Evaluative statement

This year, I have created a series of works that fall under the theme and name of my final major project ‘Resilience in the Face of Adversity.’ Within this project, the key areas I have been exploring pertain to subjects such as trauma, mental health, anxiety, therapy, relationships, addiction and PTSD. The context with which I consider my work to fall into is social and cultural, topics such as consent, power dynamics, patriarchy, misogyny and mental health are widely targeted in my paintings and drawings, all of which harbour varying viewpoints among their debaters, which is why I consider my work to bare a nature that belongs to a social and cultural context. The artists whose work I have been exploring for inspiration throughout my final year include Henny Beaumont, Paula Rego, Artemisia Gentileschi, Lynnea Holland Weiss, Dan Isaac Bortz, Dalton Gata, Jessie Makinson, Leonora Carrington, Hieronymus Bosch, Anthony Cudahy, Naudline Cluvie Pierre, Lisa Brice and more. In this time, I have also visited many exhibitions to aid in influencing my body of work, these include Louise Bourgeois ‘The Woven Child’, ‘Decriminalised Futures’ at the ICA, Yayoi Kusama ‘Mirror Infinity Rooms’ at the Tate, Isamu Noguchi’s ‘A New Nature’ at The White Cube, two shows at the GCCA and the OHSH and many others. All these gallery visits served as great inspiration to my body of work, both visually and conceptually.

My research questions throughout this project that frame my studio practice pertain to the responsive nature of the viewer, and how the themes in my work may be perceived. ‘Why is this message important?’, ‘Who can benefit from the nature of this work?’, ‘What message is the work trying to convey?’ are some of the questions driving my practice forward and influencing my research.

My individual method of enquiry involves experimentation on a smaller scale regarding use of mediums and materials, the creation of personal reference images and thumbnails, consistently practising several painting techniques such as paint pouring, gradient blends, mixing pigments, masking and figurative painting.

My method of enquiry regarding conceptual and visual inspiration involves seeking influence through a plethora of sources including visiting exhibitions, watching art/ artist documentaries, collaborating with other creatives, journaling and documenting ideas through sketches and photography. Employing these methods acts as a catalyst for me to gather information and inspiration through which to create my work.

My methodology incorporates the use of absorbing this inspiration, developing it into my own conceptual ideas, sketching out painting ideas, creating thumbnails, and eventually transforming these into final pieces and painted scenes. Because this methodology is rather structured, I also have a series of low-pressure works that I nurture and develop alongside the main focal piece to ensure I’m maintaining a flexibility and playfulness within my work, these pieces typically consist of paint pour experiments or figurative studies.

To ensure that I am critically reflecting on my practice, I analyse the successes and failures of my artwork to gain a deeper understanding of how I work and where to improve. The successes I have reaped from this year’s work include learning to mask properly to ensure paint pours do not infiltrate into areas of the piece I don’t want it to, learning to observe a reference image in far more depth to ensure my painting renders an essence of anatomical accuracy and mixing my own pigments. Refining my skill set in each of these areas has aided in my ability to create paintings that not only reflect my visual taste but tell my narrative more coherently. It has been a pleasure to experiment and indulge within these areas to fine tune my technical ability and learn more about the creative process.

The failures I have run into involve preparation, planning and time management. Because the paintings I have planned are quite ambitious for my current technical skill set, I would have benefited from working on these areas more thoroughly to assist in my creative practice’s success. As the completion of our third academic year approaches, I can reflect on my weaknesses regarding these skills and will make a conscious effort to prepare more thoroughly and manage time more meticulously. The troubles I have run into mean I have felt like I am running out of time or working under pressure against the clock, which is not a good environment for relaxed creativity to thrive. In light of this, I have realised that I have a keen interest in painting, visual aesthetics and storytelling through my work but a need to refine my capacity to manage time and to structure myself and my workload.

The means by which I choose to document my work usually involves a variety of methods including photography, sketch booking, digitally written notes, and drawing. Drawing and sketch booking in particular are a fantastic way to visually portray an idea to yourself to come back to at a later date. Many of my sketchbooks are full of annotated thumbnail sketches depicting scenes that I want to paint on a much larger scale. In addition to this, taking photos of scenes, situations, paintings and moments throughout time can be an excellent way to remember a thought or feeling felt while in a certain moment, encapsulating the trigger that caused an idea to influence your practice. The use of photography has also been paramount for the formation of my thumbnails, aiding in visual reference from which to paint from.

Before commencing the creation of my final major project, I considered the organization concerning planning, budgeting and scheduling. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I had an abundance of paints, canvases, tapes and paint mediums at my disposal – I am often bought artistic tools and equipment for birthdays etc so I didn’t need to consider buying any more pigment or tools before starting. However, to transfer the painting from my studio at home to the exhibition space will require some considered budgeting. I will need to hire a van to transport the final project, along with its appropriate supporting work and sketchbooks, to the university. I will also need to purchase a spirit level, nails, a hammer and some bulldog clips to assist in the installation of my work for the degree show.

The planning, scheduling, and general organisation of my work throughout the third year could have been more considered. Initially, I created a timetable of the academic year to adhere to, to ensure I was staying ‘on track’ and meeting my weekly targets. This worked brilliantly initially, but I gradually lost touch with the schedule and began to work spontaneously once more. I don’t necessarily think this is solely a negative, as working in serendipitous ways can breed wonderful happy accidents, but I would like to improve on my organisation skills to avoid feelings of overwhelm when deadlines are approaching.

From this process, I have learned that I need to better manage my time, not to underestimate how long things take and to work consistently on a project, rather than in intense peaks and troughs of productivity. Working in this way can lend itself to highly charged exciting periods of creativity, but also means there is a lack of consistent contact with your work, which is a desirable relationship to have with your craft. If I had employed all these reflections, I believe the quality of my work would be intensified regarding presentation, observational skill, and technical use of paint to achieve certain visual effects. I will learn to incorporate these improvements into my learning process so as to improve future performance and encourage critical thinking in my practice.

Next, I am going to create a second large scale painting depicting the antithesis of the one I am currently painting to create two juxtaposed scenes side by side. I am going to take personal reference photos, create a thumbnail to work from and work consistently at this new project. I will give myself a longer time scale to complete the project in, I will use clearer and higher definition reference images (as this was something of a hurdle in the painting process beforehand), I will actively carry out the sufficient prep work to ensure the success of the piece (using gesso, mixing paintings properly, using clean paint palettes, cleaning brushes properly etc). In addition to this, I will also work on battling my fear concerning painting. I have become rather perfectionist in my approach to making work and this year I have been able to identify this as a short coming of mine that stunts my creative progression. Once employing this combination of lessons and tactics, I believe I can gradually eradicate the shortfalls in my creative practice and allow my work to develop while maintaining a vital critical thinking approach to my methods.

 

Learning reflection 3

Another area I'd like to improve on is my attitude towards preparation. I have noticed that sometimes I can take lazy short cuts in my work that dramatically effect the success of the result. For example, using paint palettes that have old dried paint on them, not washing them properly before use, or not changing paint water regularly enough, not prepping the surface properly before adding pigment etc. Taking short cuts such as these have a notable impact on the results you achieve in the long run. To avoid repeating these mistakes I will allocate a certain period of time before starting the painting solely to prep. This will involve doing things like prepping the surface properly (removing dust, adding gesso etc), mixing the paints properly (making sure the ratio of painting medium to pigment is correct), changing the paint water regularly to avoid merky colour interference in the piece, cleaning brushes properly at the end of every painting session etc. I think employing these tactics will enable me to take the preparation of the painting seriously and aid in me viewing it as important as the actual painting process.

Learning reflection 2

When reflecting on the third year, the work I've created in that time and how I went about making it, I've come to realise that perhaps a reason behind the fear I experience with perfectionism in my work is due to setting unrealistic expectations for myself. When having to write a project proposal for another module, I realised how ambitious my goals were; to master oil panting, to learn to stretch paper and mount it to a frame, to make my own frames, to make my own canvases, to master spray painting and air brush painting etc. Now that I've been working consistently through out the year, I realise how outlandish those goals were, as even one of those skills takes a lot of time to master. 

Going forward, I will give myself a much easier time in regards the expectations I set for myself and my work's progress. To have achieved all of the goals I set myself would be a fantastic achievement, however it was flawed in regards attainability. Instead, I will give myself one skill to try and hone in on at a time to avoid any feelings of overwhelm and fear. I will continue to challenge myself to carry out 'risky' experiments to ensure I am pushing myself out my creative comfort zone while still setting goals and expectations that are a little more realistic and achievable in regards skill level and time frame. 

Learning reflection 1

Through out the year so far, I have identified several areas in which I need to improve my approach to my creative practice. I have learned several invaluable lessons through out the year, including honing in on my painting, masking, blending and drawing skills, however in doing these experiments I have become aware of some of the limitations I harbour as an artist and areas in which I can improve.

The first area that I think I could work on is time management. As we near the finalisation of the final term of third year, I wish I was further along in the creation of all the paintings I've started. I think I should have started the painting process a lot sooner into the term instead of letting fear stunt my drive. In addition to this, I would like to have a better relationship with the consistency of my involvement in my creative practice. I appear to work in intense ebbs and flows and peaks and troughs of creativity and productivity, meaning sometimes I am inconsistent with my work, resulting in a turbulence of engagement which can breed bad results due to lack of familiarity with your craft. 

In order to overcome both of these time related issues, I think it would be helpful to allocate certain hours through out the week to painting, to ensure I'm working at it consistently and building up a relationship with the piece and the creative process, rather than employing an intense 'all or nothing' approach to my work.

Painting experiments

This term I wanted to ensure that I was taking more risks with my work and becoming more relaxed with the creative process. In the past I have struggled with stifling perfectionism that manifests itself in my inability to progress a painting to the next stage once I've done something in the piece that I like and am therefore terrified to ruin. A good example of this is a paint pour I made in second year with the intention of painting a narrative scene/ figures over the top. The background colours and the pour itself where only ever painted on the canvas to act as a background for a more detailed and focused foreground scene. 

Unfortunately, because I was so happy with the result of the background, I didn't add anything else or paint anything more onto the canvas for months and months, due to the fear of ruining it by painting something badly over the top. To challenge myself, I painted a very simple silhouette underpainting in the foreground which I will develop into a nude red figure that is dowsed in a ray of light peering into the scene from a nearby window. 

It was nerve wracking to commit to painting over the top of a background I was so happy with visually, but now that I have, I'm really excited to see how the piece develops into a fully formed narrative scene. It was really important to me to challenge myself in this way as I have identified this perfectionism/ fear as one of the limitations in my creative process, the fear stops me from developing the painting even further and therefore renders me creatively stagnant; something I need to consciously overcome if I am to create the images I have planned.

Gehenna development

 This term, I wanted to make sure I was utilising short windows of time between other arrangements to get art work done, I find that working this way has an accumulative effect and enables you to progress with your work at a much faster rate than if you simply waited for free whole days to do your painting in. In light of this, I have been painting in free hours or half hours here and there to ensure I'm working at a pace that aids the success of the piece and my meeting of the deadlines.

When I paint in these small windows of time, I make sure I tackle the basics of the image, for example, I painted the demon figure all black as an underpainting for the more detailed features I'll be adding in the future, I also did this with the plant, the window frame, the chest of drawers and the wine glasses/ bottles in the foreground. I find working in this way to be very liberating as you're giving yourself permission to simply paint the basics, it takes the pressure off of having to do something amazing or impressive in that creative session. I've really enjoyed working in this way and I find it to be a much more relaxing experience. 

As I add these basic aspects of the piece in these short windows of time, I can start to see the image taking shape and forming into something that replicates the original thumbnail, which is really exciting. Once I have an entire underpainting painted on the surface, I can then begin to add more detail and hone in on emphasising the shadows and highlights to really allow the piece to 'pop'. Next, I will focus on adding a background underpainting (simple block colours) and developing the red figure in the centre of the image, as I'm not happy with it just yet. 

In regards medium experimentation, I want to incorporate spray paint and oil paints into this piece to assist me in rendering some of the hazy light effects present in the thumbnail/ reference. I've not worked with these before so the prospect of working with an unfamiliar medium is really exciting. I will carry out a series of experiments with these mediums before committing to using them on 'Gehenna', to rule out any trial and error mistakes.

Gehenna development

I decided to start the piece by painting the red figure in the centre of the thumbnail first. I'm most comfortable starting with this aspect of the image first as I have painted several large scale figurative pieces before, so this is something of a comfort zone for me. 

Seeing as I had the large print out of the reference image on hand, it wasn't too difficult to get the main tonal contrasts down in a short space of time. Once I had done this, I began to mix various different mid tones, adding them where appropriate, to form the entire shape and structure of the figure. 

As this is a work in progress, the images below aren't going to be the same as the final result. But so far, I would say I'm happy with how I've captured the essence of the reference image in the painting, however I'd like to correct a few areas on the body that appear slightly patchy or have been painted at the wrong angle etc. As I'm working with acrylic paint for this section of the piece, it means drying time is relatively fast, meaning I don't have long to blend the paints to form the contours of the body, to combat this issue, I've been working with slow drying medium to encourage the acrylic to behave more like oil. When I next add pigment to the figure, I'll make sure I work consistently within a time window that doesn't allow the pigment to dry too quickly before I have a chance to blend the colours together. I will also make sure I measure the contours of the figure/ face more accurately to ensure I don't paint the features incorrectly and at the wrong angle. This is because I want to achieve a certain level of photo realism within a surrealist scene.