New Work

So recently I have been working on a series of drawings, combining the portrait with abstract backgrounds and patterns. I have been influenced by artists that deal with multiplicity like Andy Warhol and some contemporary artists like Conor Harrington who depicts fragmented figures in his work.

Example : Conor Harrington Charcoal.

Multiplicity

Fragmentation

Personality

These are the three main themes that inspire my studio practice.

Multiplicity 1. Self Portrait.

The Looking Glass.

Reflection.

Mirror Mirror.

The Final Year.

So here it is, the beginning of the end of my time at art school. This year I plan to focus more on photography and printmaking, bringing my project to some sort of end point. I would like to work with a lot of mirrors, reflecting the different sides of my own personality but also to represent the way that most people have multiple personalities. 

To begin, I plan to get a new range of photographs to work from and I will have to call on a few of my art buddies to help out with this. Working again with black and white mostly digital but also some darkroom photography is in order . I plan to purchase a Diana camera when my student loan comes through and play around to see what kind of effects I can get.

I then plan to take my images into printmaking and develop them further, screenprinting and lithography are the main techniques I will use to combine and edit my images.

Its early days yet but by the end of the year I hope to have enough images and works to surround myself with them and create some sort of installation. I looked into this last year, this being one of the main images which inspired me to do so.

Hitting my head off a brick wall!!

Ok. So this might not be interesting for others but I do need a way of getting my ideas down before I forget them all completely, since all I seem to do these days is work and sit on the computer this might be the best way of recording them.

The summertime so far has been pretty uneventful with regards to the development of my ideas for returning to uni. I feel as though I am waiting for the ideas to come to me; which is by the way not the best method. I am now going to throw myself into research and see what happens! However I do find it difficult wading my way through the internet looking for something to jump off the screen at me!

Last semester the work I produced was based around the idea of obsessions and although I would like to continue with this I feel as though I have come to a dead end. I initially wanted to make a comment about self obsession in today's society however I have found that in doing so I just seem to be continually repeating myself. forever regurgitating the same ideas and images over and over again! I'm so bored of it!! I don't want my last year at art school to be the same again.

This year I plan to bring something else to the work, the use of glass and mirrors to create multi-layered images. I would also like to bring some colour back into my work, something I have already started to explore. I intend to be selective about what colours I will include, colours which reflect my personality and emphasise my identity as a woman. I am also thinking about restricting the areas of the body I will focus on, choosing what others will see, with use of plastics/perspex to obscure areas of the image, and mirrors to reflect others.

My main issue is the fact that I still want to paint, however I have been told that the printing methods and photography I used conveys the message in my work more clearly. Is that what all of this about? Having some deep and meaningful project to work on when what initially attracted me to the subject of art was the fact that I enjoyed it so much. Does this mean that I have not grown as an artist?

I hope to try and combine painting with printing so to continue my love affair with paint. again adding another layer to my work, I envisage the pieces having areas of detail (print) and areas where the paint begins to obscure or distort what is underneath.

I am not yet sure of how all of this will come together, if at all! Only time will tell. At least I have somewhere to ramble. Oh and Iron Maiden are Amazing!

Screenprinting

This week my studio space was filled with screenprints, I have been playing about with combining and layering images. I started by thinking I could remember it all and going ahead making the screen and putting the emulsion on the wrong side (evidently not that big a deal)! I then exposed two images onto the one screen and started printing. The best thing about printing for me is the way you can play around quickly and fairly easily with different surfaces - the ones I did on glass are my favourites so far......