Art

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Final piece- Oil on Wood board

I wanted the scene of having a haircut to represent the idea that we carve our at ourselves, so that we present our most ideal version of ourselves to society. The two figures make up the same person, I painted them with similar facial features so that you can see the resemblance between them. The figure on the right is angular and straight whereas the other is contorted and warped, this is emphasises by the hand and wrist being painted in a way that doesn’t seem possible in reality. The right head is painted with flesh tone blended together, the left is made up of defined brushwork and similar flesh colours. This is to show the contrast between the two figures. The blue flat background brings out the colours in the faces and contrasts to the orange if the top. The cold of the blue emphasises the warmth of the orange, reinforcing the juxtaposition. The figure on the right is entangled in the cord from the hair clippers, I wanted to show that the two figures are connected in a way, one can’t be without the other. For most people haircuts can also be seen as therapeutic, a sort of therapy, People go for a haircut but also to talk to other.

I wanted to go bigger, but was limited by the size of my room and resources due to covid. I feel I could have broken up the background with another colour stripe or something to add more depth to the picec but this was something that I didn’t realise until it was finished.

Overall I am very happy with the final piece, it seems to resolve all the ideas that I had into one picture and is a nice conclusion.

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Ideas for my final exhibition

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A few trails on A3 paper using acrylic and oil pastels. Exploring composition colour and form.

I did these at the start of lockdown to get the ideas flowing .

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Plan and progres of final peice .

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Having no access to large canvases, I had to find alternatives due to covid.

Earlier in the project I used scrap pieces of wood from a chest of draws

To create the board for my final piece I found to two flat pieces of wood and attached them together.

I did this by laying the two bits of wood side by side and attaching two batons of wood to the back of them with screws and wood glue.

I then wood filler to fill in the gaps in the wood and hide the screws, this made the surface flat.

Finally I coated the wood in white primer and let dry.

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These photos were taken by Ben Reed for his A level Photography.

When lockdown started I needed photos to use, use them for reference. So I asked my Photographer friend if I could use some of his photos from his recent shoot.

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Continuing to play on the idea that your shadow is always there watching.

Inspired by Bacon - The room with bold flat backgrounds that allow for more expression on the figure.

The red and green exert a force on each other, they are unpleasant together. The yellow seaps into the background, along with the accidental spot of yellow ( Bacons idea of accidents), this enforces the idea that you can’t escape the scene, you must confront your shadow.

The red also reminds me of blood, as it spills out, breaking the picture plane. Add to the violent side of humans. In religion blood represents the flow of life.

In the photo that I used, the legs weren’t in shot. This meant I had to make up the legs, I used photos from the internet of people sitting on stools to aid this.

I really like the way I have captured the figure in this. It’s not necessarily realistic and completely illustrational but it captures the atmosphere of figure that I wanted.

The flat background creates an interesting contrast between it and the figure, this is something that I’m going to try to take forward into my next piece.

[ollie-g-art]

Unresolved

Heavily Inspired by Dali, his vast desolate landscapes that are filled with the subconscious. Instead I thought I could use a vast desert as a place that is filled with the things you don’t want others to see.

In the top left corner is Icarus, he is still flying. Symbolising that there may be hope even thought you believe it to be doomed.

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When making this peice I wanted to combine both realistic effects and graffiti art. I used my research of Hobo graffiti, the symbol in the bottom left is a sign that someone dishonest lives in a certain house. Hobos in the 1890s to 1930s would use this type of could you communicate with each other.

As I was working on the peice I decided that I didn’t want the portrait to resemble me. This was so that the viewer could put themselves or picture someone else in the image.

The idea was to picture someone who acts like someone there not, and that they are being dishonest to themselves, represented by the symbol.

The black halo represents the idea that someone can think there angel like, and that they convince themselves and others of this lie.

I added the marks and expressive gestures, inspired by graffiti, to cover the face. I feel I should made the face more vague, I would have liked to do this but the peice has got suck at college due to covid.

I like the effect I created by dragging a rag across the face, it creates an interesting contrast to the other side of the face.

The black, blue and white create the right atmosphere that I wanted.

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I can’t remember where I heard it but I remember one of his close friends saying in an interview that no one really knew Bowie. How he put on an act for everyone, concealing himself.

Bowie put on an invisable mask. The mask, he said, does not eliminate fear, but gives the wearer confidence to face the world. The mask allowed the wearer to see through it while looking at other people, but it prevented other people from seeing into the private world inside their heads.

This idea helped my project. It gave me inspiration at the start of the project.

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Jenny savile - figurative painter, I love how she applies the paint, the thick oil paint that is smeared and pushed all over the canvas. The Da Vinci paintings

Henri Matisse - The simplification of the facial features and visible brush marks

Rembrandt - His depictions of everyday life and dramatic use of colour

Basquiat - Expressive marks and vibrant use of colour. His works are like a flow of the unconscious mind, quotes and pictures from books and magazines fed into his work

Will Sudding - Recommended to me by my teachers, he was a precious student of the college. I really like the combination of realism and the thick brush work.

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After using all my spare canvases I had to look for alternatives as I could not get a hold of any due to the virus. These two peices were were taken from a chest of draws. Inspired by the street art idea of making work on anything you can get your hands on, not being limited by resources.

The first piece is of a small bust from life. Experimenting for my final peice, I wanted to have a sculpture and have someone carving into it. I experiment with using flesh tones to paint the bust to help make it more real, so it relates to the sculptor better. In the end I decided that I don’t want it to be so literal, I want the viewer to make there own interpretations of the peice.

The second peice I tried experimenting with abstracting the face, I used chalk and oil paint.

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The idea of this piece was to have a person locked in a cage and have the shadow of himself looking at who he is today.

Another way of looking at this is that we all have our evils in a way but we have a choice wether to let them define us.

The mouth references Francis Bacons “Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X”. I chose to do this as I wanted the figure in the cage to show horror and violence.

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This painting was inspired by a W H Auden poem called Victor. The eye follows on from my last project. It also references the Evil eye of the Mollochio, the look of jealously a person gives. The poem relates to going his animalistic states. Victor leaves the high street towards the mountains, leaving the society that has hurt him.

I really like the idea of him returning to a more raw and animalistic state, the other side of his personality that hasn’t been carved at by society.

In this peice I took what I learnt from the previous portrait and used subtler colours for the flesh tones.

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I created this peice at the start of lock down as a way to get the ideas flowing and to get paintingwhile at home. At the time I didn’t know what to paint, so I found a photo of my self and started painting it. The paint that runs across the face came about as I was annoyed at the painting, and in my frustration I created that streak. In the back of my mind I was thinking about how Francis Bacon used chance and accidents to help push his portraits forward.

In my opinion I’m not happy with the colours I used for the flesh, they felt too synthetic and forced. In my next pieces I’ll try to focus on creating more realistic colours for the face.

I like the combination of expressive mark making and portraiture, the contrast between realistic portraiture and abstract mark making could feed into my work. As I could use them to represent the two sides of human behaviour.

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Painting workshop - This workshop taught me about perspective and the principles of Filippo Brunelleschi. It also taught me to go from light to dark when painting and not to use white till the very end of the painting to emphasis highlights. This helped in my FMP as it made the colours more vibrant and the white less muddy.

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Photos from New York using an Olympus XA film camera

I loved the New York trip, it was amazing to experience the culture and see all the Historic, modern and contemporary artwork.

One of my favourite places was time square. You read about it and see it in films but that doesn’t compare to actually being there.The idea that all these people are moving in the same direction but have different motives.