Engrossed by the human form, my ideas around the body have shifted from my muse to my ‘medium’; using my body to illustrate the integral first steps of my paintings that are deeply informed from my work informed concept. I use paint as my final outcome to explore everyday routines, rituals and movement; this being the core context to the work.
I am interested in movements, of all kinds, and how that can be depicted through art via the use of gesture within paint and how different paints and other household supplies can perform this. I explore my sense of self through my work and how this can be implemented into my paintings in reserved ways. I enjoy work that can be open to the interpretation of others with no clear meaning without explanation.
My main aim within this module was to carry on the body of work that I had started in second year by continuing my exploration of Psychogeography. It felt right. I felt that I had finally found the subject for all of my work. My studies started with my immediate surroundings, focusing on specific sounds, objects, smells and movements which all carried through into the theme of routines and rituals and how they interacted.
In my statement of intent I wrote how I intended to contrast last year's work by flipping the scenery, and after reading more into Psychogeography and its common referral to the ‘exploration of urban environments’, I started to base this module's work within the home.
Influenced by the layout of Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizios ‘Industrial Paintings’, I worked with rolls of paper to map movements around my home in a new way, physically. I focussed on the impressions made onto the paper as a result of direct contact; much like how Richard Long created ‘A Line Made by Walking’ 1967. I further accentuated these marks by applying layers of watercolour paint, charcoal and oil sticks.
To fully achieve a sense of self through my work, I changed my direction to my bedroom.
Intrigued by the impressions left on paper, I tried this again only differently, now using my body as the instrument. I did not intend for these to be viewed as body prints, like Yves Kleins ‘Anthropometries’, but instead as still life movements; a photographed period of time. I wanted to play with the contrast between movement and static and how they can work together. I repeated this process by incorporating the prints into my everyday routines, looking at the fluid movement of standing and sitting to produce a print and drawing their titles out of the locations and times that they were made, linking everything back to their origin. I wanted everything to move fluidly, all pieces of work linking back to one another to show a clear path of where the work began. I progressed with all of these aspects to create my final body of work, using my prints to inform my painting. Working with polyfilla to accentuate depth and folds similar to the paper, I finished the work with two layers of satin varnish. This allowed enough shine for light to bounce off of the painting without a glare that would take away from the shadows and depth that I had worked to achieve.
I had stripped colour from my paintings at an early stage to rid the work of any colour induced connotations that people were drawing at. I reverted to white as a clean slate. This lack of colour became an issue when people started to view the work as a material based process. I needed to add a component to the work to create a shift that would allow for the marks upon the white to be more dramatic to the eye. I was drawn back to the research I had done on Robert Ryman and how he used the metal mounting brackets as a piece of his paintings. I aimed to work with this idea by applying slats of timber, sanded till smooth, and painted in my common choice of complementary colours, pink and turquoise. Working with the timber allowed me to see how one thing can affect the work. I painted the wood in strips, leaving some areas raw, so that each view-point allowed for different visibilities. I finished with a matte top coat to further contrast the glossy finish of my paintings. The wood was applied with half inserted screws. I want this to make the audience aware of the uncertainty that I had whilst applying this onto my paintings. Contrast was the main goal here and I am confident that I achieved it in all areas.
This module enlightened me to how important the concept of my work had started to become, with the paintings and the concept working together to support and inform one another in a way that could not be achieved alone. Reading Sol Lewitts ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’, 1967, helped me confirm this. I feel confident progressing in this direction and aim to expand my knowledge on the topic to inform my work.
‘When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. (Sol Lewitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", 1967).
To push my ideas to their limits, I will be continuing these concepts until they are exhausted. I want to explore colour and the contrast that can be achieved between them within my paintings and how this can promote aspects of the work whilst creating a greater sense of balance. I want to look deeper into common art supplies in combination with household mediums. I aim to continue my study of movement and self by using my drawings to inform my paintings, working on a larger scale so that I can fully body the gesture and movement of a piece of work. I will experiment more with the relationship between pieces, how they can interact with one another via common aspects that travel through each piece of work. This will be one of my main focal points for my degree show.
I look forward to being able to incorporate my ideas from my dissertation into my studio practice, blending together my work from the indoors and outdoors, which is something I had to steer away from this time around and I look forward to the direction this may take me.
My next step is to enter my work in the correct exhibitions to help myself be seen.
