Evaluation.
This module has been a learning process for me, working from home has been like starting from fresh; I simply didn't know where to start. Starting the project along was a task in itself and finding the motivation to carry on producing work. After much dwelling I finally got into the swing of things and have managed to create a full body of work that I can happily say I am very pleased with. My practice has gone down new paths and adapted a different style, something that would've never come about if it wasn't for lockdown.
Lockdown was the cause of all of my work, it was my theme and has been my muse running throughout. I found it impossible to get into the same way of thinking that I had towards my practice whilst still at uni. I initially planned on creating a body of work that was to be a carry on from 201, the work just didn't quite seem resolved and I was at a position where I was happy to keep digging deeper into the concept of the female form and the fine line between abstraction and representative art working within a restricted colour palette. Who really gets to decide whether my work is abstract or representational? I envisioned carrying on from this via working over my previous work alongside starting new pieces at the same time, however the lockdown left me 305 miles away from the work that I had planned on reworking.
I gave myself some time out, I found it really hard producing work at a time where I wanted to do anything but. After getting my tumblr underway, I soon found my flow and found myself again looking into the line between abstraction and representational art and how fine that line really is. Working still with a restricted palette and oil paints, I began to work in my usual complementary colour way, red-green hues, in an abstract manner focussing on nothing else but the paint on the canvas. I brought home a select few pieces of canvas to work on over this time period along with lots of paper and the resources that I already had at home. My initial worry was that I would be working in my bedroom with oil paints, so I purchased some low odour white spirits in the hope that this would take the edge off.
The oil paints worked well and the odour wasn't too bad in my bedroom with the window open for air flow, but I quickly came to a halt with this. I realised I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I needed a concept and a motif to work behind, something that would influence the work I was creating. My ideas were already to work within the uncertainty of lockdown, which was my initial cause for trying out something new, however I started to dig deeper, I wanted the work to be personal, my key word at the time being the word ‘uncertain’. At this point, we had received many mixed messages from the University, which is no one's fault as no one knew how these times were going to pan out, but I decided to write these things down. Going on my one walk a day, I started to note these in chalk on anything that I could, wiping them away as quickly as I did them. From this my thought process quickly went towards the repetitiveness of everyday, the routines and rituals that I had found myself in that had very quickly become the new normal without me even realising.
From the walks, I then started going on bike rides. I downloaded an app, Strava, that documented the routes that I went on and the stats from my rides. I was intrigued by the maps I was making, each different to the next and quickly made a correlation between the maps and the very first painting on canvas I made whilst in lockdown. The shapes on the painting and the maps left from my bike rides rang a bell of similarity. My work began to revolve around this, but I want sure how I was going to incorporate this into paint. I didn't like my first painting, I had already decided that wasn't the style of working that I wanted to venture with. So I took to drawing, watercolour and charcoal as my experimentation, quickly moving towards the layering of pieces. I had collected a whole bag of scraps from throughout the lockdown period, bits and bobs that I thought could be relevant towards my work at some point and I incorporated these into some of my experiments. Trying to introduce a sense of self into my work, but also removing it at the same time by censoring certain details. My experimentation continued, now working with paint and my green and red palette incorporating the silhouettes of bike paths with the trails of the bike paths testing out which colour ways worked best with one another. I decided that the work was too cheerful, it didn't really embody the lockdown for what it was. So I started to wipe work back, washing my canvases and boards that I have been working on through the entirety of quarantine to build up the layers in my work, with a fresh lick of white acrylic. This happened over and over again. Turning the works themselves into the repetition that my days have become.
I have always had an interest in the palettes that you are left with after creating a piece of work. They're beautiful, like a piece of work in their own right. So I started to incorporate these into my process too by adding my paths onto the palettes and balancing the light with the dark. But I wanted to take this a step further. Which is when I decided that the pieces of work would become their own palettes. The silhouettes that I added into the ground of each piece were applied and mixed straight onto the work, followed by the black acrylic bike paths. For speeding up drying times, I started mixing my oil paints with emulsion, it left a matte finish which I was happy with at the time, however towards the end I decided to buy some varnish that was added to all resolved pieces. I feel that that was a step I needed to take for myself to make the work as finished.
I was initially really worried moving my work away from the female form as it has been my motif for the past 3 years now. But I came to the realisation that I am still working with the form, only now it has taken on a different context and meaning behind my work. I used my body to actually trace the bike paths, my body was my means of travel that allowed this work to happen.
Overall, I have come out of this module with 15 resolved pieces of work. My works have layered and evolved throughout lockdown, each of them taking their final forms which have been handed in as resolved. I felt it necessary that they were all handed in as each and every one of them was a work in process at all times, I worked on them in bulk. Without one piece, I would not have had the other. I finalised the work by creating 2 large scale pieces onto a dry board. I will admit that I hesitated doing this throughout the entire module as I was intimidated by the size difference but I am very happy that I finally did it. The larger scale work allowed me to add more movement in there, working with a variety of different brush types and different mixes of acrylic and water to allow for different levels of light to flow through, also allowing the ground to peep through too.
I am so happy with where this work has come to and I feel that I am at such an exciting place for me to pick up when entering third year. I have created a body of work that has embodied lockdown for me, and I am hopeful that it is something others can look at and relate to.