University Campus Suffolk

Monochrome ‘active paint’.

I have been experimenting with combining black and white (and the tonal greys you get from mixing them) with other colours.

Will selecting my colour more sparingly communicate more intention?

I have been producing more thumbnails in response to my images and in preparation for my larger response which will be on canvas.

I painted oil paint on to primed canvas – it is the size of a postcard.

At the time it was away for me to project my immediate ideas and response to the imagery I had been collecting.

There are areas where the texture of the cardboard still come through the primer and this lends another dimension to the paint and so contributes to its dialogue with the viewer.

I painted this study along side ‘roughing’ up the background of my canvas. I am now interested to see how the two paintings will relate to one another.

There is a change in materials but the subject is the same.

Do two artworks have to be separate? Can they be curated in a way that they are two paintings but one artwork?

My small study on cardboard reminds me of Auerbach. There are areas of my paint which are so thick that they seem to be frozen in motion.

With lines that describe the lips there is a cloyed drip that appears on first glance to still be wet. This idea of the painting frozen in motion reminds me that it was (before it dried) a moving thing.

-Frozen moments brings me back to think of blog post 9 where I mentioned film stills and trapped flesh.

-I associate moving with things that are living and so for me it inhibits the painting with an element of living paint.

-Because of this the paint plays an active role in describing the subject to me.

Will I produce more scaled down paintings as part of my degree show ? Maybe on varying materials ?

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Triangles

After looking at various monochromatic imagery of paintings and photography, I began gathering my own images for my painting/ series of paintings of monochromatic rendered flesh.

I have been considering the triangular composition that runs through a lot of art works.

It is a strong compositional shape.

Triangular shapes can be used to lead the viewer into the painting.

I reflected upon this in analysis of Passage by Saville in my dissertation.

The use of this composition in Passage in-particular alludes to perspective. The Pyramid-like form of the figure gives a strong triangular structure to the image.

An extract from my dissertation:

” Saville’s use of various devices such as low-level viewpoints, exaggerated foreshortening and cropping of the figure to fill her canvas enhancing the power of her fleshy nudes to produce “a confrontational yet contemplative image which pushes itself at you” (Henry, 1994, n.p.).”

I have been considering this in the images I have gathered and the composition I have constructed.

My vision is of a partially distorted head on a neck – a more recognisably human version of Dana Schutz, ‘Face Eater’, 2004.

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Black & White/ Monochrome.

Colour is a very communicative devise in painting. Often a mood can be easily established in a painting through association of colour and emotion. Very much the same way that large scale can easily communicate an element of power or confrontation over the viewer.

I have been transferring my paintings into black and white using photoshop as a device to see my paintings in a different way – Tonally is it correct? Also because changes like that or viewing paintings in a mirror or upside down can help me see changes i want to make.

This process as well as seeing ‘Thingly Character IV’ at the Saatchi Gallery has prompted me to paint in mono chromatic colour. I want to see how this affects my language.

To me black and white imagery speaks of anxiety. It isn’t trying to be reality, reality is colourful. There is something trapped about mono chrome. It is like looking at flesh contained in a TV set, stopping and pausing a moment.

I bought a book from the Saatchi Gallery – ‘The Body’ by Thames & Hudson which, is filled with black and white photography of different bodies – some deformed and distorted. This has also lead me to naturally progress to experimenting with monochromatic colour. Originally I wanted to appropriate various images of flesh perhaps from newspapers however with media appropriated images there is a likely hood that they have been messed with. My intention is that I will absorb these images and use them to create images of my own flesh.

In my dissertation I looked at ‘Hard, Fast and Beautiful’ (2000) by Cecily Brown and found it produced an element of terror. This was supported by Richter’s claim that Grey scale imagery emits terror and something negative.

I have also been looking at the work of Yan Pei Ming an example being ‘Autoportrait’ (Mars) 2000, oil on canvas.

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LONDON & BODY LANGUAGE EXHIBITION.

This week I went to London to hand in a piece of my work from 2013 to Trinity Buoy Wharf for submission to the BP portrait awards, 2014.

The standard of work was incredible high and me proceeding is very unlikely however, I’m glad to know the process for future reference and it was an exciting experience.

Afterwards I visited The Body Language exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery; http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/body_languag….

One of the artworks that really stood out for me in the exhibition was ‘Face Eater’ (2004) by Dana Schutz. It reminded me of ‘Head ii’ (1949) by Francis Bacon, which I saw at The Ashmolean Museum.

They both project a silent scream and communicate something unspeakable. Both paintings describe something which is hard to put into words. Gerhard Richter once said “Talk about painting: there’s no point. By conveying a thing through the medium of language, you change it. You construct qualities that can be said, and you leave out the ones that can’t be said but are always the most important.”

These paintings both remind me of that quotation. Although these paintings don’t describe what a human form or flesh they both spoke to me of the human condition, terror and flesh. I am also interested in how both these paintings use interesting angles and perspective.

Other works that stood out for me at the Body Language exhibition was that by Nicole Eisenman. Within her work there were areas of thick texture…just snippets which brought the paintings alive for me. I found myself attracted to those areas, thinking I love that head with a thick dollop of paint to give the impression of an ear. This has lead me back to my first post where I quoted Bacon;

“There is an area of the nervous system to which the texture of paint communicates more violently than anything else” (Bacon, n.d cited in Russell, 1971, pp.21).

I want to start experimenting with a wide diversity of textures and varying weights of mark-making.

Also at the exhibition, Helen Verhoeven’s ‘Thingly Character IV‘, 2010 painted in monochromatic colour, drew my attention and stood out to me just as much as the colour pieces.

References: Gerhard Richter: Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007, Thames & Hudson, London, 2009, p. 35.

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Light and Flesh on Canvas

As progression from my face on paper and also my exploration into light & flesh, I decided to work on canvas with the still from my video.

A mark on canvas is undeniably made. It appears more permanent in my opinion than marks made on paper, and so its language changes.

I have commented before on canvas making my paintings feel more precious to work with and how sometimes this can hold back a certain spontaneity. However to explore active paint further I wanted to push myself further.

My assumption was that changing to canvas would make my painterly language louder and more commanding and make it inherit an ‘unwavering’ quality.

Before starting this painting I had a tutorial and in response decided to remove all my artist imagery from my studio wall and replace it with my own work. As I am dealing with the subject of flesh which has been rendered endlessly in paint I wanted to make sure I concentrate on developing MY language and not get lost. To take inspiration but to allow myself to grow on my own too. I felt this was the right time in my development to do this.

In this painting I wanted to think about composition carefully-on paper I can trim it down or extend it. Canvas is fixed. I also wanted to consider composition because I think if you can apply a composition that draws the viewer in then this opens up the viewer to the paints language. I intend to start looking at compositions used in advertising to draw people in and also compositions of other artworks.

To help me section off parts of my image off to work from I used masking tape.

Similarly to my Face on Paper I wanted to create a textured ‘alive’ background for my face to emerge from. This is something else that came from my tutorial. Posing the question of how do I find the balance between technical ability and controlling that with spontaneous mark-making which encompasses something of what I was feeling of thinking.

** Thinking back to my first post where I outlined that “the idea that an artists own psychological nature can be read by the viewer through their paints language is at the heart of my project”.

Before starting this painting I put my image into black and white to see the tonal values more clearly. I used this as reference as well as the coloured image. Whilst my painting developed I also photographed it it and desaturated it for the same purpose. It is also interesting seeing your work on a screen as it is like seeing it from a distance.

The scale of the canvas is 80x100cm so just off square and quite large. The composition I chose also made it a very up close examination of my flesh.

I used a stick with a paintbrush attached and graphite in the earlier stages. This technique (used by Picasso) allows me to step away and see the image as a whole. It also keeps it loose. I find this incredibly useful as I don’t get swallowed up by its scale – I can see the wood for the trees !

I also used a decorating brush baring in mind a point highlighted in my dissertation raised by Gerhard Richter who says large marks made by such things like a decorating brush make those mark-makings louder!

This painting has lead me to reconsider scale in my work. I want to compare this painting with a smaller one. How will that change it? What will the affect be if they hang next to each other?

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