BEING HUMAN
Chris Rivers - Rivers is an artist who I have been following for a little while after falling in love with his style of painting. What draws me to his paintings is his use of colour to create ethereal scenes which feel almost out of this world. I thought he would be relevant to this project due to his incorporation of small figures within his work. Rivers often paints in small cherubs or winged skeletons in his paintings which turn his pieces from abstract paintings into atmospherical spaces. The use of the skeleton figures in particular reminds me of the figures used in cave paintings. They are quite universal as they do not portray any specific race, age, sex etc, much like the figures in the cave paintings.
Voyager Golden Record - Within my work, I would also like to use figures which are not portraying any specific group. I want to depict a human and portray that no matter what we may identify as within the world, few are all human and we all deserve to be represented in the same way. I got this idea of being representational of all humans without leaving any specific groups out when I saw one of the pictures which was sent on the golden.
In this picture the two people depicted are clearly white, caucasian, conventional looking, relatively young and heterosexual. This is clearly a representation of a very specific part of society and is not authentic or fair for all other humans left out.
Bibliography:
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/images/
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Monica Majoli - This artist created a series called 'Black Mirror' which consisted of a range of paintings of quite sensual and dark subjects with a deep warm toned colour scheme, making it quite hard to see. I like how all of these paintings are cropped at quite a personal angle, giving the viewer a perception of the subject which seems quite intimate and when paired with the warm red tones, becomes very sexually charged. The way the images are cropped also gives quite a digital and photographic feel, rather than painterly. The subjects are often slightly off to a strange unconventional angle or the focal point isn't exactly clear, apposing the usual rules of a painting.
Bibliography:
INTERROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Scott Short - Short is an artist who explores 'the relationship between the mechanical and the handmade, the original and the copy, abstraction and representation'. He creates his work by first photocopying a sheet of paper over and over again in black and white, until it creates an image which he is interested by. He then projects this onto a large canvas and proceeds to recreate this image using oil paint or Indian ink. By using mechanical errors as the subject of his work, Short represents how accidental marks and mistakes can be turned into beautiful images and add much more character and interest to a piece of work. I would like to use this idea of letting the creative process of coming up with a composition happen mechanically and then represent this in a human way by painting it.
Bibliography:
INTERROGATING THE REAL
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Neil Raitt - In Raitt's work, he uses repetition as a form of abstraction, to obscure perception and focal point. Raitt usually finds inspiration in the world around him, focusing his compositions on natural imagery and serene landscapes. This juxtaposes with the chaotic nature of the repetitive composition. I was drawn to this work as I was really interested in the intricate marks that the artist makes to create the small details within each repeating image. Although I have not had the chance to see one of Raitt's paintings in person, I can imagine that from far away the works seem almost like a pixelated image, however when you get up close enough to distinguish the repetition, you are confronted with the details of the smaller images.
Bibliography:
INTERROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Chuck Close - Close creates paintings by using small square patterned sections which make up the final image. This method, when viewed from a small distance creates a pixelated portrait, however the pixelation has a more human feel rather than the expected mechanical pixelation. By painting in this way, Close is able to add character and emotion to the portraits through a method which usually would completely strip a picture of these aspects by blurring and obscuring the subject. Close says the reason he paints in this way is because he gets bored and needs to entertain himself while painting 'I get tired, a computer doesn't get tired'. I want to use this idea to inform my work, and try to somehow create pixelation in my own painting in a more human rather than mechanical way.
Bibliography:
https://whitecube.com/channel/channel/chuck_close_in_the_studio
http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/portraits/chuck_close.html
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Avery Singer - This artist uses semi figurative rough architectural models, made on a computer, to fuel her work. The simplistic monochrome palette of the work contrasts with the extremely detailed and almost chaotic nature of the compositions, which I really like. The use of colour scheme with the addition of the harsh rectangular shapes really reminded my of The Guernica at a first glance of her work. I really liked this almost cubism like approach to her work, even through it is very different from what I personally enjoy creating in my own work. I also really like the faces sometimes featured in her work, reminding me of the work of Paula Rego. This childlike approach to depicting a face is really interesting to me as it seems to present nostalgia in a really eerie and sinister way.
Bibliography:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S--jnnbhOeE
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/avery-singer-art21-1633051
INTERROGATING THE REAL
Laura Buckley - Buckley is an artist who stumbled across her highly successful installation method involving film and structure, when investing in a film camera to document the memories with her daughter.
I found one interview with her which I found particularly interesting.
Veronica Simpson: I was intrigued by a description of your early years, growing up in a small town in Galway, attending a convent school. Aside from the obvious exposure to religious imagery, what exposure did you have to art as a child that made you think you wanted to become an artist?
Laura Buckley: I wasn’t used to visiting galleries, so my kind of interest in art was very much pop culture, such as the very early guitar bands, early electronic music and that visual imagery of music video, which I work with now, but very escapist. It was very much about coming back from school and getting into my room and recording songs from the radio, then playing them back. But I really enjoyed the intimacy of making imageryand making something meaningful and connecting. Through sound and vision, you can connect with the viewer on different levels.
VS: It sounds as if you were more drawn to music at that point?
LB: Music, I loved, yes. I studied piano for many years and ballet, too, and was very into science and English. I loved to write. And now all of these things have fed back into my work, which is fantastic. My first films were silent. I didn’t intend to start making moving imagery until I became a mother and got a video camera for that reason. I was coming from painting and sculpture and installation and really breaking down the function of art and representation. And so the first films are silent because, as I say, my background doesn’t come from film. The sound gradually started coming in and now I collaborate a lot with musiciansI’m interested in and I also make my own music. I’ve done a couple of music videos for Plaid and New Young Pony Club. I enjoy the collaborative process because I do everything myself, really, apart from the fabrication … Otherwise, the filming and editing I do on my own and it can become quite isolating.
VS: How do you start compiling the images and sounds that eventually go to make up a piece? How do you shape these fragments as you go along?
LB: You just never really switch it off. That’s what happens. When I’m working on a show, I’ll start collecting clips and start playing with them. Generally, the installations are in movements or acts, and they’ll be focused on one or two psychological states. It often reflects where I am in my life.Some works are quite celebratory. An installation called Waterlilies, in 2010, for my first solo show, at Mother’s Tankstation in Dublin, was very melancholy. My second daughter was still a baby, and there are some very domestic sounds; then, I’m pushing it through this process that completely expands it to this heightened everyday reality, and abstracting reality, but just allowing … the freedom to see things in different ways.
I really liked how the artist said that she didn't really have a plan of what visual elements are going to be involved at the beginning of the piece however lets herself collect pieces over time. The fact that this way of collecting leads to the work being very representational of where Buckley is within her life is something I love about her work. It is very difficult to represent personal thoughts and emotions however I think this artist manages to do this very well.
Bibliography:
https://www.aestheticamagazine.com/interview-shortlisted-jarman-award-nominee-laura-buckley/
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Callum Roberts - I listened to a podcast where marine biologist/oceanographer Callum Roberts describes his experience being a scuba diver and visiting various coral reefs. A lot of things he said really inspired me so i made some notes on my favourite quotes. They he used metaphors to describe the elements of the coral reefs created a really clear image in my head about the world he is describing, and made me want to create what i can see visually.
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Nobuo Sekine - I found this artist when looking into examples where the canvas is more of an object rather than a base for painting, creating a piece which crosses into the realm of sculpture. I really liked the pieces he created with canvas and stone in his series 'Phase of Nothingness'. I liked how simple yet effective these pieces were at creating an atmosphere of tension and sincerity in an almost playful way. I also felt drawn to this piece due to the use of the stone, being a natural already existing object. The way he places the natural stone in a way which is unnatural, changing the context of the object and making it seem unfamiliar. He managed to take something very familiar and recognisable and change its context by its placement within the composition.
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Bibliography:
http://www.nobuosekine.com/image/phase-of-nothingness-cloth-and-stone-1970/
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Laura Moriarty - I really want to create something which has connotations of nature and marine life, with coral reefs being a main focus. I found the artist Laura Moriarty who bases a lot of her work on geology and creates the most beautiful pieces relating to the earth. As well as the aesthetic of her work, I really like the way she uses naturally occurring substances to make her pieces. She uses pigmented beeswax in what she calls her 'sculptural paintings'. I like that she refers to them as these, as although technically they are sculptures, they visually share a lot of elements with painting. There is often texture created with the wax which is reminiscent of brush-marks which lead the viewers eye around the piece, and the way colours are combined and blended make the pieces very painterly. This really related to the theme of painting beyond itself as she is able to create these 3D paintings without using paint at all. The pieces look so delicate and controlled but in reality the medium dictates the final outcome and Moriarty just adds the pigments and places them together in different ways.
"Taking poetic license with geology, I compare processes of the studio with processes of the earth. Layers of color form the strata of a methodology in which the immediacy of the hand can translate a sense of deep time. Working and reworking molten, richly pigmented beeswax, I build each painting/object through a slow, simple yet strenuous physical engagement, which often becomes a metaphor for the ephemerality of life and civilisation."
Bibliography:
https://www.lauramoriarty.com/sculptural-paintings
https://artthescience.com/blog/2017/10/15/creators-laura-moriarty/
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Bjornar Aaslund - I was really drawn to this artist due to the colours of the work he creates. he often uses greens and blues to create his abstract paintings, which to me create a very reflective and nostalgic atmosphere. I love how, although his works are paintings, they seem to act like stills from moving image, due to their performative blurred nature and ambiguous focal point. Its almost like although they are paintings, due to the way they have been painted with such intense blurring and so dynamic colours, they seem to act like a still from a video.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Nava Lubelski - I was drawn to the works of this artist due to the scientific connotations of her pieces. they almost look like microscopic photography with how delicate and biological they are in nature. Lubelski interests me as an artist as she does use scientific knowledge to inspire artworks, not only creating something beautiful visually but something which has a scientific background.
"Shredded paper sculptures, such as the Tax Files, reconfigure a mass of paper that has been grouped and saved due to written content, into slabs reminiscent of tree cross-sections where the climate of a given year, and the tree's overall age are visible in a single slice. Historical information is revealed in the colors of deposit slips, pay stubs, receipts and tax forms. The cellular coils spiral outward, mimicking biological growth, as they are glued together into flat rounds, which suggest lichen, doilies or disease. The re-use of paper, as well as the attempted "repair" of the long-lost original tree, is an examination of feelings of despair about waste and unsustainability while simultaneously responding to the shadow impulse to hoard and keep what is no longer needed. The exercise of translating numbers back into a comprehensible, physical manifestation is also an attempt to develop a tool for managing overwhelmingly large tallies, such as those we encounter regularly in reports on war or climate change."
Although Lubelski created paintings in a traditional way, on a canvas, she does not use paint and instead uses the media of thread. This is an ongoing theme which I seem to be gravitating towards, the way textiles media and processes can create paintings.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Jim Dee - I am beginning to experiment with small samples of PVA glue as the media for my work and when looking for inspiration of how to use them I came across artist Jim Dee who creates oil paintings inspired by small body of water created on metal. I really liked the colours he uses, often using blues and yellows together, reminiscent of natural imagery. I liked how there is the use of a regular pattern of the squares/ rectangles, although each one is unique. The paintings almost look pixelated, relating to the topic from the previous topic.
Bibliography:
https://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/22395-jim-dee?tab=ARTWORKS
https://www.creativeinchicago.com/2013/08/lincolnshire-art-fest.html
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Craig Keenan - Once again, I was drawn to this artists work due to the use of colour within the pieces. Keenan describes himself as an artist 'with an unhealthy propensity towards cyanotypes'. This method of printmaking where the piece is cyan blue really interested me as I really loved the colour and ghostly atmosphere it creates within the work. All of his works seem very reflective and melancholy, which is something I also wish to achieve with my own work. I found one piece where Keenan depicted a plastic bag which looked like a small ghost floating in the ocean. This piece represents how humans still fear things like ghosts when there are bigger things which are genuinely dangerous and threatening existence, such as the masses of plastic within our oceans. I really enjoyed this concept as well as the work itself.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Joris Kuipers - As soon as I found this artist I was immediately obsessed with his beautiful cloud like installation pieces. They are so etherial and beautiful to look at even through a photo. They look like brush strokes that have escaped a canvas and become their own entity, which really inspires me. Along with the painterly take on installation which makes up these cloud works colour is also a strong component which attracts me to these works.
'Gradients and organic patterns – cellular structures perhaps, molds, rusts, raindrops – seem to flow autonomously and freely through all the pieces, revealing a casual painterly command behind the spontaneous exuberance of color. Layer upon layer, Kuipers adds depth and reflection, guiding and enticing the eye.'
The colours are so delicate and dynamic that they create a utopia around you, transporting the viewer to what seems like a different dimension. Although the pieces seem so powerful and alien like, they still have the characteristics such as pattern and colour which link them to natural imagery such as fossils and flowers. There is also a human element to these works as the parts making up the clouds are actually inspired by CT scans, which shows one of my personal interests when science crosses over with art.
Bibliography:
http://www.joriskuipers.com/installation/
https://www.codaworx.com/project/suspended-relief-autonomous-work
BEING HUMAN
Cave art - When creating a brainstorm of important aspects which define humanity and set us apart from other animals, my group thought about communication and the way in which we as humans are able to use language both spoken and written to communicate with each other. This got me thinking about how visual languages have been used to document throughout history, and one of the oldest forms of these documentations is cave art. Cave art often depicted animals which early humans would have encountered and been threatened by. Sometimes the paintings would also include human figures and even symbols. These symbols are believed by some to be a way for early artists to communicate graphically.
When researching cave art, it became increasingly clear to me that when creating something with the purpose of being placed in a time capsule, cave painting was a good source of inspiration because of the way they communicate stories from thousands of years ago so clearly. In a National Geographic article I read, the writer Stephan Alvarez summed up the effectiveness of cave art really well; "Standing in front of a 35,000-year-old painting, every possible thing separates me from that painter. We share no language, no culture. The lives of those first European hunter-gatherers are so far removed from mine that they are unimaginable. An abyss of time yawns between us, yet the images on the wall transcend time, erase barriers, and let those artists speak as clearly as if we were in the same room". This is the way in which I would like my piece to communicate with the viewer, by being simplistic and easy to understand but also informative.
Chauvet Cave
Human figures from East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo
Bibliography:
BEING HUMAN
Jessica Matier - This is an artist who through her work explores mankind's relationship with both society and nature. She attempts to understand and resolve her personal identity by unravelling the chaos which she feels onto paintings using abstract shapes and colour block layers of paint.
The piece which drew me to this artist is called 'Something Must Die For Us To Inherit Anything Worth Having'. In this piece she used mixed media on canvas to create quite a fluid and emotional atmosphere. I liked how she had layered with chalk and pastel onto of the painted shapes, following the curves of the paint, to create more intricate detail. It reminded me of the way animals were drawn in cave paintings to follow the natural grooves in the rock. I also like how the figure within the painting is almost interrupted by the rest of the element within the piece, showing that the figure is notbthe most important part of the work.
Bibliography:
https://www.kunstnachrichtengallery.com/artists/jessica-matier/
https://artsleuth.com/collections/jessica-matier
https://www.jessicamatier.com/new-page-3/
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Li Songsong - After creating my photocopies, they reminded me of Li Songsong's compositions with the varied rectangular shapes defining zones within the artwork. Songsong's paintings are created with thick layers of paint creating a lot of interesting surface texture, which was what originally drew me to this artist during the presentation. His paintings are then fragmented into shapes. His aim with these paintings is to provoke memories and create a nostalgic atmosphere, which I really enjoy. I think this artist really relevant to the work I am creating at the moment, as I used my own personal imagery from old family photo-books to create a layered final image by using a photocopier. I would like to create a piece of work using these images to create a painting which will evoke nostalgia from the viewer, like Li Songsong does within his work.
Bibliography:
https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/li-songsong/
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/11/li-songsong-oil-paintings/
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Chuck Close - When doing some further research on Chuck Close I stumbled upon some pieces that he created in the method I have tried using, by working with fingerprints to create images. I found it very interesting to see a different approach to the same process of creating. I found when I created my finger paintings i create lots of intricate surface texture whereas Close creates very flat images however adds depth through the overlap of fingerprints. I relied heavily on colour when creating my paintings whereas Close created monochrome pieces with variations of tones.
Bibliography:
INTEROGATING THE REAL - THE AUTOGRAPHIC AND REPROGRAPHIC
Margo Wolowiec - This artist combines modern aspects of the digital age with ancient processes of hand weaving to create her textiles pieces. Although these works are textiles pieces they have quite a painterly feel to them due to the glitchy nature of the blurring, almost resembling brush strokes. This is the aspect which attracts me to these works. I also really like the way these pieces are installation/sculpture pieces rather than 2D images. It gets the audience more involved with the artwork, encapsulating them into the space the artist has crafted
Bibliography:
https://kadist.org/people/margo-wolowiec/
https://www.marlboroughgallery.com/exhibitions/margo-wolowiec-still-water-circling-palms
INTERROGATING THE REAL
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Mi Ju - I was drawn towards this artists installation pieces as they reminded me of one of the quotes that ........ said in the podcast, which inspired me ; "great thunder clouds of fish'. The piece called Waves by Mi Ju reminded me of this due to the floating nature and colour scheme of the works. They seem very natural and etherial, some elements of them even being reminiscent of coral. I liked how these pieces could remind you visually of many different things yet still be very abstract.
Bibliography:
http://www.emptykingdom.com/featured/ek-interview-the-rainbow-never-ends-a-mi-ju-interview/
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Vanessa Barragao - After seeing Barragao's Coral Garden on a website I was so infatuated with her work. Although I am very much not a textiles artist, I love her work. Not only is the work beautiful to look at but also created with up-cycled materials as Barragao is very aware of the devastating effects the textiles and fashion industry has on the world.
'Why do you choose to work mainly with recycled materials?
The textile industry is one of the most polluting in the world. In almost everything process, chemicals are used specially when it comes to the fibers treatment and dyeing. All the machinery used requires tons of energy while producing a lot of waste and disposable trash. It is extremely harmful for our world and it affects all of its different natural environments, particularly the ocean which absorbs 90% of the atmosphere pollution, warming up itself to the point that so many species get threatened, being the corals, who sustain so many other creatures, one of the most endangered ones. I truly believe in an up cycling effort towards the right way to try to fight this kind of negative mindset described above. All the materials used come from the deadstock of several local factories which are first cleaned and then selected to be reused in my projects.
Where does your biggest source of inspiration come from?
My biggest source of inspiration is the complex structure of coral reefs, which are truly cities of the bottom of the sea, which are the most impressive thing that I have ever seen.
Could you explain why some of your environmental works are crafted with very rich colors whilst some remain muted and restricted?
While trying to replicate abstractly the coral reefs as they are in our present time, my goal is to give a chocking contrast between the colorful and the colorless because while the former means life, the latter is indeed the representation of the coral’s bleached effect and therefore its death"
I really liked what she said about the 'colour and colourless' as colour and bleaching of coral reefs is something which I am very interested in exploring within my current work, especially after listening to the podcast of..............
Bibliography:
https://www.trendtablet.com/64068-vanessa-barragao/
https://mymodernmet.com/coral-reef-textile-art-vanessa-barragao/
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Ivan Alifan - A painting which has been one of my favourite paintings for a few years isn'Sunhat' by Ivan Alifan. I fell in love with this piece after watching a video of it being constructed. I had never seen a painting made in this way and I was completely engrossed in watching the process. Alifan pipes paint onto the canvas as well as adding separate structures made completely in oil paint. I love the fact that the piece is so unbelievably textured that it actually reaches out of the canvas and around the viewer, yet is still entirely made of paint. I had never seen this use of paint before and has impacted me since, to always experiment with textures on and off of the canvas. It has inspired me to try and create structures which when dry I can peel off the surface and replace into different compositions.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Carolyn Saxby - I have been looking into different materials to experiment with to create a painting without using paint and I came across this textiles artist Carolyn Saxby. I was attracted to her work due to the ocean like colours and interesting textures which she uses in her work. The woven materials evoke painterly qualities due to the way you can visually see the flow of the media within the pieces, much like brushstrokes in a painting.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Monica Chulewicz - When I first saw this artist work, what I liked about it was the way it seemed to create a quite melancholy and reflective atmosphere. The slightly creepy compositions were also very beautiful creating a contrast between the sinister undertones of the piece and the visual beauty. I really liked this. When looking into the artist more I was very interested by how she described the inspiration for her work to be 'the tension between the past and the future'. I came across one piece in particular which caught my eye called 'I'm Not Here For You To Taunt' which involved many figures printed from old photography sewn together in one long instalment piece. I liked the way the colour faded from top to bottom and how the pictures used in the many components of the piece were inverted and quite mysterious.
Another piece which really intrigued me was 'A Habitual Loss of Memory', which again used multiple small sample pieces and placed them together in a hanging installation to create a composition.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Marian Bijlenga - I like how this artist created many small samples and joins them together in a way where they both create relationships with each other and with the space around them. She describes transparency as being an important park=t of her work as it allows her to incorporate the blank space around the composition into the composition itself.
"I am fascinated by dots, lines and contours, by their rhythmical movements but also by the empty space they confine. Instead of drawing on paper, I draw in space by using textile as a material. I work with thread, fabric and horsehair, fishscales and parchment, materials which are soft, light, flexible and open to endless development. For me transparency is a prerequisite. By leaving some space between the structure and the wall the object is freed from its background and interacts with the white wall."
This helped inspire me to experiment with joining my PVA samples together in different ways to see how they interact with each other when creating a composition.
Bibliography:
https://marianbijlenga.tumblr.com/Fish%20Scale%20Works
http://www.patternprintsjournal.com/2018/05/wonderful-textures-and-patterns-with.html
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Gunvor Nervold - I liked this artists works due to how they are heavily inspired by the relationships between man and nature, something which really comes through in all of Nervolds works. She creates what she calls ' textile paintings' often in conjunction with wooden sculptures to create a whole world which reaches around the viewer. her work is very experimental and often quite abstract. Despite this, due to the colours and textures created in the pieces you are able to trace the works back to the motif of nature which inspired her.
Bibliography:
http://gunvornervoldantonsen.com/works/
http://www.paperdarts.org/art-archive/2016/10/17/gunvor-nervold-antonsen
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
Donald Martiny - This artist is described to act within 'the gap between art and sculpture' by taking the most basic component of a painting and turning it into work of its own by playing with scale and texture. He creates large scale works which often depict one or two brush strokes. Despite only showing a couple of brushstrokes in each piece, they all have their own character depicted through shape and colour. Every mark is dynamic, making the pieces have a performative element to them. To me it looks as though the marks are dancing with each other. I am really interested in textures of painting so this is a very exciting concept, to have individual brush strokes portrayed in this way.
Bibliography:
PAINTING BEYOND ITSELF
John Everett Millais - Ophelia - Throughout this project I felt myself referring back to this painting due to the subject matter and feeling which I wanted to put across in my work. In this painting Millais manages to create the most amazing atmosphere combining beauty with tragedy and highlighting how maybe these two things go hand in hand. This melancholia is something I aim to recreate in my own work based on nostalgia. Because of this painting, the colours which I associate these feelings with are greens and blues, so I want colour to be a main element within my work.
Bibliography: