"Painters, Plato accuses, distract our attention with their likenesses of their true nature... Copying mere appearances, the painter 'knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects represents'" This was an interesting take on painting because previously having come across contemporary painters such as Emma Hopkins who is interested in mental illness and paints people to actually understand them better. Her close analysis of pigment in skin and the body is really intimate. She often draws people nude as this is that person at their most vulnerable state and they are showing themselves completely. For her the process of painting is almost meditative. Turns out Plato's view was actually something that was underpinning the intellectual status of Western painting for many centuries.
Interrogating the Real 14/11
Lecture:
Mannerism and Caravaggio - Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket 1874 - I really loved the idea that was said that if this image wasn't taken he wouldn't have been able to draw it. "The artist insisted that they were not pictures, but rather, scenes or moments. Working against contemporary inclinations for narrative (indicative of the heavy consumption of literature), Whistler can be seen arguing for painting's essential difference from literature within this work, as colour and tone trounce hints of narrative or moral allusion. Whistler's focus was on coloristic effects as a means of creating a particular sensation". As in this project we were asked to think about the autographic and reprographic in painting and how that is used to represent reality, I visited Sadie Cole Gallery because Alberne uses these techniques to capture her ideas as well as mixed media.
Sadie Coles Gallery
Michel Alberen
"Abeles characteristically uses photography as a tool for the exploration of the body and human form. In her imagery, the artist alternates between treatments of the body as a readymade – the body as object – and the body as a site for discovery and display, knowable only as abstracted, dispersed, projected onto, exposed, or as dressed up – a vessel of style. Maintaining an anonymous approach within her work, Abeles’s practice is largely preoccupied with her ongoing exploration of concepts of finitude and escape, of reinverting military technologies, and of the figure as both code and clock."
One of my favourite pieces by her was the missed media collage where she used drawing over different materials. I think when artists use texture it really gives it a new depth and asks for a new way of looking it at it. It adds more character when you look at a painting and you start to associate the feel of the textures to the message behind it. For example Alberne uses gold crocodile skin to represent masculinity and wealth.
Richard H. was one of the artists that was on our brief which caught my attention. I became interested in how he was part of this conversation about realism in the way he portrayed his ideas. Abstraction is something that I often find hard to relate to however I think it often describes something in a more detailed way than realism. Abstraction can often focus in more on emotion and only certain elements that are key. I liked his work because it also reminded me of work of another artists Daniel Segrove that has influenced me in the past. I also liked Hamilton's use of collage and painting in different techniques and I find it interesting how he picks out the areas to focus on and crop. I think he has an amazing sense of composition. I like how instead of making block colours you can actually see the brushstrokes within the colour which makes the viewer aware of the artists brushstrokes.
INTERVIEW WITH SEGROVE (March 2017
WALT MORTON: One of the most obvious innovative features in your work is a break away from traditional fine art drawing to inject color, also to distress the image — to stain, tear, cut, wreck or burn the image. Sometimes to crop the image “badly.” Part of this is a way to bring new color and texture and excitement, but is it more than that? When did you start manipulating your work this way — and why?
DANIEL SEGROVE: I started this type of destructive deconstruction once I left school, mostly because once I was out of school no one could tell me "no this is wrong." My concept behind the distress on the artwork's surface was to try and find a link between emotion and texture. I want to capture the emotional presence not through an actual literal representation (e.g. this is an emotional artwork - look how the figure is crying or something). Instead I want the emotion to come from how I treat the artwork itself, that the emotion is felt in a more literal action by the hands of the artist and not the subject matter. I think I can also relate the goal to the goals of storytelling, how writers often like to “show” and not “tell”. This also applies to visual art as well. Making a visual image does not inherently mean you are showing something. If you make the image too literal, you create a very stale image - you don’t want to spoon feed the viewer. I believe in leaving the image open ended so that the viewer can make their own conclusions and relate to it how they wish. This is why for my work I don’t want the emotional aspect of the work to come solely from the subject matter but the treatment of the work itself.
I found this really interesting because this gave me a starting point with how to approach creating image that doesn't "spoon-feed" the viewer but actually uses texture to create this dialog. I find working with textiles being one of my favourite ways to work because I think texture can have a lot of character so the way Segrove manipulates his work to portray emotion I think makes the work more personal too. It is the same when we meet someone new we never know their story at the beginning - it would be strange if we did. But only after spending a bit more time with them can we start to create and image of who they are.
Thinking about his approach also helped me in the drawing task to pick the areas that I wanted to leave obvious or ambiguous. After beginning with abstract this work also made me focus in a little more on portraiture because I felt this is where most emotion is visible and if not this is where segrove's technique comes in of texture and abstraction.
I thought Daga's painting was referenced from the same way of displaying images together. It's interesting that if he had painted just one image of a dancer it would feel still compared to this trio creating almost a loop of a dance that your imagination allows to create. Similarly with these images I feel like he is able to capture a fragment of a moment. Using so many images also makes me think of multiple perspectives. As if it is being interrogated by many eyes and they are all seeing the same moment from a different viewpoint.
Looking at these photographs there would often be references to cubism
'What's Cubism?
In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.'
https://www.canadiannaturephotographer.com/hockney.html
Ways Of seeing - I actually enjoyed reading this and found a lot of interesting aspects which talked about the way we perceive things and whether our views are altered by our experiences in the world.
21/11
So far I think I have been gravitating towards images that suggest or imitate movement in some way. I like the immersive nature Hockney's photography which at the same time leaves places unknown. I like when there is a sense of narrative in a painting because it makes the image more personal and suggests experience outside of what you see.
'Beginning each of his screen prints by making a collage, David Noonan brings together an eclectic array of found imagery – sourced from film stills, books, magazines, and archive photos – to create dramatic scenes that suggest surreal narratives. These collages are then photographed and turned into large-scale screen prints, a technique remarkable for its sumptuous finish that relates to both artistic authenticity and mass media. Printed in harsh contrast black and white, Noonan’s images encapsulate the romanticism of golden age cinema, and its associations to memory, fiction, and modern mythology.'
Noonan's screenprints are what made me interested in experimenting with my collage further and over layer them to see if a narrative can be evoked just from the process itself.
Research on Memory
https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/rememberingthings/
3 types of memories:
1) Sensory memory- Sensory memory is really short. It holds information we receive from our senses for a few seconds or less.
2) Short-term memory or working memory - Short-term memory holds information for a little longer than sensory memory but still it’s short (less than a minute). We can boost our short-term memory through rehearsal, i.e. repeating the information over and over again. Research also showed that we remember better if we repeat the information over a period of time (think distributing your study time vs cramming the night before an exam).
3) Long-term memory - Once the information gets to our long-term memory, it’s there for a long time.
There are 2 types of long-term memories:
1) Explicit memory - Explicit memory is processed in the hippocampus of our brain. This includes facts (semantic memory) and things that we experienced personally (episodic memory).
2) Implicit memory - Implicit memory is processed in other areas of our brain. This includes skills (procedural memory).
22/11 Lethaby Gallery
"Through a series of actions and interventions, this evolving exhibition examines notions of ‘otherness’ through the lens of difference and seeks to go beyond the frame of images. Curated by Central Saint Martins alum Samboleap Tol and final-year student Sara Gulamali, the exhibition features the work of 22 artists, including students and graduates from colleges across London."
Part 2 of the project: Abstraction
NOTES/ THOUGHTS FROM THE VIDEO
At the beginning people tried their best to create art that represented what they saw in the most accurate way however when things like impressionism started appearing this was no longer as important however still challenged. Painters like Hugo and Whistler show that some things in life just simply do look abstract in their landscape paintings. After photography was introduced artis ts became interested in painting things non naturalistically. This varied in methodologies which stylised, flattened or simplified the image. Matisse began doing this in using intensive colours and Picasso recreated still life through cubism and fragmenting things into geometric shapes which shoes multiple angles of an object at once (similarly to Hockney's photography). Other artists collapsed space and time together to represent speed and perspective in painting. For painters such as Kandinsky abstraction wasn't something that opposed realism but it actually was realism because he was interested in connecting with the spiritual which makes the painting about believing that there is more than what meets the eye - this is just the way he express his experience "while under the effect of the form of colour combination of the picture".
Annie Besant created art in belief that sounds and emotions had a form of visual auras. This is also where the video speaks about the importance music has on painting and how perhaps different musical tastes can be depicted in different artist's work.
Piet Mondrian created work where he believed things could be represented simply by using the vertical and horizontal.
Abstract Expressionism
"Within abstract expressionism were two broad groupings: the so-called action painters, who attacked their canvases with expressive brush strokes; and the colour field painters who filled their canvases with large areas of a single colour.
The action painters were led by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who worked in a spontaneous improvisatory manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way the action painters directly placed their inner impulses onto the canvas.
The second grouping included Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. They were deeply interested in religion and myth and created simple compositions with large areas of colour intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer. In an essay written in 1948 Barnett Newmann said: 'Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘'life'’, we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings'. This approach to painting developed from around 1960 into what became known as colour field painting, characterised by artists using large areas of more or less a single flat colour."
I once spoke to an abstract painter Errol Sweetland who was interested in marbling about what was his case for abstraction and how he reacts when someone says "My 5 year old could do that" and his answer was "well why aren't they doing it?". It really made me think how abstraction requires genuine skill because it becomes so much more about aesthetics and whether it is comfortable for the eye.
Tauba Averbach - interview
I wonder about the line between rational and irrational in your work, the knowable and unknowable. What does belief have to do with what you’re up to? It’s not possible to visualize various concepts you’re interested in, so what are you aiming at with your work that ultimately manifests visually?
Right now I think about trying to make art that is entheogenic. Entheogens are molecular compounds that induce altered states of consciousness, which are said to bring the user into contact with “the divine.” For me the divine is everywhere, the goddamn amazingness of the universe: its complexity, order, and mysteriousness. I’m talking about everything from the amazing architecture of something like a shell, to things like dark matter, the bending of space-time, and whatever consciousness is. These are the things I think about, read about, and live in utter awe of. That, and my gratitude for being here and able to take it all in. So if I could have one goal for right now it would be to make something—an object, an image, a sound, anything—that acted entheogenically, bringing a person into greater contact with whatever might be divine for them.
I liked the way she spoke about her work because I am interested in making work that makes people notice things they were't aware of before or making them appreciate something they hadn't. I think that is the most powerful thing about art is that when words fail we can use this to create awareness of certain ideas and even influence the mind of the viewer.
Abstraction Today Lecture
I think this was one of my favourite lectures which I was surprised about because it was so interesting to hear what these paintings carried in them and about the processes that were made to create a final outcome.
There were many artists that caught my attention.
Tomma Apts - All the process is shown on the page which I find interesting because it makes it more human and relatable when he behind the scenes are shown.
When watching the video 'the case for abstraction' it talked about things in our lives which appear abstract such as landscapes at night and the change in whether making it less visible. Similarly I thought you can create so much abstraction through photography. It would be interesting to take images of people in the every day and see how distorted it could get. Even on the tube I think taking pictures of people is quite difficult especially when you look like you're looking at the camera and directing it onto someone so it would be internist to make images without looking at the camera and seeing the outcome through that element of surprise.
As textiles was one of the first things that came into my mind for this project I also started looking at what the fashion nd textiles students were focusing on in their brief. A lot of it was to do with rubbish and recycling and using materials that are quite throw away. I began using any scrap that I had to make small compositions. My favourite thing about all these images is the colour and I realised very quickly that I want to start experimenting with that as much as I can because for the first time in a while I had felt a little more excited about something.
Also the I took the image of the rubbish because it almost reminded me of a weave put together and had a sort of composition in it already.
On Painting and Pictures
"Music is a medium that people are more tuned to... Vocal Music.. I see as more like representational painting, because it conveys meanings outside the music itself. Instrumental music... is more abstract, but still projects feelings and emotion. I think painting can project the same kind of sense as music, its just a different medium."
Presents the dynamic nature of painting. Can a painting exist as something that hasn't been created to be a painting. 'Painting' being not an object. defining the edges of painting for yourself and where you want to situate yourself in. Is there a difference between a painting and picture?
The outside of the painting matters a lot. Both abstract and figurative painting are an illusion.
Good to identify resistances in your work.
Marginal Games- small factors that add up to a big change. David Betchelor.
Jeff Coons his work made by other people. Where do you place your value or where does the audience place their.
In painting your are constantly making value judgements. A good way of understanding of what your'e project is about. This makes you think about the painterly skill and different techniques etc. Choosing an image out of all the other ones in the world. making hundreds of decisions in work. Ryman talks about the hierarchy of decision making. A work can be valued due to it's authenticity, branding. When you step out of fine art these assumptions aren't as important. When it is aethenitcly judged it's easier to judge the value. With conceptual art it's sometimes hard to trust. What is the tool kit of practice to make work just like fine art can give you skills to be successful in bunnies, plannings etc.
Seeing a third colour when placing two colours together. Idea of after images and your eye correcting. The yellow room Door fore Illioson.
This reminded me of a similar approach that Adrian Ghenie had when he stated that every painting is abstract. Overall I think this was a little bit of are elation to me because I didn't know that painting could be so much about the paint and the process itself without trying to squeeze deep meanings out of everything. Even though I wouldn't say I still yet completely understand his work I liked how honest he was through his painting. To me his paintings are honest and don't hide anything. It is what it is. Also I think it has the power to change your perspective and the way you look at painting. It asks you not to prejudge and take your time to analyse something you thought was obvious. On this course I realise more and more that no idea is a bad idea, it is only how committed the artist is to this idea because that is what is shows through the work the most. Im still learning to trust my ideas more and stop doubting them before even making the first mistake.
interview
How do you describe your work, and where do your biggest influences come from?
The language for describing art always shifts depending on who is listening. My practice is cyclical and shifts all of the time, but most currently I would describe the majority of my work as investigations into abstraction with a heavy focus on material. Much of my work plays with opposing forces, such as minimalist tendencies and extreme decadence. Nothing is one dimensional, and I am much more interested in creating a feeling rather than proving a point or presenting a specific narrative.
Helen Frankenthaler
''The drawing should come from what the shapes and the colours are"
"How are you getting your space, not where is the pencil going" Abstract painting is in a way also planning and thinking is this decision I'm going to make appropriate and how will it change everything. At the same time I think that is what's exciting about it, a colour could bring something into the painting that you never expected or planned.
"to provide space without line but deviniate line in other ways"
"colour itself or pigment itself is meaningless" I found this important because I feel the same way that composition is actually something that makes the colours come alive and have their own characteristics and hierarchy that they gain from being in this composition. Without it they don't sit together well.
To be in control enough not to be n control all. To have a dialog with the work and let yourself go in relation to it"
"The one rule is to have no rules and when you find them you are free to break out of them"
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2016/10/04/helen-frankenthaler-line-color-color-line/ Overall it's also nice to see so many women artists working with colour and composition and to hear their take on it.
Modern Realism: (Tate)
Although in the nineteenth century realism had a special meaning as an art term, since the rise of abstract approaches in modern art, realism, or realist, or realistic, has come to be primarily a stylistic description referring to painting or sculpture that continues to represent things in a way that more or less pre-dates post-impressionism and the succession of modern styles that followed. Much of the best modern realist art still has the edginess of subject matter that was the essential characteristic of nineteenth-century realism.
In the twentieth century, realism saw an upsurge in the 1920s when the shock of the First World War brought a reaction, known as the return to order, to the avant-garde experimentation of the pre-war period. In Germany this led to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement (Otto Dix, Christian Schad) and magic realism. In France, Andre Derain, previously a fauve painter, became a central figure in what was called traditionisme. In the USA there was the phenomenon of regionalism, and the great realist Edward Hopper. In Britain there was the Euston Road School and the painter Meredith Frampton. The British Kitchen Sink artists could be included, but they used essentially modern styles to paint realist subjects.
-Kicthen Sink painters is a term applied to a group of British artists working in the 1950s who painted ordinary people in scenes of everyday life
Realism: (Tate)
Until the nineteenth century Western art was dominated by the academic theory of History painting and High art (grand manner). Artistic conventions governed style and subject matter, resulting in artworks that often appeared artificial and removed from real life.
Then, the development of naturalism began to go hand in hand with increasing emphasis on realism of subject, meaning subjects outside the high art tradition.
The term realism was coined by the French novelist Champfleury in the 1840s and in art was exemplified in the work of his friend the painter Gustav Courbet. In practice realist subject matter meant scenes of peasant and working class life, the life of the city streets, cafes and popular entertainments, and an increasing frankness in the treatment of the body and sexual subjects. The term generally implies a certain grittiness in choice of subject. Such subject matter combined with the new naturalism of treatment caused shock among the predominantly upper and middle class audiences for art. Realism is also applied as a more general stylistic term to forms of sharply focused almost photographic painting irrespective of subject matter, e.g. early Pre-Raphaelite work such as John Everett Millais’ Ophelia.
It was interesting to hear about Puchamp's work because of how it helped to evolve the world of comics as well as other forms of art that translate movement and illustrate movement in detail such as animation and illustration. I think he had almost like a John Ruskin approach to every day life. He understood things more through drawing but Puchamp used photography as well as painting. I found it interesting how he stylised movement and it made me think of taking images that are full of movement and stylising them in a way that isn't completely recognisable. Collecting images helped as it made me come across a lot of fashion editorials where there was so much movement it was no longer recognisable as what kind of garment it may be.
Review By Sarah Mower
'Speed, technology, and the fast-forwarding fractured chaos of modern consciousness were the subtexts of this couture collection. It was formatted as a double-vision experience: The human eye showed one reality, the screen another—the before and after are paired in the photographs you see here. Well, isn’t that the way we live today, our brains trained to judge every event and every environment according to how they’ll look on Instagram?'
This had an interesting relationship with realism and how social media distorts our idea of what is real. It may be real for the outsiders however for the individual, they know the true reality. I looked into his collection because a lot of my reference images at the beginning were fashion based and it was interesting to see some of the more conceptual/ every day ideas behind realism.
Ghenie paints with a palette knife and stencils, and often chooses to depict important figures from history, notably including a series of portraits of Charles Darwin. His work has been compared to Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko.
“Every painting is abstract,” Ghenie said in the midst of an exhibition that counts as his first in New York in nearly four years. “I don’t believe in figurative. As soon as it starts to imitate, to depict something, then a painting is dead. This is the moment when you kill painting.”
Compositions can be figurative, he said, but the power of painting—when it has any power at all—is less in the cause than in the effect. And that effect is abstract regardless of the elements that went into creating a picture or considering it after the fact. “People imagine that abstraction is some kind of gesture,” Ghenie said of those who approach abstraction as a rhetorical stance. “But when you try to paint a tree, you realize, ‘I cannot paint all the leaves, I cannot paint all the textures.’ So you have to invent a movement of the brush that would suggest, in your mind, a tree. That is, essentially, abstract.”
Polke was an interesting artist to look at as I had never come across artwork that is so experimentation-focused.
Every painting has a human element to it because it is rich with the identity of the painter one way or the other no matter how much they try to detach themselves from it. Still I think there is something about having an actual element of the human figure in painting that makes it that bit more relatable and emotional. It's interesting to place something so clear next to for example some abstract painting or the actual silhouette being abstract like in Ghenie's painting's
180 Strand - Strange Days
Wong Ping - "I admire and sometimes even envy artists who have a clear research direction. Every time I make a new piece, I often feel disoriented. I am more free-spirited. I always say that each work of mine is a diary about me during that period of time. It’s hard for me to tell you right now what I want to say in general, but I might know later."
I've never seen anything like it and the story was mixed with humour and heartbreak at the same time. These bright colours were almost sarcastic to what was happening in the story.
Tania Brugera
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45708599
"Tania [Bruguera, the artist] chose to put an image under a floor using thermochromic material - heat-sensitive material - because she loved the idea of making a horizontal mural. "But it's one which is a call to action, because there's no way that you can see this picture unless you join together with many, many other people." The image which is eventually revealed is a portrait of a young Syrian migrant named Yusef, who fled to the UK from Homs and is now studying medicine. The theme of migration is one that dominates the whole installation. It's a topic which artists, writers and performers are tackling frequently at the moment. But where this exhibition differs is that it's actively intended to make you, the viewer, physically uncomfortable.
This article interested me not that the aesthetic reasons of this piece but the idea behind recognising something that is often overlooked by many. It reminded me a little bit of the ideas factory project where I had the idea of placing somebody in an uncomfortable place to have this humiliation from the nature of masochism. Here the way the sense of being uncomfortable was used was through recognising that to make change happen it is hard work. To make people alter their viewpoint to see something they once never recognised is hard work that you have to do within yourself.
What I also found interesting in reading WAYS OF SEEING was the part about how the poor artist was portraying the rich in his painting and so many are trying to figure out his view point and his attitude towards these people though his gestures.
Finnegan Harries - A Creative Approach To Climate Change
http://www.tedxteen.com/talks/finnegan-harries-a-creative-approach-to-climate-change
Educate, Organise, Lead (by example)
I have seen the work he had done with his brother on activism and it was interesting to hear him talk about climate change in a way that encourages creativity. It made me realise that any approach to change the world for the better requires creativity
I found it interesting the tones that Bacon found in his painting that appeared just from a black and white image. As well as the shapes, they were all completely unique when processed through his brushstrokes. This sort of challenged the idea of realism however was this realism to him and how he saw the image? These colours and tones are all originated from his imagination. However does imagination turn painting into abstraction? Or does it make it even more accurate because these are the true colours evoked in the artists mind.
I literally typed into google 'Are paintings using your imagination Abtract?' and the first thing that came up was "Understanding abstract art is fairly easy – all you need is an open mind and a wandering imagination. ... “Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes. Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite." Even though this was all about abstraction I think it still had elements of Bacon's outcomes. With his paintings he was letting the viewer to place a new story to this original image whereas if he copied it exactly all we could think about was a scrunched photograph.
"Do you see what I see"
https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/do-you-see-what-i-see
These scientists believe that color perception may not be predetermined like many have believed for hundreds of years. Instead of a set pattern, scientists doing research with monkeys found that color perception may instead be shaped by the outside world. Although most of us would agree that red is the color of cherries, cardinals and stop signs, scientists now think that one person's red could sometimes be another person's blue.
As I am still trying to figure out what some aspects of one art are it was interesting watching this video and understanding that some art is completely based on the idea rather than it's aesthetic outcome. Sometimes I'll come across something and I want to know more about it. It might never be useful but hopefully it will. Again trying to absorb as much information as I can... anyway
I really liked the work of Acconci where he follows strangers until they enter a house or a space. I'm not sure what exactly is interesting about that but he drew out maps to show this. I think the whole process makes you delve into perhaps a habit they have to perform every day. Turning that corner to get home quicker or seeing the journey of somebody who makes it again, every day. "I am almost not an 'I' anymore; I put myself in the service of this scheme" Is what he says about this process and I get what he means. In a way you're delving into a segment of somebody else's life.
It is also interesting how some people did some of the things we as people normally do but slightly more in depth and call it art. For example Eleanor Antin who photographed herself naked every day to show her weight loss. I often find things like this quite pointless but then after looking into it and how she creates this work to have connotations with greek sculpture and the idea of the male gaze and how they unnecessary parts are chipped away and the the time that this was set in with connections to feminism I begin to understand she has a point. Also she lost 10 pounds in 37 days. Still I can't help but often question the necessity of this work in the same way that when I make work I feel like it often doesn't serve any purpose. This woman makes this art to highlight the shallow viewpoint of men and goes through all that effort to do so. In the same way her efforts are what makes this piece more powerful.
Tomma Apts
"Maybe she is always painting the same painting. They are all very like one another and yet utterly singular: always different, always the same. Some radiate from a central point, others have loops that fall over and under one another in an impossible visual conundrum. I think of spiders’ webs, inlaid enamels, dances with ribbons, forgotten wall reliefs. But none of this comes close" -Adrian Searle
I really liked the story behind this piece and how nostalgic it was. It was even felt from the colour that she had used almost like looking back happily. I was researching into Parsons and she was a student on the BA illustration course. She also has a successful website with a range of work and collaboration. I found it interesting to see how and artist works outside of her BA and collaborates. Also I had not really come across illustration work like this and at the beginning I thought it was more textiles or fine art because it is leaning more towards abstraction and the message isn't clear in what actions are being made. The sense of narrative is quite ambiguous which I hadn't one across in illustration. This would be interesting to experiment with and create narratives that go against the usual story board style but come out of the boxes which suggest scenes and overlap one another. Her work reminded me of one of my favourite artists Daniel Segrove the way he often uses repetition in his work to evoke emotion and a sense of time.
Here is a collection of images I had found in the book that I found inspired me. The only form of abstraction that I am familiar with is using fabrics to convey or portraying ideas and imitating images that I find interesting. Heloise Guerin's work is also really interesting because of the way she uses colour and then intricately places it on fabric. Her painting is expressive but her textiles are selective. http://ensaama.net/site/home/diplomes/2016/dsaa-mode-et-innovation-textile/heloise-guerin
For this photograph I used the last image from the LIFUL editorial as a reference because I was drawn to the colours. I started thinking about how I could stylise this image and I started thinking about how when a camera is out of focus we often see the lense flair as being in a shape of a circle which lead me to start with this.
After I had finished I went to the sink to empty my cup and accidentally dropped a small amount of water on in and suddenly the paint escaped the centre of the drop to its edges and revealed the while behind the colours. I really liked this effect so I made it drip and covered the painting with more water. It was interesting to see how the process of the painting reaches its peak and then turn into something completely different. I think with abstraction it is important to know when to stop but there are always moments when you can't just leave it as it is and it needs more.
In the future paintings I will try and find this balance more. It is almost like carrying weights and being able to find your balance so neither left or right is at risk of falling out of your hand. The circled frames are the ones where I liked the painting the most and wish I had stopped.
Guiseppe Penone
I had found a piece of tree on the way home one day and after looking at some of the sculptural work by ... it made me interested in how I can place painting on such a natural object and make it more illustrative. I had some ideas about covering it in casting as a base for paint or perhaps textiles. Maybe I will need to create the shape for it and only then paint on it.
I started thinking about work of Penone as he was one of the sculpture artists that works with this nature object and it also incoporates drawing within it as a study of the shapes that derive from the tree. I liked the work of one of the artists discussed in the abstraction lecture who creates 3D paintings (Glenn Brown) which look really textured and unnatural which would be interesting to place these things in a juxtaposition.
I also like the work of Fiona Rae – Everything will be beyond your thinking. It's not often I see painters using these cartoonish elements in their work that seem to cash with painting with their sharp edge however I think that is interesting to explore. In a way it reminds me of children cartoons in soviet Russia where often the background is painted or drawn and the characters that are a lot more vivid are placed in front. This would also be an interesting thing to experiment with and to make painting more illustrative sounds quite exciting to me.
Lynita Benglis
This artist caught my attention because she resisted her work being categorised. Her work ranges from sculpture, painting to drawing and craft. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/lynda-benglis This was a really lovey interview where both of them are artist, Benglis is talking to John Baldessari. It's interesting to read how both great artists speak about work and what advice they give each other.