Experiment

Little experiment with objects/background...unfinished

Concepts

Initial thoughts on how to show juxtaposition and power in paintings...

• Colour - sugary/soft against dark/inky
• Brushstrokes - smooth/rough, bold/weak
• Reflection - multiples - mirrors/magnifying glasses/microscope/glass
• Objects - playful, childlike
• Animal symbolism - pets, birds, free/caged
• Coloured decandent/sparse
• Swarm/plague - butterflies, birds, insects - crowded, claustrophobic
• Surface - glaze, layers, thick, dense
• Expression - smiling/twisted,watchful
• Background taking over image - sucked in, enveloped, alive
• 'Like a painting' image of Lily in NPG
• Birds, insects - what do they represent? flight, feathers, armour, hiding, carnival, masking
• Circus performers, freak shows - grotesque curiosity
• Growth, bearded woman, deformity, midget, giant, siamese twins, animal man, rubber man
• Scale - image within the painting frame
• Figures confrontational - abandonned toys or party hats link with Annette Messager
• Sexual power
• Manipulative position or expression
• Strong colour
• Posture
• Viewpoint - figure looking down on or up to viewer

Primary Research

Went back to the Museum of the History of Science last Sunday for some primary source recording. Couldn't get the glass containers I had seen out of my head. Considering integrating them in my background as symbols...

Backgrounds

Post second tutorial, it is clear that a similar trend is emerging. I seem to be incapable of expressing the conceptual content in my work, or articulating how I construct my images. So what I need to do is go back to basics and think about how I make decisions about my work. Always having been very aesthetically driven, currently, background and colour decisions are predominantly made for visual balance, looking areas of dark and light, and complimentary colours. I still want to use sweet colours and an underlying presence of red, yellow and blue. Looking at some traditional paintings and then some more contemporary images, I ahve made notes on how they address backgrounds and symbols. I love Hogarth's 'The Graham Children', posed towards the viewer, dark background and with vanitas like symbols - hourglass and scythe - showing death. Also, the cat about to pounce on the caged bird, unsuspecting and already trapped prey. Common decisions seem to be dark and plain to draw attention to the face, landscape and objects creating or suggesting events or narrative.

More recently, artists like Paula Rego and James Ensor have used props and a sense of crowding in their compositions to give context to their figures. I particularly like the way that Rego makes props and draws from constructed scenes to plan her work. Some props are representative of concepts, some play a narrative role. The background can be stuffed with objects, furniture and resemble a domestic room or studio. The way that Ensor has used plain blocks of colour and then integrated masks on the left in 'Self Portrait with Masks' is really simple but also has a quirky element where the innanimate masks seem to be interacting with the artist's paintbrush. 

So my challenge from Caroline is to make a painting where all my decisions are made conceptually rather than aesthetially and where the background draws the viewer in, and could possibly almost take over the figure(s).

6 Hours +

Further work on the 'Take Two' task - starting to get somewhere now we've spent a bit more time together.

The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women

'This exhibition attempts to debunk the notion of the male gaze by providing a group of works in which the artist and subject do not relate as "voyeur" and "object," but as woman and woman.'

http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/2009-06-25_the-female-gaze/?view=pressrelease - accessed 13/03/11

Found this when researching the female gaze; the curator linking together a diverse range of female artists depicting the female form. This a really a note to self, to further investigate how women have turned their gaze inwards; which looking position does the viewer adopt, voyeuristic or fetishistic?

Shirin Neshat
PARI 2008
Type C Print and ink
72 x 49 1/2 inches
182.9 x 125.7 centimeters
Edition 3/5

Alice Neel (1900 - 1984)
OLIVIA 1975
Oil on canvas
54 x 34 inches
137.2 x 86.4 centimeters

I have selected these two images initially because they both have context, through background and clothings. I like the way the subjects are seated but posed, and that their expressions seem guarded and slightly suspicious. The overall appearance of both images is fairly light which makes them feel less predatory; however their watchful expressions and direct eye contact make the figures seem powerful, not submissive. As a viewer I want to continue looking as they confront my gaze. The bride seems more resigned, as though she had planned to be photographed whereas Olivia looks almost fed up. This may reflect the time period used for creating the piece - a photograph is instantaneous, a painting completed during multiple sittings over a longer period. More of this later. 

Cheim & Read Exhibition Archive

Bubbles

Improvements made to corn babies painting, post Emma tutorial. It occured to me that the bubbles should bring colour and reflections to the piece, rather than being clear as I first showed them. Not sure if they are perhaps too bright but currently I am enjoying the sapphire-like orbs, hovering.

For some unknown reason, today blogger will not allow me to upld images the right way up...?

Poorly Painted?

I have become very aware, post Emma tutorial, that there are some aspects of my work which are indeed 'poorly painted'. There is a time aspect to this, in that with reflection it is easier to see areas I need to improve. The six hour task was incredibly resticting for me and as a result I feel that that work is poorly painted. I never said it was finished. And at the point of pause, it was reasonable for a six hour attempt. But now there are clearly areas to address which I have started this weekend. So far I have tweaked eyes, nose and hair.

Karen Kilimnik

Flicking through Vitamin P, and thought Kilimnik's work was worth looking further into. The direct stare and slightly 'careless' painting style attracted me, plus the Russian and storytelling undertones. Kilimnik is more written about than I had anticipated; she seems to have exhibited work in many prestigious galleries. She's written about in quite a sensory way, as though the brushstrokes are weaving around her figures and binding them into the stories. Although some faces are familiar, they also seem removed and secretive and watchful.

'Kilimnik comes on like a mysterious countess in a romantic novel, tantalising us with clues to her true identity, but always vanishing into the night when we believe we finally have her in our grasp.

If her subject matter and borrowed brushstrokes are familiar, behind it all - the stories that don’t add up, the affinities that aren’t explained - is something very difficult to articulate, an experience, an autobiography, a world view, a private self... Their searching eyes won’t leave you alone.'

http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/karen_kilimnik/ - accessed 07-03-11

 This sense of 'searching eyes' is something which I am captured by when I am sourcing images to work from. They can be both alluring and intimidating, transferring the power held between subject and audience.

The artist has said of her work: Being so inspired by fairy tales, mysteries, books, TV shows and ballets etc. I like to make up characters myself as if I’m a playwright and these are characters and scenes I invented or observed… So I’ll see a picture of someone or something in a photo or a painting and cast them in my so-called play as a character I’ve made up or sometimes borrowed.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2007/02/karen_kilimnik_20_february_9_a_1.html - accessed 07-03-11

This sense of creating a character to convey a message is something I value about my practice and an aspect I am trying to develop subtly.

Kilimnik’s work cultivates an unabashed sense of romanticism yet retains a knowing criticality and awareness of the personal desire that we invest in both vaunted works of visual art and the more fleeting intrigue of celebrities and superstars.

http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=66 - accessed 07-03-11

This quote links the notion of a viewer's fleeting engagement with a work of art and a superficial appreciation of fame, beauty and youth. Gratifying, these images create a quick fix without ensnaring the viewer, but leaving a trace of something more, a narrative or a history. I am interested in the idea of audience being tantalised by the image but not being in control of their response to a piece, perhaps overcome by curiosity or lust.