University Campus Suffolk

I’m exhausted! I’ve started to paint and get rid of the white on my large canvas. It’s taken a lot of my energy moving the paint around a surface this big.

A few things have come up while I’ve been doing this.

I’ve decided to paint the basics of this painting quite formally. The room is the structure which holds the flesh down. It is important to look hard and get this right from the word go or from experience (painting ‘Introspection’ last year) it will upset the painting as a whole at the end.

I will de-formalise these areas later – make them look less ruled.

The interior aspect is something I’ve not had to think about so far in my project. Every other painting I have created have been zoomed in on areas of flesh.

This is the first time I have had to consider the contrast of flesh and flesh in a space. I don’t want the interior to distract from my flesh.

I feel a bit like a Masterchef contestant when they decide to make something they’ve never cooked before in the final! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Is this the time to be trying something, I’ve never done before in the context of this project in the last few painting days I have left?

As those contestants on my favourite cookery program say, “I’m not going to get anywhere playing it safe!”

True, true. However I have also made a marquette of my painting today to try and get a painterly visual of what I’m aiming for.

I’m really excited about the contrast between the blue and orange. The orange top was a conscience decision whilst styling the image, to add an element of optimism into the piece which will conclude what has been an emotional and sometimes dark explorational project.

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Monologue of a Trapped Bee.

My canvas is here! I’ve already started to prime it! While I was doing this I looked up and saw (and heard) a bee trapped inside the window.

I had a thought watching him that he probably felt a bit like I do when I’m having a black hole day. It felt like a metaphor for how I sometimes feel. This is what I wrote.

“I’m trapped and I can’t get out. All the other bees are outside in the sunshine. I’m trapped in this dark place. No matter how loud I buzz and hit against the glass I can’t get out. I don’t think anyone on the other side can hear me.”

The window the bee was trapped behind is the same window that appears in the image I will be painting on my large canvas.

Two of the closest people to me also call me Bee as a nickname this all seems important to me and I’m excited thinking where this will take me with my large canvas.

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Trapped Bee

Tilted heads…

When I had a break from blogging I had just mentioned I had started a curved neck portrait (Head Tilted I). I have since worked on this and started another painting from the same series of photographs.

I don’t think either of these paintings are finished at this point but I will continue to work on them over the next two weeks.

The first in its beginning stages retained a tension to the neck – a muscular quality which reminded me of some art works talked about in the John Sheeran lecture on the Masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. I feel this is lost slightly now but the physical qualities of the paint replace it with something else.

The exposure of the neck in both these paintings and earlier paintings (Trapped Flesh I & II) communicate a vulnerability to me now.

My flesh, my subject vulnerable to the scraping and slashing of paint on my palette knife and brush. Desperate – surrendering to my mark making ? There is also something deformed and melting about this flesh which reminded me of Mason Verger out of the film Hannibal.

The second painting Head Tilted II felt like a poignant image to paint for the feeling of been trapped again. The head is looking up – towards the light. Looking for a way out like at the bottom of a big pit.

In comparison to the first the painting it is more flat – less textured.

There is a deadness and stillness in the subject echoed in my muted colour palette. This is however contrasted by the life and intent of the marks.

It is like my directional mark makings are going up – magnetised towards the top of the canvas like the tilted head. They are short quick marks like a staccato note in music.

In this sense the subject both contrast and work in dualism with each other. This is something I wrote about in my dissertation. This quote from my dissertation is in the context of Francis Bacon’s work Painting, 1946.

“Fading flesh and materiality of the paint are reflected within one another. The paint parts and breaks in the same way as the depicted flesh, showing marks and layers underneath. This awakens the observer to the notion of destructible, torn flesh and, in doing so, evokes the reality of humanity from this period – severed limbs, flayed flesh, incinerated bodies, the scream of pain and death.” (Berry, 2014, p.7).

For the process of this painting I first applied acrylic and then oil. Tonally with little texture. I feel this is may become a study for a painting further down the line where the paint will be used differently again. I can then see the change that has on the reading of the paint.

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Trials and Tribulations of working on a large scale.

The next painting I am leading up to will be 120 x 160 cms. The ratio of dimensions and the scale for this painting are very important.

I can fit the figure I plan on painting life size with in these dimensions while still giving a sense of pictorial space.

Pictorial space will allow the viewer to feel like the are in the space with the figure – I hope.

Because of its size I thought about joining two canvases together but I was concerned about the effect that would have on the fluidity of line.

I decided it must be an all-in-one canvas.

There was no canvas at uni and because time is off the essence at the moment I organised buying some myself from the local framers and art supplies (got a student discount as well – happy days).

Although there are roughly 3 weeks until hand in that does includes drying time and the time it takes to curate and hang the show which has to all be done by the 30th.

Really not that long at all!

Wood was already bought and so my canvas was all set up to be made. The quicker I can prime it and start painting the better.

The only thing I forgot to organise was transport for the canvas, it being too large to fit in a car.

Oops!

Luckily fellow artist Chris Newson
(who I collaborated with last year) came up with the goods! A man with a van.

Although there is a price to pay for my lack or organisation the canvas will be with me by 2.30pm today!

Preparing for Degree Show and reflection on project…

I think I have always know that this project has been bigger than my degree project and so in away you could say I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

For me this will be an on going piece of work as there is know way I can fully achieve what I want to in the time scale – I don’t know when this project will ever be finished.

Instead I am trying to get it to a place which signifies the end of this chapter rather than the end of the book.

I think knowing in myself that I don’t expect myself to have created paintings that fully summarise and give example to ‘active paint’ allows me to except these paintings for what they are.

They are working towards it. In terms of thinking about how to display my work for the degree show I think back to when I saw Francis Bacon’s paintings at the Bacon Moore exhibition in Oxford.

It was an experience that will stay with me. I strive for my paint to be empowered with the ability to take a viewers breath away and consume them the way that first Bacon I saw did – ‘Portrait of Henrietta Moraes’, 1963.

I want the physicality and language of my paint to be an experience. It is for this reason that the conceptionally the space for my degree show should be enclosed or have a corner at the least. This will allow the paintings to ‘talk’ to each other and also ‘wrap around’ the viewer.

There also needs to be light so that the texture of the paint and its different consistencies are fully visible and alive.

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