This painting is 80x100cm and was painted using a palette knife and acrylic paint. Even though it was one of the biggest canvases I worked on, I believe it isn’t big enough. The goal of this painting was to make the viewer feel like they could enter the scene, like they were surrounded by a forest. In order to achieve this connection between the painting and the viewer, the painting must be as big as possible. It could even be painted straight on a gallery wall, as there really is no need for a canvas. Painting it on a larger scale will make room for more detail that could be added to the trees, to make them look more realistic. However I would like to keep the texture that the palette knives provided, since it adds realness to the painting. The increase in scale would also mean more colours could be added onto the painting, so that when it is viewed from up close, it would have an impressionistic style. The focal colours (burgundy, red, orange, yellow, purple) would remain the same though, since I want to portray a glowing autumnal scene.

My blog has helped me develop themes and ideas I’m interested in, and think about the kind of work I would like to produce in the future. It has allowed me to discover new artists and has drastically broadened my knowledge in art.

I found certain tasks more useful than others, specifically tasks 6 and 10, in which I became deeply invested in. Task 6 forced me to think outside the box and develop a new mode of practice. It made me consider using new techniques in my artwork, which I would never consider using before. Task 10 helped me self-reflect and come to a conclusion about what my artwork is about at the moment, something which, I believe, is very important for an artist to know, in order to proceed with future artwork. The process of gathering all my thoughts and ideas for that task, inspired me and gave me even more ideas to work on in the future.

Some tasks were more challenging than others, such as task 7, which required me to compare two different texts. However, I do believe this task helped me develop my conceptual and analytical skills and as a whole, this blog has helped me grow as an artist.

“Our environment and our memories make us who we are.”

My art at the moment is about identity and how one’s memories make up their identity. I want to express that all of life’s experiences, even the smallest ‘insignificant’ ones are what make us who we are. The places and the people that we’ve chosen to surround ourselves with play a role in shaping us into the person we are today. We learn from our past and learn from these memories of experience. Without memories, we have no reason, no emotion, no action and no identity.

I’ve been mainly working in paints but have recently grown an interest in print, which I’d like to develop further. I’ve also taken an interest in expressing the theme of memories through film. I enjoy working with mixed media and layering different materials on top of each other. In the above artwork, I layered birthday cards, postcards, maps, book pages and other documents of significance and painted on top of them, making sure you could faintly see them underneath the paint- like glimpses of distant memories.

Lorenzo Quinn

Support, 2017

On the 13^th of May, Lorenzo Quinn launched his new monumental sculpture at the Ca’ Sagredo Hotel, during the Venice Bienalle, 2017.

‘Support’ has been designed to address the environmental and global climate issues facing today’s society. Quinn uses the two gigantic hands as a force of nature that braces the historic building, both reinforcing it in the face of decay while at the same time suggesting a force of nature equally capable of destroying it.

“I wanted to sculpt what is considered the hardest and most technically challenging part of the human body. The hand holds so much power – the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy,” -Lorenzo Quinn.

This reflects the fragility of our built and natural environment and its vulnerability to the forces of nature and man. Quinn takes a liberal stance on climate change and addresses the ability for humans to make a change to impact the world around them – environmentally, economically and socially. Overall, ‘Support’ forces the viewer to come face to face with reality and the social impact that climate change has had on our planet. 

‘Venice is a floating art city that has inspired cultures for centuries, but to continue to do so it needs the support of our generation and future ones, because it is threatened by climate change and time decay,’ Lorenzo Quinn.

Bibliography:

Halcyon Gallery [online]

London

Available from: https://www.halcyongallery.com/exhibitions/lorenzo-quinn-at-the-venice-biennale [Accessed 3rd December 2017]

For my Contemporary Project, I printed out a picture of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘Mona Lisa’. However, the printer had ran out of toner and the image’s colours were completely altered. The painting’s original and naturalistic colours were replaced by bright fuchsia, coral, violet and royal blue. There was no longer proof of the technique da Vinci used-(‘sfumato’) in this painting, since the smooth transitions of tones were replaced with harsh lines. I decided that I would use that print for this task and proceed to strip the image from what made it so monumental within the art world. Other than the ‘sfumato’ technique, Mona Lisa’s gaze and smile played a role in making it such a popular painting. Mona Lisa’s eyes were painted in a specific way, making them follow you when you move around, which gave the painting mystery. Mystery was also created by her ‘smile’. When looking away from her mouth, it falls under the viewer’s peripheral vision, making it unclear. This, along with a little shading at the cheek bones make her mouth look like a smile. But once the viewer focuses on her mouth, the smile slowly disappears.

I decided to cover her face, and therefore cover her mysterious gaze and smile. I painted over her face using a palette knife, which added texture to the painting, and the vibrancy of the colours transformed the image even further. Having now removed everything that made the original image so impressive, I started to take it in as a work of art on its own. Even though the mystery of the gaze and smile was removed, the image now consisted of anonymity, since her face was covered. The texture and colours that were added stripped the image of its original meaning and gave it a whole new meaning, therefore eroding the conventional definition of what artwork can be.

In both texts, the artists aspire to change the way art is seen but also the way it is created. They discuss ideas that shocked the society of that time, but also revolutionized the art world.

The text ‘Leo Steinberg (b.1920) from Other Criteria’ describes the ‘Flatbed Picture Plane’ in art. He discusses how art has evolved from corresponding to the standing human posture and from being a flat and horizontal image, to being more about the process of the art itself. He gives examples of artists, such as Rothko, Still, Newman, de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, all of which would follow the flatbed picture plane rule. Pollock, an abstract expressionist, would start out with his work on the floor but then he would hang it on the wall, allowing the paint to drip down. A change happened in the in the 1950’s, which was seen through Robert Rauschenberg’s and Dubuffet’s work. Their work didn’t correspond to the human posture, even though it could still be hung on the wall and it focused more on the process of making the art than the result.

In comparison, the text ‘Richard Serra (b.1939) from The Yale Lecture’ explains the art of sculpture and three dimensional work.  Serra focuses on the process of making art, much like Steinberg. However, unlike Steinberg, Serra emphasises the importance of site-specific work, and escapes the traditional studio. He states that one cannot produce work within a context and then place it in another. The scale, size and location of site-specific works are very important and are determined by the topography of the site, the surrounding architecture, and generally the environmental components of the given context. One must also take into consideration the social and political characteristics of the site, allowing the artist to focus on the relationship between the sculpture and the context.

I have always been intrigued by the presentation of two or more perspectives/elements in an artwork. M. C. Escher’s ‘Reflections’ series has been an inspiration to me for a long time, as he manages to capture multiple perspectives within one image, by using reflective surfaces such as puddles, reflecting spheres, dewdrops, ponds, the pupil of an eye, etc. Yayoi Kusama also creates multiple perspectives in her exhibit ‘Infinity Mirrored Room’, where one hundred multi-coloured LED lights pulsate at various speeds and patterns inside an entirely reflective room, creating an illusion of infinite space. Other than the reflections of the lights, you can also see endless reflections of yourself, which creates a sense of freedom and makes you forget all limits.

I would like to create surrealist artwork using mirrors or other reflective surfaces to present multiple perspectives- such as the earth and the sky, for example- in one image. The artwork could range from paintings to photographs to installations and I could work with my surroundings or even try to create an other-worldly experience, just like Kusama did. It would also be interesting to manipulate the reflected image through ripples in water or broken mirrors, in order to give a distorted and transformed depiction of real life.

Edward Ruscha

The Music from the Balconies, 1984

I was drawn towards this oil painting because of the big beautiful scene it depicted- it felt like Ruscha had created a portal from the gallery space to a whole other world, through this painting. The soft pinks, blues and oranges of the sky hinted that a sunset or sunrise was taking place, which made the scene so serene and wholesome. It felt as if I had entered the painting; I could almost see the grass blow in the wind, and I felt that the scene had surrounded me. After reading the white bold writing on the painting, the scene became tainted. There was such a strong contrast between the peacefulness of the scene and the “noise of sporadic acts of violence.” I believed that the artist was trying to convey how something so natural could be destroyed by violence and that we shouldn’t take it for granted. Ruscha was inspired by J.G. Ballard’s novel ‘High Rise’- a dystopian novel about how the human society in a high rise building becomes driven by primal urges and re-creates a world ruled by the laws of the jungle- and used a quote from his book on this painting. He is portraying the conflict between man and nature by contrasting this quote with this rural scene, a theme that is often found in Ballard’s novels. The strong contrasts in this painting left me feeling lost. It felt as if Ruscha had made up a beautiful world which I became absorbed in and by writing those words, he ultimately ruined it, therefore successfully communicating the damage that man could do to nature and raising caution on this matter.

The ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the age of Black Power’ exhibition at Tate Modern presented 12 rooms, 150 works, and 60 artists and was one of the most influential exhibitions I had ever seen. Even before entering the exhibition I was faced with five big televisions, which played speeches by Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and James Baldwin, five of the most inspiring African American leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. This gave me a glimpse of what I was about to see once I walked through the exhibition doors. A wide and diverse range of black artists’ work was presented; from abstract expressionism to photography to sculpture. These artworks portrayed icons such as Muhammad Ali and movements such as the Black Panthers. It also shed light on some activists, writers, photographers and artists that were hardly known by the public, therefore giving them the recognition and acknowledgment that they deserved. It portrayed how pivotal, historical moments influenced black artists. All artworks provoked strong emotions, ranging from feelings of empathy to feelings of empowerment. The ideas, images and messages that were presented were thought provoking and enlightening and are actually still very relevant in today’s society.

Nikki S. Lee

Part (14), 2002

[photograph]

This image depicts a woman sitting in the back seat of a car, with a solemn expression on her face. A man’s arm is hugging her shoulders, but the rest of the man’s body is cropped out of the picture. This could represent the detachment she may feel from the man next to her or her desire to remove his presence from her life. It seems as if she has had an argument with him as she looks quite annoyed or even sad. Having researched this image, I now know that the artist’s goal was to explore the complicated aspects of relationships and all the emotions that come with them. She also shows the vulnerability and isolation that comes with breakups.

“The purpose of the cut is to make people curious about the missing person and to think how his identity has affected the woman who is left behind. It forces people to examine the relationship itself, even if it is only part of the story.” –Nikki S Lee

Lee’s words prove to be true, as I recall myself being interested in the cut out part of the image, when I first saw it and questioning why it had been cut out in the first place. It made me think about the dynamic of their relationship and wonder what situation she was in when the photo was taken.

Bibliography:

CARPENTER, B. (2013) National Museum of Women in the Arts. Artists Spotlight.

Available from: https://nmwa.org/blog/2013/11/01/fluid-identities-the-parts-and-projects-of-nikki-lee/ [Accessed 26th November 2017]