Year 3 Degree Project by Elaine Hedges

I went searching through Ipswich for different patterns which caught my eye, looking at garden gates, churches, materials that have just caught my eye and fireplaces.

These I chose to photograph as I thought the patterns were interesting, or the shape. Churches and gates in particular caught my interest as the gothic style that was very used in the past has always had beautiful symmetry and linear stylizing, whilst ranging from simple to incredibly complex.

This wasn’t only present in metal in those cases, but also in stone work on the church itself, in fireplaces around  the edges and patterns on the glass of the windows of the buildings too.

I recently visited Smith’s Row in Bury St Edmunds again to view the exhibition ‘Machines to Crystallize Time’ by CJ Mahony and Georgie Grace

On the front of the Exhibition it is written that: ‘The exhibition brings together their interests in contemporary states and immersive experiences which they create via built spaces through language and on screen’

The Artists built this exhibition just for Smith’s Row, ranging from Large scale sculptures, structures and projections to smaller scale structures and drawings.

I found the way they used light and video project to create silhouettes very intriguing as it reminded me of Kara Walker’s caricatures which take on the appearance of silhouettes and also her work with video and light projection.

This is something that I would be interested in doing to my own work, which I have experimented with in the past.

An interesting Idea would be to create a large scale paper cut suspended from the ceiling with light shining through with the viewer directly underneath interacting with the work.

I experimented with layering my larger cut outs with solid pieces of colour, using square shapes, negative space cut outs, pieces  I had cut out that were scrap and also manipulating how the paper could move instead of laying flat against a surface.

The colours I used I moved around to see how they made different areas of the cut out patterns stand out and disappear almost completely. What was also interesting was the way the colours reacted against each other when interacting with other primary colours.

I have been quite wary about manipulating the paper patterns too much as the black layer of paper is much thinner than the rest due to a very small availability of paper. I feel it works quite well though, creating the different shapes and bumps and I feel that interweaving smaller pieces of paper through out to create a 3-D effect could be very interesting.

By using the negative space cut outs it also gives the whole piece a bit of a separation and 3-Dimensionaility which wasn’t apparent before. I feel it does this by making it appear less flat and also creates more shapes.

I’ve put together the larger piece with the Green and Pink piece and made it almost like an installation, it flows from one to the other quite seamlessly due to the solid pieces of paper underneath and I feel it works very well together.

Henri Mattisse’s Paper cut-outs are a huge inspiration for my work. His use of layering, colours and interweaving has influenced mine the most out of any artists. Compared to some they seem incredibly simple, but I feel this is what gives them so much effect.

Mattisse’s series of paper cut-outs were born in the final chapter of his career, which he described as ‘carving into colour’

He uses vibrant bright colours and very simple shapes to create a variety of forms such as flora, the human body, most noticeably usually women’s, circus scenes and performers.

The Tate describes his work as: ‘ Bold, exuberant and often large in scale, the cut-outs have an engaging simplicity coupled with incredible creative sophistication.’

Tate.org.uk, (2015). Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/henri-matisse-cut-outs

The reason that Mattisse switched from painting to paper cut-outs is due to his ill health preventing him from painting. But through this a new medium was born and the cut-outs are what he became most famous for.

Moma states that Mattisse used Scissors to create his cut outs: ‘An unorthodox implement, a pair of scissors, was the tool Matisse used to transform paint and paper into a world of plants, animals, figures, and shapes.’

Moma.org, (2015). Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs. [online] Available at: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2014/matisse/the-cut-outs.html

What i find intriguing about different papercutting artists is the different tools that they use. Some find it better to work with scissors and some find it better to work with scalpels or laser cutting. It makes me wonder why these artists use this range of different instruments.

I myself use a scalpel because it feels most comfortable in my hands and I find I work faster and more precisely with them than scissors, scissors block my vision too much to make for an effective tool in my case.

I like how he mixes solid colour with pattern, and overlaps the images over each other. This is something I will experiment with in my own work, mixing solid colour with complicated patterns.

He also uses interweaving in his work, again something I will explore in later pieces of work as my current pieces are too solid for this to be successful.

This Fuchsia and Green coloured cut out based created whilst also creating my larger circular piece as I wanted to create a much longer rectangular based one to experiment which when I couldn’t face looking at the larger one for a while.

It was interesting to experiment which how the colours overlapped, and by using the fuchsia one to have solid colour in certain areas. I feel these solid colours worked as they separated more successfully from each other and it made it less simple, it gave it a complexity and precision that is hadn’t had before.

I did wish to add a yellow layer behind it, but felt it would look overly done and would drown out the other two colours.

I feel it has been successful as an experiment and has been a learning progress for the remainder of my project as I shall begin using the solid colouring rather than just pattern and symmetry in order to further emphasize the different colouring of the different layers with opposite colours.