Only dead paintings are executed

At the moment I'm working on a series of 8 paintings based on the squares of a map. It's not the map above, though drawings made from that one will be used later on in the process. The one I'm using is one of the shipping route maps I mentioned in a previous post.

I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone by not planning the paintings too much, as is my habit. I've been working and reworking them, and trying to be more experimental with paint handling. I think it's too early to judge yet how they're turning out, but I hope that by challenging myself I'll grow in confidence with my oil painting!

I also had my mid-year assessment last week with my tutor, Virginia Verran (Winner of the 2010 Jerwood Drawing Prize, don't you know!) which went well. She suggested that I start a "quotes book" to keep a track of things that interest me that may not necessarily be to do with my studio practice, but that inspire me. I only have two so far, but I'll share the first one because it's the one I keep repeating to myself...

"Only dead paintings are executed. Living ones come into being. They are a record of decisions; the sum of actions taken and reactions to them, of judgements made and of the reconsiderations and revisions that those initial judgements prompt. Painting is process; painting is doubt; painting is the suspension of disbelief and the physical affirmation of formal and material intuitions for which there is no prior justification. Painting is what painters do while others argue about painting."


- Robert Storr, Cage- Six Paintings by Gerhard Richter

Exhibition time!

My paintings fiiiinally went up in the 2nd year Fine Art exhibition at The Poly in Falmouth on Tuesday :) The 2 days of hanging the show were a bit of a nightmare, but it all turned out fine in the end. Here's a photo of me with my paintings- the horrible flash does nothing for them whatsoever, but it's the only one I've got!

I had the obligatory group crit of the work today (holding a discussion about our work in groups of 5 or 6 led by a tutor) and people seemed positive about the paintings. However, I get the feeling that the graphic style/diagrammatic nature of the way I work makes people see it as inaccessible and a bit cold... I hope I can somehow combat this!

Anyway, if you're reading this and saw the exhibition/have an opinion on the paintings as you see them on here, don't hesitate to let me know what you think. Reactions to my work are always welcome :)

x

Being good isn't always easy...

Ahh. What a week.

Since finishing my pieces for the exhibition last week, which doesn't even open for another 4 days, I've been really struggling to think of something to do next. Until now the exhibitions I have been part of have been at the end of the academic year, so I'm not used to having to plough on with work once they're out of the way! I have still been doing bits and bobs in the studio but none of them have captured my imagination.

I've been a bit of a geek today and got some books out of Falmouth library on one of my Strange Fascinations- shipping lanes. They have lots of cool maps in! I know, I know... I'm weird. But if it gets me re-inspired, why not? :)

One lady who has kept me smiling all week is Joss Stone. I'm going through a phase of listening to her stuff at the moment, and this one in particular I can't get enough of. She's made me fall in love with a song that I usually despise. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBH8o8XXnVM

I would also like to belatedly congratulate her on being the first nose ring-wearing, cider-drinking Bond Girl- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1295310/Joss-Stone-unveiled-latest-Bond-girl--new-video-game.html

x

Exhibition pieces

From 2nd-12th February I will be showing a triptych of paintings in the Fine Art Level 2 Show at The Poly in Falmouth (if you're from around here please go and have a look or come to the Private View on Tuesday 1st!).
There's no particular brief for this exhibition, it just gives the staff, students and members of the public a chance to glimpse what we've been up to since October 2010. These are my as yet untitled paintings, with my artist's statement underneath...



"My work is concerned with the overlap between the physical world and our perception of it. Recently I have been exploring negative space in my drawings: focusing only on the space in between and surrounding solid objects. I am interested in the way this can create fragmented images and bring up new associations that are unique to each viewer. Systems and structures are layered with elements relating to sensation, memory and sound, informed by my personal experience of synaesthesia."

On a slightly less arty-farty level, I am happier with these paintings than anything I have done previously, certainly since starting my degree course. I feel like they represent my intentions much more clearly and are the kind of work that I've wanted to make for quite a while, and could never quite get to.

The central image was only half-done in my opinion- I was going to build up the layers to a similar extent as the other two- but my tutor Virginia said she thought it worked well as it was, and that it acted as a "pause" separating the others. After looking at the images with this fresh viewpoint I'm glad I stopped where I did. Now I'll just have to wait and see what everyone else thinks when they go on show on the 1st!

Second Year, Term 1, part II

So, to pick up where I left off... I started using oil paint this term, in combination with negative space drawings in black pen. There's no particular conceptual element to my work at the moment. I just find outlines, flat shapes and silhouettes absurdly attractive and get a kick out of drawing, painting, layering and generally messing around with them. But that isn't how I discuss it with my tutors! ;)

I wanted to move onto (relatively) larger-scale work, and so after finding and priming a lovely MDF board- I love its smoothness in comparison to canvas or wood- I started making this painting.

In hindsight, the making-it-up-as-I-go-along approach didn't really pay off. There isn't much I like about this, and the composition (or lack of it) is what I dislike the most. However, my tutor liked it and said I was being too hard on myself, so that cheered me up slightly! Despite this negativity, this painting was a useful stepping-stone between the smaller-scale work I was making before and what I'm working on now, so all was not lost.

I took pictures of the different stages of this work, and I actually really like the first one I took, consisting of just the painted MDF board and black pen drawing. Hmm.

Anyway, after this painting I went back to the drawing board and started to consider composition more carefully. It was then that I came up with a little study on canvas board, which I have annoyingly lost the photograph of. I was much more pleased with this and it became a basis for one of my current works in progress.

Another factor which restored my optimism was buying new artist-quality oil paints (Winsor and Newton, to be precise). From the first brush stroke I knew it was £70 well spent, and I spent the next week in a love-induced haze. I'd recommend these paints to any student who thinks they'll be spending a substantial amount of time oil-painting; I bought mine from www.jacksonsart.co.uk.

Here are the two paintings I'm currently working on (I know they're mounted wonkily on the wall!):

At the moment it's the end of the Christmas holidays, but when I get back to uni I'll have 3 weeks to finish these (and possibly create a third to work as a triptych) and then they will be displayed in my second year exhibition... eek.

Ok, this is the final post in which I'm catching up with posting past work. Hopefully from now on things will start to get more interesting and this might start to properly look like a blog!

BA(Hons) Fine Art- Second Year, term 1

Phew, haven't written on here in a while. Been too busy making the work I'm about to upload (and eating too many mince pies)! I'm afraid this is still a bit of a vague overview of what I've been up to- I intend to start blogging properly when the new term starts in January. As for what I've been up to since the end of first year, here goes...

When first year ended I wanted to start afresh, and so my work didn't particularly follow on from what I'd been doing before. I became interested in negative space drawing, which appealed to my inexplicable fascination with flat shapes, line drawings and silhouettes. I started by collecting photos I had taken over summer of things like trees, shadows, rollercoasters, monuments and architecture, and traced the negative space. When I returned to uni, I went out and did some observational negative space drawings from the local environment. This left me with a series of interesting outlined shapes and patterns that hinted at subject matter, but retained their abstract elusiveness. I started to introduce a sense of depth to these drawings by copying them onto acetate and tracing paper, and layering them in different ways:

I knew I wanted to include painting in there somewhere, and because I wasn't sure what I wanted to paint yet, I began by transcribing the layers of paint that had been left on my desk over the years. I made a couple of little observational paintings of the desk surface on canvas paper, and then cut it out in the shape of one of my negative space drawings of trees. This became another of the layers with which I experimented:

Original painting of desk surface

Unfortunately I've lost a few pictures of the next couple of stages of work so this might seem like a bit of a leap. I began to develop the painting side of my work by taking photographs of waves and using these as a basis for paintings that concentrated on colour and tone. The colours I used were taken from palettes I created by listening to music (I am synaesthetic and see colour, shape and movement when I hear sounds or listen to music). I arranged these palettes into tonal order, and created this initial wave painting by transcribing the tones using a grisaille-like technique:

Original wave photograph

I was pleased with this painting, but wanted to shift the focus away from subject matter and onto the formal elements of painting, namely colour, tone and brush stroke. In order to do this, I rotated the image 90 degrees and cropped a section of it, then chose only a few of the tones to paint. I preferred this as it evoked the movement of water without being too representational.

This post has covered most of term 1, but it is to be continued...

BA(Hons) Fine Art- First Year, Part II

And so to the rest of my work from first year!
After starting off looking at pixellation in painting, I wanted to introduce another element to my work. I was inspired by an idea of Frank Auerbach's to represent the movement of objects and animals in a landscape by documenting them with coloured lines, and began to experiment with this idea in conjunction with line drawings:

In these two images, green lines represent people, blue lines seagulls, grey lines pigeons, purple lines "other birds", and red and cream lines were the headlights of cars. Yes, that's about as exciting as street life gets in Falmouth! I then began to use this idea in conjunction with pixellation:

In another painting, I tried juxtaposing clusters of pixels with a looser style of painting:

This combination of painting styles eventually led me to my final series of work, based on the city of Berlin. In these paintings, I used photographs I had taken there to create pixel paintings which provided a background to a variety of other painting languages:

The next set of images show my final painting of the year which was exhibited in our first year exhibition, and details from this piece.

The very last pieces of work from my first year were done inside a novel. Inspired by Tom Phillips' Humument, I made a few paintings and drawings on the pages of the book, leaving certain areas of text showing through and thereby creating little poems. These images haven't led to any other work so far, but who knows if they will in the future!