WORDS AND PICTURES

Fiona Rae

"What I love about painting is that it embodies a series of thought and feeling processes. It's all there on the canvas as a record. I can put something on the canvas, consider it, adjust it, remove it, replace it, add to it, conceal it, reveal it, destroy it and repair it. I can be in a good mood, a bad mood, a cheerful mood or a destructive mood - it's all useful."

- Fiona Rae (via The Observer)

I found this quote from Fiona Rae so inspirational and so true. I am a believer that it is important to convey the artists feelings or mood within a painting, and Rae's work always achieves this.

In recent work, including the images above, the mood is quite ambiguous. At a first glance flowers, hearts and cartoon characters imply a sweet, almost cloying and child-like world, yet Rae’s various washes and veils of paint along with the sometimes dark and brooding palette suggest dissolution. The paintings seem to suggest the seductions, contradictions and disappointments of contemporary life and culture.

STAGE ONE SHOW

The stage one exhibitions came around so quickly. This was a chance to display our work in Chelsea's Triangle space. The BA Fine art stage one students were split in half and were given the oppertunity to work with one another to display all of our work. This was a massive challenge, working with a large group deciding where all the work will look best, how it looks displayed next to other work and how the viewer will walk around the gallery space. We had two days to finish off the show ready for the private view. It was a race against time and by the end of the second day everyone was exhausted. The private view went well and the whole expirience was a great oppertunity to work with others and learn how to display work, not only to make it stand out and look impressive, but to make other works surrounding it a success aswell!

This Is one of my paintings that was exhibited in the part one exhibition.

Oil, Acrylic and Spray paint on Board.

Above is one of my recent images combining text, oils, gloss and charcoal.

Taking inspiration from Douglas Kolk I have distorted human form and wording to create this effect. My aim is to make the reader look more closely at the image and try and work out what the text is saying and how this correlates to the images.

Text, Image, Collage

I have recently been thinking about composition and how an image looks as a whole. What does the viewer think about when looking at a piece of work. As an artist am I giving away to much or too little information?

Douglas Kolk

Much of his drawing is influenced by comic books and pulp novel covers, Kolk’s drawings are pieced together as narrative frames. Some of his works offer clearly defined stories while others offer more of a scattering of information.  His work for me seems to offer a sort of reassurance in the anxiety that is felt in a modern day world.

I think that Kolk's mixture of drawing painting and collage along with the size of his pieces play a big part in what the artist wants to convey. Each different piece tells us a different story, he captivates the viewer with the bright colours and unfocused feel of his work and then tells the story with the different mediums

Barbra Kruger

 

"I SHOP THEREFORE I AM"

 

Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of Photographs overlayed with captions. The phrases and captions in her work often include the use of pronouns such as "you" "your" "I" "we" and "they"

 

 

 She layers found photographs from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. In their trademark black letters against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground." Much of her text questions the viewer about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing.



Krugers mixture of text and imade differs tremendously to that of Douglas Kolks work. The messages are clearer and more in your face than Kolks sometimes vague messages.
It is this that I want to continue to look at
      
                                                                                                            


HOW MUCH INFORMATION DO I WANT TO GIVE AWAY?
AM I GIVING TOO MUCH/TOO LITTLE?
COLOUR
SHAPE
LINE
TEXT
IMAGE

 

GRAFFITI!

I decided to start exploring with different mediums of paint and different surfaces to paint onto.

 I then started to work with aerosol mixed with acrylic and oil on canvas.

LEAKE STREET

I travelled to Leake Street Graffiti tunnel to try painting onto different surfaces. Rather than trying to master the art and technique that many Graffiti artists do, I decided to sketch with the paint and make the work as free and as loose as possible. I don't want the work to look finished and polished, I simply wanted to explore painting with a different medium onto a new surface.

 The inability to mix the aerosols with ease worked in my favour as the final images were very different to my works on canvas or board using paints with brushes. Working quickly with juvenile markings was different and enjoyable and the outcome was exciting.

JULIA OUSCHATZ: below is flat up there

I visited the old Pimlico library. Julia Ouschatz's exhibition, this is a one off exhibition at the former Pimlico Library, Berlin-based artist Julia Oschatz will transform beyond recognition the rotund, multi-level space and take visitors on a journey deep into another reality. Isolated in this infinitely vast and inhospitable terrain, where the laws of physics are frequently turned on their head, an appreciation for the essence of being is heightened.

Ouschatz made the exhibition exciting using a mixture of video, painting and drawing these new works provide us with aerial shots akin to satellite imagery, which flatten and alienate us from an environment we thought we knew.

I found her performance art the most interesting, it seems to question humanity, all of her work seems to be quite alien and often shows a lone figure

her paintings and drawings mainly consist of aerial shots akin to satellite imagery, which flatten and alienate us from the intimacies of the features we see below.

The exhibition was set out in such a way that made the viewer feel small and lonely, surrounded by images of vast landscapes or one lone figure, the exhibition space was dark and somewhat unsettling, i felt that rather than simply viewing the artists work, I was being drawn into an experience.