At the Hospital on a Tuesday Night

After an unfortunate mishap on Monday night, including a lively dancer in stiletto shoes and my friend's foot, we feared she may have broken a bone.

So I took up the marvellous opportunity to sketch unsuspecting people in the waiting room. As you do. Infact most of the sketches where of my friends, as people began to suspect something strange was happening when an odd girl with a pencil and sketch book in hand began staring at them. As you would. Amazingly, although waiting time estimations were 5 hours, we were heading home in just less than 2 hours 30. Round of applause for the NHS please. What a shame it was the one time I actually wanted to stay longer.

Here are some of the sketches produced. I hope to work from these sketches in oil paint. I hope to achieve a looser way of painting.

Reading News Paper in Waiting Room

Mike

 

Emz Sitting

Emz

I have also been sketching friends whilst they work/ watch tv at home.

Where the project started...

My intentions for this project are to explore portraiture. I have been trying to capture the 'spirit' of the subject. However, at this moment in time I find it difficult to explain exactly what this is. If I was to attempt it I would say I wanted certain aspects of the character to show though. I want my works to have a sense of humanity and to be overpowering to the spectator. To do this I will explore the use of lighting and colour.

I am very interested in the large scale paintings by Chuck Close, particularly his early works such as ‘Frank’ and ‘Philip Glass’, due to their flat composition and emotionless expressions. Despite this their humanity is paramount to any other portraits I have witnessed. I have never been fortunate to see any of his work first hand, but one only needs to imagine how powerful these portraits must be due to their scale and ultra real style. My aim is to create a series of large scale works, which will overpower the spectators. Passport photographs will be used to create a similar effect to the works of Close. 

Chuck Close- 'Philip Glass'

Chuck Close- 'Frank'

Chuck Close and many other artists, such as Gerhard Richter and Ola Billagren, use photography as an initial reference point, and I feel that this is a path I will follow too. There are several reasons for this decision. The first being that the lighting, which I feel may be an essential aspect of my paintings, will remain constant with the use of photography. Another reason is that to find a model to pose long enough to get an accurate rendition will be very difficult and I would like to be able to work by my own time plans.

Gerhard Richter

Ola Billagren

Plan

I have been struggling to justify what I have been doing recently. There is something missing in my work. So far my compositions have been very flat with just a head and shoulder pose, and my painting has been very controlled due to my references to photography.

I think I need to draw from life more. I could use these sketches as starting points for paintings and see what effect could be achieved. By doing this I hope to render more interesting compositions with the figure and also I think the addition of props will give my subjects more personality.

I wanted to back track a bit and talk about a piece that really affected me during the weeks of the biennial. ‘Cut Papers’ by Sachiko Abe was a piece I found to be very emotive and powerful.

The performance at the A Foundation gallery involved Abe herself meticulously cutting sheets of plain white paper into long threads. 

My first reaction to the piece was absolute admiration and awe. Before I entered the room I had no idea what to expect, but I was taken aback by the elegant tower of finely trimmed paper, which must have been higher than a double-decker bus. The trail of paper lead across the floor and up the wall of an office window, to where Abe was sitting rhythmically cutting the paper. The sound of each snip was expelled into each corner of the room by a microphone. And despite the grand size of the room this aspect of the piece makes us feel closer and warms the space. Each of her performances lasts an hour and a half and she dos at least three a day. She will do this everyday for the whole 12 weeks of the biennial. It really makes you think doesn’t it? What would drive a person to do something so repetitive? 

I read that Abe has pent some time in the military and that often her work is a way of releasing her anxieties obedience Determination, training, control.

First post of a new university year.

Ok, so I'll admit it... this post is a little late. There's just been so much going on that until now I haven't given the blog much thought.
Infact I don't really know where to start. There have been many gallery visits and lots of new opportunities to work along side artists.
I regularly take part in the weekly painting workshops with Rick, and I can definitely feel myself working in a more relaxed way both in and out of the studio.

Due to the exhibition date being held back a week, I will not be able to set up my installation in the Wolstenholme space until next Monday. I have, however, set the installation up at home, to give you a general idea of what I hope to create in the space.

Layout decision making.

To clarify my ideas I have made a few more sketches of how my installation could look.



Just as an alternative I decided to sketch this idea. I wanted to imagine how the installation would work in this layout, where all that can be seen is the illusion of the floating televisions with black material billowing out from behind.

I decided against this idea for two reasons,
1. The installation would be too difficult to build and has the risk of looking ott and tacky.
2. For me, the challenge of this project is to make my piece work in the Woltenholme environment. If I hide the walls and change the atmosphere it would be a bit of a cop out.



This sketch is just to show how I would like the two screens to be facing, and in a way clashing with one another, while the relevant objects will be hanging between.


As my two films represent different life stages of nostalgia, or memories from ones youth, I wanted to find a way of letting people connect with their 'inner child'. I have decided to out the screens on two separate levels. The set on the floor will be playing the film from the child's point of view. In order to connect with the film the viewer will need to get down to child level, and thus connect with the child's point of view before being able to watch.
The higher set will show the nostalgia interview film. It will be at adult eye level.