I have chosen to speak about one of my own images. I chose this painting as it was the first piece of artwork that came to mind. My image is A1 in size and emits an unusual, eerie atmosphere due to the dark background and blue and white smudged paint on the edges as well as the multi-colour sphere floating off centre of the image. I believe if this image was much larger the viewer would really be able to get fully immersed in this abstract landscape I have created and really get to strongly feel the unusual atmosphere of this image. So perhaps for further experimentation I could create a much larger piece with the similar format and concept of this particular image to see if it does indeed change the mood of the artwork. So in order to transform this image on a larger-scale I would simply just draw out the sphere in pencil like I did for the original piece and make sure to abide by the same make-up of the original; keeping the sphere off centre and the white and blue smudges in the left and right edges. Of course it would appear slightly different as it is near impossible to create an exact copy of an image, however this may prove to be beneficial.

Throughout this process I would not say that I have really learned anything from the research and communications module besides the appropriation task, this I learned about appropriation and some of the laws behind it, this was valuable information that could become helpful in future endeavours. I also found it useful being informed about artists I had not heard of before and I liked analysing photos such as in Task 3 were I analysed a photo by ‘Nikki S. Lee, Part (14), 2002 [photograph]’ and in Task 9 I spoke about Duncan Grants photo ‘Bathing, 1911’. However this is something I have already done previously before doing a degree, so therefore nothing I don’t already know how to do and is something I simply just enjoy doing, which is why I liked these tasks. I found the studio work and lectures far more beneficial to my practice, such as learning more about the art movements, which made me have a better understanding of the concepts behind an artist and what influenced them and their work.

So overall the blog for me was not that useful to my practice however it did improve my knowledge of artists. Although the lectures, my own research and crits was more than sufficient for me to find artists that related to my artwork and would benefit my practice.

Liberation, force, honesty, authentic, creative, loud, dynamic, society, personal, vivid.

I decided to use a piece I recently painted named “Dirty Baby” to best represent my practice. The image is conveying how society can change the meaning of a word to mean something completely opposite, for example in this piece baby can be defined as a human being, new-born, innocent and pure. Then society has manipulated the word to mean a more sexual connotation that one may call a partner; a dirtier version. I also used the colours blue and pink to represent the stereotypes associated with the genders when a child is born; pink for female and blue for male. I then merged these colours together which created a purple that expressed a neutral version of these gender stereotypes. So my piece was challenging gender roles in our society, which covers some of my choice of words quite accurately.

This image was an accurate representation of my project so far as a lot of my work contains the subjects of breaking stereotypes and gender roles, so this images concept is one way I have been exploring these subjects, while also still strongly highlighting what my artwork is about currently.

The work I have chosen to talk about is Duncan Grant ‘Bathing’ 1911. It depicts a scene of seven naked men diving into the sea, however it has been suggested it is a representation of a continuous movement of a single man diving into the sea.

The focus on male nudity has been argued that it was due to Grants homosexuality and therefore his attraction to males. This art piece was created in the wake of the French post-impressionist movement. The Post-Impressionist movement used a lot of arbitrary and unnatural colours as well as emphasised on geometric forms. You can see that this image was heavily influenced by Post-Impressionism with the unnatural colours and geometric forms of the sea.

Grant was also a member of the Bloomsbury group, which was a group of individuals with mixed fields of work such as: English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists. Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as current attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. I strongly feel this artwork as well as some of his other works he created around the same time such as ‘Football’ 1911, made a positive impact on societies views on same sex attraction at the time and would have aided the more accepting view of the LGBTQ+ community of today.

For the appropriation task I simply chose to copy multiple images which had a surrealist theme to go with the atmosphere of my piece. I decided to do a surrealist piece as I have always been inspired by artists such as Salvador Dali who’s artwork has the potential to transport the viewer to another reality. This idea of creating this dream like state in the viewer fascinates me. I created a background of a variety of vivid watercolours, simply because I enjoy these shades of colours and it does help in making the image as eye catching as possible. I decided to use plain black drawings because these would  then really contrast boldly against the bright colours of the background. There was no chosen artists work I decided to specifically replicate, all my images I used were discovered from Pinterest and I could not find the artists who had created each piece of the artwork I chose to use. The shapes on the left hand side where the only images I created myself, as well as the background. I have always enjoyed copying drawings that have captured my attention, usually due to their unusual style, so to me this task came quite naturally.

Within the two texts “The Yale Lecture by Richard Serra” written in 1990 and “Other Criteria by Leo Steinburg” published in 1972. They both speak about art in a passionate and educated manner. Serra is more interested in the process of Sculptor whereas Steinburg is more interested with the process of Painting. I feel both texts share a similarity with certain similar themed topics discussed, an example of this would be that they both speak about how the spoken practice has changed with time. Steinburg stated “The pictures of the last fifteen to twenty years insist on a radically new orientation, in which the painted surface is no longer the analogue of a visual experience of nature but of operational processes.”  He was saying in this quote how painting has evolved away from focusing on natural landscapes to a more abstract appearance of processes. However Steinburg doesn’t seem negatively affected by this transition compared to Serra who says “Sculptors for the most part have ignored the results of the industrial revolution failing to investigate these fundamental processes and methods of steel making, engineering and construction.” He is expressing his disappointment of how more recent sculptors have steered away from the traditional roots of sculpt making due to the introduction of technology, he states “the technological process is revealed depersonalizes and demythologizes the idealization of the sculptor’s craft.” Serra means that the process of making the sculpture is just as important as creating the final product, which I agree to a point. I believe an artist can learn and develop new ways of working with a more hands on approach to sculpture perhaps. However the introduction of technology allows sculpture to be far more exciting due the variety we can now create compared to when the technology we have currently wasn’t around.

When Steinburg speaks about the differences in the painting process over time, (more specifically through the Cubism Movement, in the 1900’s, through to the Abstract Expressionistic movement , in the 1940’s.) he has a less rigid approach in his opinions, he is simply discussing the transition of the artwork throughout the years. He praised artists such as Duchamp and Rauschenberg  as being huge influences within the art scene. Steinburg stated how Rauschenberg laid the “foundation of an artistic language that would deal with a different order of experience” within the 1950’s during the abstract expressionist movement. Whereas Serra only mentions artists who either back up his opinion such as Le Corbusier (who wrote a letter to Victor Nekrasov stating how he felt that paintings of sculptor don’t undermine sculpture but don’t add anything to it either (backing up Serra’s dislike for non-traditional methods of making sculpture)). Or he mentions artists to simply criticise their artwork for using sculpture in a non-traditional way.

Overall I preferred the more open minded approach of Leo Steinburg’s Other Criteria, compared to that of the more narrow minded outlook of Richard Serra’s The Yale Lecture.

The practice I am going to be evolving is what I like to call “Mood Painting”. Where basically you create abstract paintings from the emotions you are currently experiencing or are being evoked through an external stimulus, for example I will be listening to music and from the music I get inspired to choose what colours to mix into the background and sometimes place words which stick out to me from the song. I started creating artwork this way at the beginning of this year in my Art Foundation course after being inspired by a talk from the artist Tom Hammick, the way he spoke about his prints and the personal connection he had between night and day and how it influenced his work, I was inspired to experiment with this personal connection within my own artwork; so I began this mood painting technique. I really enjoyed it and it created some interesting work and was somewhat therapeutic for me to allow my thoughts and emotions to seep onto the paper through an array of colours and words and to reflect on the outcome afterwards.

The piece of artwork I will be speaking about is “Violetta Alone, 2015” created by Tom hammick, which I witnessed at the “Towards Night” exhibition at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne.

What I found most striking about seeing this image upfront was the size of the piece. It is larger in size than I anticipated (193 x 152 cm in size to be precise), this made the image have a far greater presence than when glancing at it on the internet. The image captivated your gaze with its size and by its moody, mysterious atmosphere that was not as strongly present when looking at it through a screen.

I also noticed that marks and colours appeared more vivid in the piece compared to when browsing the piece online, certain red lines silhouetted the figure making the character seem somewhat more sinister. I did not notice this online compared to when I saw the artwork upfront, making the image far more interesting to me.

The way the artwork was positioned in the exhibition made it have more of an impact on the viewer. The image had its own wall in the corner all by itself so it was seen as an almost monumental piece by the artist. This would only have been noticed by seeing the work upfront and perhaps at this particular exhibition.

I recently visited the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne to attend the “Towards Night” exhibition curated by Tom Hammick. Tom had curated the show around the theme of night, painting the walls a dark blue to give the entire space an atmosphere of night, giving the exhibition a more immersive experience than if the walls did not go with the theme of the exhibition.

I was first attracted to the exhibition due to my previous research into Tom hammick and liking his artwork and his use of day and night themes within his work, so I wanted to go and see his work upfront as he was also showing his own artwork at the exhibition. A lot of his work was focusing on night and had dark colours and dark blues which merged into the wall being of the same blue colour, this made certain pieces of his work seem even larger and more captivating than without the use of the wall colour matching the works background. A piece where this really worked by Tom was the “Violetta Alone, 2015”. The image is already large in size and with the added illusion of it merging into the walls due to its dark blue background, it certainly became a memorable piece of the exhibition.

I chose to look at “Nikki S. Lee, Part (14), 2002 [photograph]” more closely. It appears Nicki is acting as a women sitting in a car with an arm wrapped around her shoulders, which looks to be a males arm and the face of the man is not seen. The women is starring off into the distance, her facial expression sad and longing to perhaps be somewhere else.
I feel that perhaps the image is about an unloving relationship, or at least a relationship that is bad enough she does no longer want to be in it anymore. However the male is still committed shown by the affectionate gesture of him placing his arm around her shoulder. I feel either she doesn’t know how to get out of the relationship or it could be more darker and it’s an abusive relationship that she is feeling trapped in. This is shown by her sad and longing facial expression and by her body language; she is facing the opposite direction of whoever is wrapping their arm around her as she does not want to be reminded of the pain of her situation.
I feel Nicki is trying to convey in a subtle way how isolating and lonely bad relationships can feel to the viewer. Perhaps she has gone through this personally and is an aspect she struggled with the most whilst being in a bad relationship, so she felt the need to express it through her work. Perhaps this was simply her own expression and she did not consider the viewers perspective on this piece that much and it was simply an outlet of the trauma she faced.
I decided to choose this image out of the four to analyse as I was intrigued by the images potential dark subtext, the other images failed to interest me in the same way.