University Campus Suffolk

In my last post I mentioned that my original intention was to work from melded digital imagery. This was to try and muster the sensation of feeling trapped, contained, and wanting to externalise how I felt. The tension in yourself – wanting to explode with inner turmoil.

Back in October I prepared a canvas to paint out a composition of 3 bodies. It was too small for what I wanted it for and so I since painted over it with a grey oil paint mixed with liquin. I also threw crushed up charcoal at it to try and draw something out the materiality of the paint (I’m not sure what)!

On this I wanted to paint a singular melded body. This would allow the flesh to be life sized rather than trying to squash the 3 bodies onto it.

I planned it out on stretched paper and with being only an hour into experimentation I decided the whole concept of this digitally manipulated flesh was too gimmicky! It didn’t feel like me – it didn’t feel honest.

So whilst having an aggrieved moment in the process of painting my large canvas I splashed a wash all over the grey and brought it back to a mid tone, ready for it to be used as the base for another image.

This was when I read the story of Mr Vovk – “The ‘disappeared’ whose voices will be silent in vote on self-rule in Ukraine’s east”…

Big canvas in progress

I always wanted to paint the figure for this project but was unintentionally lead towards the planes of the face. Through experimenting on a small canvas I knew to get the freedom and expression of marks I needed the surface of the flesh to be large. I also wanted the confrontational aspect of a large canvas allowing the figure and materiality of paint, seen in ‘Passage’, 2004 by Saville which, I analysed in my dissertation.

Braun said ‘Titian placed the figures uncomfortably close to the front of the picture space, creating a confrontation between flesh and viewer.’ (Paint Made Flesh catalogue, 2009).

I looked at Bacon’s – ‘Figure in a Landscape’ and ‘Seated Figure’ to try and get an idea of scale. On cardboard, lining the floor of my studio, I drew out my figure with a marker on a longstick, and measured the space I thought I would need.

However this large scale has given me problems – I cannot view all my canvas at once and my figure just keeps going wrong. I thought to grid it out but didn’t want to engrave that on my canvas – instead I used thread taped on to rule out a simple 12 square grid. I also used photoshop to place the grid on my image. As well as that I gridded a photograph of what I’ve done so far. My head and shoulders were right but a subtle mistake on one knee too high sets all other aspects of the form off kilter.

**Jenny Saville: ‘I have to really work at the tension between getting the paint to have the sensory quality that I want and be constructive in terms of building the form of a stomach, for example, or creating the inner crevice of a thigh.’

I feel this is very much the case the way I have been working on this canvas.

I wanted the figure in this painting to be uncomplicated – relying only on the language of my paint . This is an interesting comparison to my earlier idea of using digital imagery to work from as a way to manipulate the conversation between paint and viewer.

Originally I took a photograph of my mum and drew her from life to get an idea of the figure and positioning of the body. I then developed it in to a photograph of myself in the same position.

It is both an open and a guarded position – legs folded open but contradicted by the arms which cross over and hold both the legs.
It was a surprisingly awkward and painful position to hold which I find interesting. That awkwardness seems to have filtered into my handling of the paint and working the flesh out!

So I’ve had many a sleepless night over my large canvas I mentioned in blog post 30.

I kept thinking – I’ve started this all wrong! As I said I started the painting of it formally to find the structure of the space. I then rubbed charcoal over the canvas to roughen it up and set back some areas – I glue gunned strips of charcoal on to a block of wood to cover more ground.

I wish I had a bruised the canvas in the same way I had the smaller ones but I was shell shocked by the enormity of the canvas. It made me treat it differently and because of this the figure will not emerge from the abstract aspects of paint or its pure materiality.

To try and change this I splashed over the forefront of the picture with dark melty paint. This will give a texture underneath my painting and from here I used a black wash to loosely mark out the figure. I also lay it down on the floor and splashed paint up towards to the top of the painting – the idea to give the sensation of the figure being pulled up – being gravitated out of the space as if it was an alien being beamed up. This is to contradict the sensation attached to the emotions of sadness that can sometimes feel like a weight pushing you down. This is to defy it – to line this painting with optimism.

I decided I didn’t want to graph the figure out of draw it in pencil first – I wanted to paint from instinct… my instinct was wrong – my figure was too small too far right and so I started to work over the black in muted colours. Now my canvas was becoming battered and have the story of its construction engraved on it!

Again to reflect on Saville’s remark “… It is like you’re putting history on the painting…” – Brutvan, 2011.

I was a little frustrated that this painting wasn’t running as smoothly as I had hoped – but not surprised. I think this came through in my application – scratching aggressive marks.

It’s when technicalities of the beginning stages go wrong that I find it harder to get into the painting – to connect and try and create a sensation of my subject. In hind sight I wish I had done some more life size drawings as well as my smaller sketches and my drawing on cardboard. Perhaps if I had I would have had less to think about – but then there would be less traces of a fight / battle with the canvas – a process Bacon described on the South Bank show 1985.

Bacon on South Bank show, 1985 discusses his process amongst other things.

As a continue-um of my first swollen flesh painting I had three more canvases the same size made – 38 x 30 cms.

Three more swollen faces -My eyes swollen and the planes of my face puffy.

Theses were produced before the embarkment of my large canvas and as a hopeful development from them.

The beginning stages of these paintings like most in this body of work, was the bruising of my canvas with, ink, charcoal and acrylic paint.

To be honest I enjoyed these canvases as abstract paintings too. There were miniature paintings within the organic marks of the paint.

I think the disfiguration of my flesh – not my flesh as I usually see it – allowed me to paint with more freedom.

This element of distortion either through the painting process or or the imagery before is something I brought up at the beginning of this project and the reason for melding digitally imagery.

These paintings became an elaboration of the imagery had and therefor the flesh was disfigured and changed further through my process of painting. The result is redelivering flesh to the viewer as something that is alien and unfamiliar. With the hope that they see it with fresh eyes and take on the extra addition of my own psychological embellishment of my subject.

I have been looking again at the work of Auerbach, Kossoff and Yan Pei Ming. All three are featured in Flesh Made Paint catalogue from the 2009 exhibition.

My colour palette for these paintings are in-between black and white and colour – muted but with flashes of colour and optimism.

Although these paintings were created with the intention of accompanying their older brother I think they stand strongly together as a tryptic.

I have decided to title these paintings ‘No Woman, No Cry I, II & III’ (Triptych) after the title of Bob Marley’s song. It a song which has held huge emotion pertinence with me both in adulthood and childhood and fits with the subject matter of this flesh – swollen from crying.

I produced all 3 of these paintings in quick succession during a 6 hour period. Because of this they have retained an in the moment-ness. THEY ARE OF THE SAME MOMENT.Their size and looseness of form allowed me to do this.

The photos of these were taken on the side I prefere them profile. In working with this paint there was a lot of taking off as well as putting on as part of my process – scraping and cutting with my palette knife.

I built up the planes of the face with rich, meaty reds as if building a face from flesh – the bloody red shapes of the muscle first – thick and cloying and then the wetter sliding paint of the flesh – working again form dark to light.

I feel these are my most successful paintings so far.

I am currently working on a large canvas with my flesh contained in my own space while also continuing exploring my emotional traces on my canvas, I arrived at this essay – ‘The Influence of Anxiety’ – Susan H. Edwards in Paint Made Flesh. Specifically, anxiety surrounding the generation of artist who lived in America at the time of the Cold War – ‘Painting the Figure in Cold War America.’

Alice Neel an artist I was not familiar with is an artist cited in this essay;’Throughout her career Alice Neel gave expression to the vulnerability of the body and the fragility of the soul.’ – S.H. Edwards.

Neel’s worked has appealed to me as there is something trapped (in reproduction at least) about her paintings that sing to me.

So far I have had trouble adjusting in the scale change from my smaller more intimate canvases to this. I have felt that I have not known where to put myself- where to begin.

The energy I exert is much greater than that which I use on smaller canvases. Also the need to concentrate has been greater. In this project I have began to zone out when painting and this is when my most successful paintings have been born – through the conscience mark making – the interaction between my ‘inner self’ and the paint. It is in these moments that part of myself has been projected and ingrained in my paint.

I believe the need to ‘think’ has spoiled that element in this painting – or at least I don’t feel it has emerged as yet.

I have also come up against a few hiccups that I have had to straighten out. Again this has made me have to stop and start and think – I don’t feel as connected with this painterly manifestation of my flesh.