Abbey Callaghan

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Mixed media on paper, 42 x 59.4 cm

I’ve still been struggling with priming my boards to get them so I can properly work on them so I went back to using paper whilst I figure that out. I wanted to make something with more than one figure so that I could see how different colours work alongside each other. My inspiration for this one was just my current feelings, as that’s what I’ve been wanting to include a bit more within my work.

Specifically I was thinking about my mental health, especially since it’s been affecting me quite a bit recently. Since I’ve suffered with my mental health for most of my life, I’m not really sure who I would be if I didn’t. Because of this, I often refuse to accept it or get help for it because there is something comforting about it to me, and I can’t really imagine myself without it. Even though I know that I’m capable of getting better I often don’t allow myself to try because it doesn’t feel right to me.

The blue version of myself represents that, offering me that kind of comfort even though it’s toxic. I did another sketch which I considered, but this composition was inspired by ‘The Kiss’ by Gustav Klimt since I really like this painting. I used spray paint again which I think worked quite well but I think I need to practice a bit more. The spray had clumps in some areas, particularly in the blue which are really obvious, but that’s just a case of practicing my technique. I’m not sure how I feel about the colours, maybe they’re a little bit too bold and I’d prefer them to be more pastel-y, to solve this I’m going to swatch all of my spray paints which will make it easier to visualise what they will look like. Another thing to add is that for some reason I struggled with detail and had to add it back in with coloured pencils, mainly to the faces and other crisp lines that it needed.

I feel like this piece may be a bit off topic in terms of the themes I’ve been exploring but I have discussed bringing more of my own experiences and feelings into my work so this seems like a way of doing that. I also keep thinking back to the text pieces I did at the start of the semester and how I can incorporate that into my work, but I don’t want to force it. I feel like this piece might be missing something so maybe I could add some text at the top but for now I don’t really know what would be the right thing to say.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Mixed media on board, 59.4 x 84.1 cm

Unfortunately don’t have a better photo due to leaving this in the studio.

After the recent research and experiments I’ve been doing I’ve had a lot of ideas about bigger pieces that I want to make, so I’ve been doing sketches to help me piece these ideas together and come up with compositions, ideas, etc. I was thinking about my research I had done earlier on about sexual empowerment and how I’d often do similar things myself and lie to myself knowing that I was acting for men but convincing myself that it was for me. I started to think about why I wanted this male validation so much and realised that it was where I got a lot of my self esteem from, as it is for many other people. With the common beauty standard being resemblant of a child (petite, no body hair clear skin, etc.), it is no surprise that girls experience sexual attention from a young age.

I wanted to think about my own experiences with this and how it has affected me, particularly in terms of the ‘loss of innocence’ I feel that I went through. At first I started to look at things that weren’t sexual acts but may have sexual connotations to show how things that aren’t explicitly sexual still have the potential to be fetishized. I did a small sketch of myself eating a cherry and wearing a pair of heart sunglasses on my head (often related to the Lolita image). This was going to be the basis of my piece but I decided I wanted to add more to it.

As I continued to research, I started looking into religious imagery, in particular the Virgin Mary, a universal symbol of innocence. She is often depicted holding lilies – a flower which I’d already done some sketches of, and with a ‘sacred heart’ on her chest. I decided that this is what I wanted to do instead so I took some reference photos of myself and drew them up on my board. I chose to use the version of the sacred heart with a sword through it, and draw the lilies as dead.

I decided to use spray paint again to get a flat, even colour to work on, I created a background of blue with a pink ‘glow’ around myself and left the rest white to work on top of. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken enough care when priming my board and the surface wasn’t smooth enough for me to work on. After spending some time trying to sand down and prepare the white space, I eventually just left it how it is. I figured that for now I was just wasting time trying to save this one, but I have all the ideas documented to be able to come back to it in the future, probably over the Summer.

Although I’ve not done much on it, I’m happy with how it’s looking, mainly the background colours as I’m really drawn to the blue and pink colour scheme at the minute. I’m excited to come back to this and hopefully have it work out.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Makeup on paper, 29.7 x 42 cm

After my small colour studies that I was working on I decided to do a larger one. This time I used spray paint as a background rather than acrylic paint. This definitely worked a lot better as it created a really flat surface rather than having brush marks which the makeup really shows. I decided to go for pink again and did a much more detailed drawing. I liked how this one turned out and will definitely continue to work like this. Now that I know it works technically, I can focus on creating some more interesting, larger pieces with more of a concept to them.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Juno Calypso “Juno Calypso is a London based artist working with photography, film and installation. While studying photography at the London College of Communication, Juno began taking pictures of herself disguised as a character named Joyce. In 2015 Juno took Joyce to a romantic themed hotel in America. Posing as a travel writer, Juno gained access to multiple rooms which she used to stage her series of solitary self-portraits. Studying solitude, desire and femininity through a dark comedy lens. The Honeymoon was awarded an international prize by the The British Journal of Photography. For her latest project, What to do With A Million Years, Juno staged photographs in a mansion built underneath Las Vegas in the 70s as a shelter from nuclear terror, and currently owned by a mystery group attempting to achieve immortality.” Juno Calypso’s work reminds me of Juno Birch’s work and I really love it. As with Birch, I really like the idea of dressing up and creating characters within my work but there are other things that I like as well. Many of the themes present in her work relate to my own and I’m a big fan of the way she deals with these. Calypso looks at the construct of femininity and creates a character who embodies everything that we have decided that a woman is. However, she does this in a way that is over the top and comical which is what I really like. Her photos are all very theatrical and staged and it becomes apparent that this womanly figure is making a comment on the stereotypes we have created, they are ridiculous. This is something I have considered using in my work before but have never really known how to go about it so it’s nice to find an artist who does it in a way that I really like. I also find the colour schemes she uses very visually appealing so it might be worth thinking about using pastel colours within my own work, I feel like they’ll work well with the way that I work.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Sketchbook studies

As a continuation of my small colour studies, I did a couple more to see how they worked.

Orange: This was almost the opposite of the blue study I did but I think I preferred that one. Again I used blue to create shadows as it’s the opposite colour but I think I used too much as it just looks to intense against the orange. I think instead of using the opposite colour I should just stick to using darker shades of the background colour, but maybe it’s something I just need to experiment with more as in theory it should work.

Yellow: I used yellow as I wanted to try using a really light colour as the background, this is because I wanted to see what would happen if I used the makeup how I would on a white background but with a really light colour underneath. So, instead of a monochrome drawing, it is ‘normal’ colours, just not on a plain background. I actually quite like how this looks and would like to try it on a larger scale. I think it’s always quite difficult to tell whether it actually works on such a small scale because there’s a lack of detail which can make the drawing look bad, it’s then difficult to tell whether it looks bad because of this or whether the experiment didn’t actually work. In this case I think it’s just a lack of detail.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Sketchbook studies

Before I started using coloured backgrounds on a big piece, I wanted to see how it would work in a few different ways on a smaller scale so I did a few experiments in my sketchbook. I wasn’t too concerned about the drawings themselves, I was more interested in how the colours worked with each other.

Blue: To start with I tried using blue. I used blues, greys and purples to create darker tones but this didn’t really work so I tried to add orange since this is the opposite colour to blue. I’m not sure how well this worked I can’t really decide whether I like it or not. I think I’ll probably use blue again in my work so I’ll have the opportunity to use it more and see what works and what I like.

Pink: I also like the colour pink and wanted to feature this in my work so I did a small test. Again, I used darker pinks and purples to create darker tones but I also considered introducing reds. I didn’t use that in this drawing but like with the blue one I’ll try it again in a different way to see what works.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Juno Birch I came across Juno Birch whilst doing some research and I really like her and her work. Although she is a sculptor, she is also a drag artist which is what I am particularly interested in. I have been reading interviews to find out more about her and her work, here is one of them: https://www.metalmagazine.eu/en/post/beauty/juno-birch She paints herself in different colours and dresses up, creating a new ‘character’ which she represents in her art. I think this is really interesting, I’ve obviously experimented with makeup in my work for a while and have used it on myself but never in a way as extreme as this, to convert myself into someone completely new. I really like the idea of this though, I think it allows for makeup to be used in an artistic way rather than in a way that accommodates the male gaze which I discussed earlier. The way she presents herself has also made me think more about the way I’m using colour in my work, which I have started to introduce recently. She stated that if she is wearing something lavender, she’ll paint herself a different colour like blue or pink. Although this seems basic, it has made me think that I should probably research colour theory a bit more as this will help me to understand which colours I want to use in my work. Going forward I’d like to look at possibly creating characters in my work, these could represent my feelings and ideas that I am trying to portray. I also think it would be quite therapeutic to use makeup to transform myself into an artwork. As well as colour theory, I want to look at what different colours could represent as I feel that this would help me to get my messages across in my work.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

X-Collab

I signed up to take part in the x-collab project, where you get partnered up with someone, you swap art that you have made based on a brief and then create a new piece based on their work. The theme was ‘blue’ and this is what I made in response, it is oil paint on canvas (59.4 x 42 cm). Since this wasn’t intended to be directly a part of my studio practice, it seemed like a good opportunity to try something completely different. I didn’t have any specific ideas when making this, it was more just an experiment with colour, but I really like how it turned out. I’d like to continue using colours in this way in my future work as I think it would make things more interesting and I could really play around with it.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

As I was struggling for inspiration, I decided to go on a website called art breeder which allows you to merge digital images and play around with the features to create new images, here are some I made. I’m not sure what to do with these, maybe I could print them and work back into them because I do like them. I’m not sure where they fit into my project but it was nice to try something new, especially digitally as it’s not usually something that I do.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Thoughts

After my last piece I started to ask myself some questions.

Can I wear makeup without performing for the male gaze? How?

As most of my work concerns makeup and identity, I would like to think about how it can be used without conforming to the male gaze. To do this I would have to use makeup completely artistically, but the lines between these ideas are very blurred. For example, drag is an art form, but I have just used drag inspired makeup to prove my point.

 How do I currently feel about my work? Why have I gone back to working in this way?

Prior to this piece, I was working in a completely different way which I wanted to incorporate into my practice, but I have found myself going back to what I was doing before. I think I have done this because it’s what I know and what I am comfortable with, but the process of it is starting to get boring. I feel that just working in this way is not allowing my work to develop and I can’t have as much fun with it. Although I do like this way of working, I don’t think it will continue to work if I don’t push my ideas more. I can do this by combining some of the looser, more experimental work I have been doing with this approach and seeing how that works. I feel like the looser pieces represent my living experiences whereas the makeup drawings represent how I recognise myself within them so I do feel like this combined approach could work well.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Makeup on paper, 84.1 x 59.4 cm

After reading the Rosalind Gill article I mentioned earlier, I decided to create this piece. I started to think about things that we are told are empowering, such as sexual acts (including sex work), wearing makeup, cosmetic procedures, etc. They are all things that through ‘feminism’ women are trying to ‘reclaim’. But the issue is, these acts are only branded as empowering as they exist to perform for the male gaze.

Here I focused on wearing makeup. If you ask young girls why they wear makeup, it is unlikely that they will tell you it is to impress men, instead they will probably say “it makes me feel good” or “I wear it for myself”, this is something I am guilty of. On the surface, this seems understandable, but after considering the issues with feminist ideas of ‘empowerment’ I started to understand that these claims are just not true. Wearing makeup (or any other of the acts I talked about), doesn’t make us feel good because it is empowering, it doesn’t give us any more power, it just brings us closer to the idea of what we should be according to the society we live in.

For this piece, the makeup I did on myself was inspired by drag makeup. Drag makeup often involves features being heavily emphasised, which I wanted to do myself (big lips, long eyelashes, high cheekbones, slim nose, etc.). I wanted to really exaggerate this to show how we often change the appearance of our natural features with makeup, proving that it is an act to fit with standards put in place for us. I understand that this is not the case every time someone applies makeup, but this applies to most situations when someone does.

In order to highlight this issue, I took inspiration from how women are often presented through the male gaze. In my work I have chosen to present myself looking away from the viewer. I am also topless and look shy and uncomfortable rather than confident and empowered. I wanted it to feel quite voyeuristic really making it clear that I am actually just there to be looked at despite the ‘empowering’ makeup.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

These are the notes I made to help me to understand a Rosalind Gill article I read titled ‘Media, Empowerment and the Sexualisation of Culture Debates’. There are a lot of interesting points in this article which I would like to explore through my work.

The article mainly deals with the concept of sexual empowerment, how it is presented, and the issues with it. The main thing I picked up on whilst reading the article was the idea of sexual empowerment not really existing, but instead just acting as justification of women performing for the male gaze. This is something I have experienced myself but have never really thought about it in this way until reading the article. I would like to make some work based on this idea and explore my thoughts in more detail.

Another thing that I was drawn to was the section about media literacy, in particular how being critical of the media does not protect you from it. When girls were interviewed about what they would see in the media and how it affected them many understood the lies that they were being fed but then felt worse because they still felt like they had to give into it. I actually found this quite comforting to read because although it is a negative experience, it is something that I have struggled with and it is some kind of relief that it is not just me who feels this way. I have felt very hypocritical for a while as my work focused on body positivity and similar themes for a while, however, I am very insecure myself and often find myself giving in and trying to fit with society’s standards. Maybe this will become something that I can feed into my work because I think it is quite interesting how although I (and many others) understand that I am fine as I am and don’t need to change, I still find myself being consumed by trying to fit with standards that I know are impossible and unnatural to reach.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

A while ago I had bleached some old photos (4 x 6 inches) to see how they would turn out and then forgot about them. I came across them again and decided to continue experimenting with text. I created some texts in the same way as I mentioned in my previous post and then used these photos as a background. I took the photos and wrote on them using white paint but again I didn’t like that you could really read what they said. Some of them already had white paint on them so the writing wasn’t very legible but on some others, I continued to dab on white paint so you can see the writing but can’t read what it says. I really like this effect, I like it a lot more than the ones I had done with makeup so maybe this is how I should try to incorporate text into my work moving forward. The only thing I don’t like about these is the colours, I don’t like the bright reds, oranges and yellows but that is just what happened because of the bleach. If I want to use text I this way in the future I can just do it using different backgrounds in order to avoid this issue.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

After speaking to Laura and looking at some artists, I started using text in my own work. I took small entries from my journal that I wanted to put into my work. Since I didn’t want to put these entries directly into my work, I used some experimental writing techniques to change the words. The main thing I did was find other bits of writing that I liked such as poetry, literature, things online, etc. I just made notes of things that I liked, I then merged parts of these with my own writing. From there I ran the text through Google translate, selecting different languages. By doing this, words get lost or changed in translation and the results can be really interesting, I would just do this and edit it until I liked the text. From there I started to write things out in my sketchbook to experiment with how I’d like to present these texts. The first image is eyeshadow on paper (A4) where I just wrote out one of the texts and went over it a few times, smudging in between. Even though the text wasn’t directly taken from my journal, it still felt too personal to just present which is why I smudged it so much, so it isn’t as legible. The second image is also eyeshadow on paper (A4) however I decided to experiment more with the way I was using the materials. Again, I wrote out what I wanted to but then didn’t like it, I thought back to Cy Twombly’s work that I had looked at and remembered all the drips over it. I mixed up some makeup and did this myself, completely covering the writing. I didn’t like how it looked but I did like the act of putting it down and then covering it back up so I will probably keep this in mind and experiment more with the idea. Finally, the last image is a monoprint using lipstick (A4). This was very much inspired by the Tracey Emin pieces I had looked at earlier. Again, I’m not sure if I really like this piece but I have enjoyed the process of using makeup in my work in a different way to usual. I think this follows on nicely from the questions I was asking myself in my last post. These pieces feel much more expressive, even if you can’t read what they say. It’s nice to take a break from working in the way that I have been whilst still making work that is relevant. I’d like to continue to do this and perhaps start to combine using text and imagery like my previous drawings. To do this I’ll have to experiment some more and try it with the drawings to see how they work together. I think this will make my drawings more interesting and give them more of a narrative.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Tracey Emin “Emin’s monoprints have a diaristic aspect and frequently depict events from the past. Often they incorporate text as well as image, although some bear only text and others only image. The text appears as the artist’s stream of consciousness voice. The rapid, one-off technique involved in making monoprints is perfectly suited to (apparently) immediate expression, as is Emin’s scratchy drawing style. From the Week of Hell ‘94 is based on the events which took place during a 'week from hell’ in 1994. During this week Emin had major dentistry, split up with her boyfriend and had an abortion. Other drawings, together with documentation and remnants of the events of this disastrous week, were exhibited in Minky Manky at South London Gallery in 1995 under the collective title A Week From Hell. This monoprint gives an expressionistic account of the abortion. The artist’s inert and seemingly headless body is depicted on the right of the print, lying beside a sinister scratchy figure. A diagrammatic sketch of a womb being emptied is depicted to the left of this. Terribly Wrong (see Tate P11565) also refers to this event. Emin has stated: For me, aggression, sex and beauty go together. Much of my work has been about memory, for example, but memories of violence and pain. Nowadays if I make a drawing I’m trying to draw love, but love isn’t always gentle. Being an artist isn’t just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message. (Quoted in Morgan, pp.59-60.)” Another artist I’ve been looking at is Tracey Emin, particularly her monoprints. These are clearly personal documentations of significant events, which links to my own current ideas, but the main thing I’ve been thinking about whilst looking at her work is why has she decided to do this and why do I want to incorporate similar ways of working into my practice? Emin states that these monoprints are about memories and pain and communicating a message, but what is this message? Maybe the message is, as she states, about the truth of being an artist and not just making nice things, but instead being truthful and open. This prompted me to think about what I’m representing within my own work. So much of it is focused on imagery and aesthetics that I feel like it is almost going against what I am trying to represent in my work. When I started using makeup, my work was very concerned with body acceptance on a physical level, but I feel like I have moved on from this and I need to adapt my way of working to fit with this. For example, whilst I am still trying to accept myself, I am now understanding on a deeper level why I don’t and I am starting to understand many of the things that have contributed to it. As a part of this growing understanding, I am seeing myself as more than just my looks and I am starting to appreciate my body as something capable of living and experiencing and I feel like my current way of working wouldn’t fit with this. I do still want to work with makeup as I like how it looks and I like what I feel like it represents but at the same time I want to try working in different ways, perhaps in looser styles and drawing from my personal diary entries to represent myself in terms of my living experiences. From this I hope to be able to eventually combine the two styles because I do feel like they are both important in terms of what they represent.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Cy Twombly “Edwin Parker “Cy” Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011) was an American painter, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel. His paintings are predominantly large-scale, freely-scribbled, calligraphic and graffiti-like works on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. His later paintings and works on paper shifted toward “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats, as well as classical myths and allegories, in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word “VIRGIL”. Twombly’s works are in the permanent collections of modern art museums globally, including the Menil Collection in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and Munich’s Museum Brandhorst. He was commissioned for the ceiling at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. In a 1994 retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly’s work as “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.” I really like Cy Twombly’s work, I think something like this would work well with entries from my diary that I’ve been keeping. I think the main reason it appeals to me so much is because of the symbolism within the work. I am not a confident writer myself and don’t think I would feel comfortable sharing parts of my diary exactly as they are, especially since a lot of it is very personal. However, taking an approach inspired by Twombly would allow me to incorporate my thoughts and feelings in a way that they would be there, but not explicitly. I will experiment with this loose style and the use of symbols relating to my writing as a starting point.

[abbeycallaghan-art]

Tutorial with Laura

I had a one to one chat with Laura reflecting on my feedback and thinking about my work going forward. The main thing we discussed was doing more research in order to get a higher mark, I’ll do this by being more rigorous with my research and using more sources. In terms of my work, we talked about similar ideas to last time, like using writing alongside my work. This would work because by this point I had started building up a diary with my thoughts and feelings, which Laura suggested I could incorporate into my pieces or display alongside them, this is something I will experiment with. She also suggested looking at Cy Twombly in my artist research as a starting point for this.