University Campus Suffolk

Through being interested in the artists I am interested in (most of which use active paint) I have focused on similar areas to them in my exploration of flesh e.g screaming mouths – opening flesh – layers.

I have been experimenting with various approaches to try and develop my painterly language, such as scale, colour palette, materials and ways of looking at my subject ( photographs, life and mirrors).

For this image I continued working on paper – this came out of the spontaneity of this paintings creation. I was over tired and felt emotionally strained and wanted to work with image of my silent screaming face – the subject fitted with how I felt – the idea of an inner battle. No-one can see or feel our emotions only us.

The paper was readily available and I had an urge to work on a large scale – my emotions felt so big and monstrous on the inside, I wanted to express something as large and as violent as what I was feeling. The large role of paper in my studio allowed that.

I worked quickly and frenzied on this image – a state of in the moment-ness. Although it was spontaneous and pretty unthought out, all my previous experimentation and what I had learnt fro that entered the work. It came out almost with out thinking which is what I had hoped would happen.

Because of the familiarity of my subject I attacked it with confidence (Bacon was documented as saying his process was like a battle with the canvas). I read a violent and unapologetic language in my mark-making as a result of this.

I believe this came as a result of my emotion. There is a rawness in the application and also the colours are sharp. These expressive, innate mark-makings > splashed, dragged, scraped ink and paint melded in to shapes and marks that resembled my screaming face.

“Bacon would begin, that is to say, with one intention and would then be led by the nature of the mark on the canvas to end up with quite another.” (Russell, 1971).

Whilst I was painting this I felt in touch with my skin and how it feel at its most vulnerable. Perhaps this is because my mental state felt vulnerable and this created a duality with the physical aspect of myself. I have rendered the paint broken – you can see through to different areas of paint and bare paper – much like in Saville’s Trauma series. I feel this acts like a complex conversation – the marks lead you across the surface of the painting.

Through researching my dissertation I know that in the process of painting Rosetta (2005-06), Saville covered the canvas in mark-making and staining etc before adding the figurative elements > flesh developed out of the purely abstract, painterly aspects. Similarly to the work of Cecily Brown (e.g. ‘The Girl Who Had Everything’, 1998), an artist who is said to walk the tight rope between figuration and abstraction. Her painterly marks make up disembodied sexual limbs and bits of anatomy – this is figuration coming out of abstraction. This is something I want to keep at the back of mind during this project as I have found this tension between expressive marks and elements of subject can create active paint.

From this point I want to look further into areas of my emotion but also areas of traditional depictions of flesh – such as flesh and light.

These images are stills of a video of me working on one of my paintings. The finished image in comparison to my earlier experiments, seems unsuccessful. However to me it has taught me a lot.

I was working on cardboard – a material like paper that sucks the moisture out of oil paint.

* It is interesting to change the consistency of oil paint as it is so distinctive in the way it moves.*

The cardboard was not a solid sheet but panels of cardboard taped together – this tiling was created through chance and lack of material and is the sort of spontaneous work I am enjoying at present.

My intentions at the beginning of starting my final project were to create large melded images of my flesh – this was to identify a relationship with my subject in the hope of strengthening my paints language.

Since starting my project I have been less and less concerned with compositions and finished hangable paintings that overwhelm and consume with some unspeakable language but instead have focused on just DOING. Sometimes as an art student, I feel it is easy to get stuck on what shall I do? What is next? What is right? This can stop the ‘flow’ of things. So instead I have been working as an artist not a student. Experimenting and just doing. Not questioning, what? But just doing what my curiosity instructs.

So far this is leading me in (what seems at the moment) completely unstructured experimentation – This is good. How can I expect to develop my painting and allow my paint to come alive if I hold it back by constant structure ? At this point in my project the I feel the key is to simply keep painting and creating.

Since my last post I have been responding to the image of my stretched open mouth further. I recreated the image and completed this study from a mirror using acrylic and ink. I slapped ink on to the paper, I wanted the colour to be heavy on the paper to create a deepness like that of a body cavity.

I used a rusty red not a crimson like in my previous painting – and the result is more blood like. I used blue ink to deepen and contrast the colour.

Once the ink has dried on the surface of the paper I layered thick acrylic – It fascinates me how ink will run in to white acrylic. Even when it appears dry. I layered the white acrylic up and waited as it began to bleed the rusty red ink.

Sometimes I look at details of experiments like these and even some finished paintings and am so attracted to what lies on the surface of the canvas that I loose interest or rather the subject looses its pertinence because the paint simply says more…

This week I have been trying to get out of my comfort zone – Realising what paint can do and enjoying the experimentation and interaction of my process.

I have had an image on my phone, I have been wanting to use for a long time – a photograph of my stretched open mouth with a sore in the corner. I think this image held such a fascination with me because of the artists I have looked at- Jenny Saville has commented on her interest in where the body breaks open – where outside meets inside. Bacon too had commented on the mouth and the teeth in his work.

I drew from the image – experimented in pen and ink – practicing the form before creating a larger image. Really getting to know flesh and my subject is a large part of my project.

My first large response to this image was unplanned and spontaneous. I had a larger piece of paper stapled on my wall with an study of my body from a mirror. Areas of my body were repeated in this image and from the positioning of two arms a Rembrandt/Soutine/Bacon- esque carcass was revealed.

This image sparked an urge in me to over lay a large gaping mouth – I combined oil paint and water based ink. I wasn’t concerned with longevity just with replicating the breaks in the skin with breaks in the paint.

I worked on the paper to remove the preciousness that comes with canvas. Paper also draws the moisture out of oil paint changing the paints fluidity and in turn language. I found the traces of my movement were transcribed in the paint differently.

I’m planning to create a few more experiments surrounding this image as there was something in this painting that excites me and compels me to see what else will develop. At this point in my project I feel it is more to do with natural progression and letting go of habits than trying to force a finished painting.