

· Abstraction

The abstract feeling that comes across when looking at Richter’s work is sublime. You have to delve into the painting. The shapes he uses can be lines or sometimes more blurred shapes where the paint has just absorbed into the paper and merged together. Where Richter’s work takes a very abstract approach my work is still showing dominant features of the landscape with an edge of abstraction. The level I have currently found between realism and abstraction is where I would like to stay as I am really enjoying it. I am looking at the levels of abstraction in Richter’s work and his mark making techniques as i find it very interesting how he demonstrates diverse approaches.

· Colour integration

Allowing the colours to run together or merging them on top of each other whilst still wet is something that Richter seems to apply to his work. It often works to create something unique which hasn’t always been seen before. It is eye catching and inspires me to begin merging my colours together.

· Thickly layered paint

Thickly applied paint creating texture is something that I love to use in my work. This however has been overtaken by my small watercolour and acrylic sketchbook documentations which I have then been trying to create on a larger scale. I am trying to create the wash look and then bring in the thickly applied paint in places to create the texture. Some of his works have a flat appearance and some have a textured presence. The combination of the two is what I need to find.

· Dominant lines and shapes

Dominant lines and shapes in Richter’s work is what the eye is first drawn too. It creates the tone of the drawing and also the presence of the subject matter. The shapes in my work are forming the compositions and therefore seeing them continuously in Richter’s work is an inspiration to keep looking at the different forms and ways he creates them.

Gerhard Richter’s work is acting as an inspiration to me constantly for the reasons posted above. I will continue looking at him and questioning my own work in relation to these points along the way.

Questioning my own work

Why am I beginning to control the colour if it has always been a passion of mine?

Why is the level of abstraction that I want to create still a representation of my subject rather than complete abstraction?

What is it about colour integration that interests me, rather than a distinctive separation of colour?

Why are shapes and lines important to me in my work?

Since putting my photographs up in my studio space I have felt a wave of inspiration come my way. Having the images constantly in front of me has definitely informed my practice over the past two weeks.

I separated the images into groups where I felt they portrayed similar characteristics, first being the large group of images documenting the pathway shots. The second group were the landscape images, all which were taken and presented horizontally. Whilst this may have been to capture a wider lens of the landscape, to me,it was more of capturing a moment in time.

The similarity between the photographs was something that I wasn’t aware of at the time or I didn’t particularly notice whilst I was physically taking the pictures, however noticing certain things that always seem to be present within the snaps emphasises my interests and involvement with the landscape.

This shows links to my dissertation artist Hamish Fulton whose work is a reaction of his physical involvement with the landscape. If someone else decided to walk through the park, the photographic outcome may not have incorporated the same content. This is what makes my photographs and expressions taken from the landscape, personal to me as an individual.

I have slowly been looking at the different photographs and working from them in a similar way to my previous post. I have very much been enjoying working on a small scale and I think that they are much more effective than that on a large scale at the moment.

This may be down to the fact that the mediums I have been working with take better to the small sheets of paper in comparison to wood or canvas; or it may be the amount of detail I have incorporated into a more restricted scale.

I am still working with mixed media but have more ideas of different approaches to take. I am currently continuously working from some of the different photographs, making semi abstract documents of the landscape. My studies are currently investigating the existence of the natural world, expressing the essence of the landscape that forms the serene foundation which it portrays.

Last night I was experimenting on small scale with a painting of a close up textured photograph from the park. I started to paint onto a scraped grey background and then add pen detail on top. I was really pleased with the outcome so today I decided to work on a large board and begin with the same technique.

The watercolour did not quite take to the board the same as it does on the paper, however I did thin the paint out as much as possible to try and create a similar effect. The board currently looks quite flat. This was only my first layer and I am going to go back and try and add more texture into places showing washed out paint and thickly applied paint.

Over the past week I have been experimenting on a small scale. Looking at the portrayal of the park photographs and how I am depicting them. In many of the small experimentations I have used acrylic and watercolour, applying one on top of the other once the first layer was dry.

I have really enjoyed using the watercolour on top of the acrylic and would like to try this large scale. This however would not have the same effect on the large hardboard I am planning to use as it does on my small paper samples.

I am looking into either getting some strong quality paper to work onto, or whether to use paper as a texture on top of the wood. Both ideas I am still experimenting with as with using the wood I am able to take my paintings to a much larger scale.

I have recently been looking my holly wells park images, along with my tutor.

We separated them into groups of themes where I looked at more sculptural pieces, which I was less interested in, and then looked at a walking element where the pictures I have taken which have figural movement incorporated into them.

I then had two groups of photos which showed relevance to artists, Peter Doig and Anselm Keifer.

These groups depicted texture and reflection and this is something that I am interested in.

This activity helped me very much to view my photos. There was also a group of images which fell in the middle category.

Ideas for these included cutting up and looking at areas and close up sections on the hunt for inspiration.

My next steps include looking at the photos and experimenting on small scale before taking it further on a larger scale.