Finished 5th Painting: Ideas for the Next Piece

I have completed my 5th Piece. I would say this piece is the most attractive and diverse piece of the series of works I am creating at the moment. It is much brighter in colour but also the development of the image and employing of different painting techniques is more evident. I definitely feel like I have adapted the original collage and have used it as a tool to focus on making a painting and not just a copy.

The areas that I have where I have simplified the shapes and painted them in block colour within this piece are highly successful, however I have chosen areas that are fairly easy to simplify like the sky and field area, breaking the colours within them up. I will experiment with pushing this further and simplifying a whole image like a tree for example and surrounding it with block colour, in the form of silhouettes.

First Painting Complete: Evaluating the Success of the Background

I have completed my first painting. I feel it is incredibly successful, my painting skill has progressed and I have successfully transferred my collaged work into a painting. I am slightly concerned that even though this piece is visually appealing and well executed, that if there was a set of many of these paintings made directly from the collages I have made they could be quite a boring set of work. I am proud that I have managed to capture the realism within the imagery but I am not sure the viewer would read this work as a painting and possibly overlook it’s skill and the complexity by mistaking it for a collage.

Evaluating the background, I think that the grey and cream tones that I have worked into the background maybe detract from the central painting, the texture and brush marks are successful but maybe the texture in white would be more appropriate.

Revised Artist Statement: Degree Show Catalogue

My practice aims to challenge and confront our nostalgia for traditional landscape paintings which portray unrealistic, aesthetic and romantic views of the land and to highlight the causes and effects of the harm our earth experiences as a result of human neglect. It is easy to overlook and ignore the damage that is being done to our environment and to cling on to the image of an unpolluted landscape. My work explores an attraction to the beauty of nature and relies on it to expose the reality of the harm it is subjected to. Contrasting fragments of our natural landscape and imagery associated with environmental harm are brought together in a dialectical way so that they have a conversation. The imagery present together emphasises the fact that these images exist in the same environment and underlines the reality that the elements of unspoiled natural landscape may one day be lost and only a distant memory if the causes of its depletion are not acknowledged.

Throughout my current practice, my ideas are explored mainly through painting, drawing and collage. Collage is employed to create works in their own right and also to create amalgamations of imagery to be translated into painting. My work breaks the conventions of a typical landscape format and painting from collage incorporates many different perspectives but builds up a believable image where natural landscape beauty is not seperate from environmental issues. Some influences on my work include John Akomfrah, Dexter Dalwood and Keith Arnatt. Contrasting imagery of nature with snapshots of environmental toll highlights the realism of the landscape we are very much part of today.

Progress: First Collage Painting

I have been working hard in the studio on my first painting of one of my collages this week and have really progressed with it. I have taken my time and built up layers of paint in glazes to create a painted representation of the original collaged work. The painting combines imagery of natural beauty with imagery of environmental harm, attracting the viewer to the beauty of the land and exposing them to the harm it experiences.

I am confident that my research and glazing and underpainting experimentation has paid off and as a result my painting skill has really improved. I have also learnt to observe more closely and paint what I see rather than what I think I see and to be patient in my approach. The factory smoke, tree stump and pipe water still need a bit of work and I am looking forward to seeing this finished and to progress on to the next one. I am very excited by the prospect of showing a series of these, I feel as if I am working towards my best work to date and I will be very proud of my degree show.

Progress: Painting from Collages

I am making progress on my first painting from one of my collages, I am working out the technique of glazing and layering up paint as I go along, I think it is going well and if I paint them all to a high standard, I am confident I will have a successful exhibition.

I have included an image of my paint palette as I cannot believe how many colours I am mixing to paint such small areas of work. The palette was clean when I started, each layer of paint is a different shade and the cliff area for example has about 9 layers of thin glazes on it, it is exciting to watch the image unfold if not a little bit stressful at the beginning when i’m not sure if the layers are coming together.

I am experiencing some problems along the way but I am overcoming them and developing as I paint. For example, not letting the colour underneath completely dry before applying the next layer is not successful and so I need to be more patient, I may be painting some parts of the piece too detailed in relation to the collage and so I need to make sure I am really observing the initial image. But also, I must remember that my works are paintings, not photographic images and if the colour isn’t exactly the same for example it doesn’t matter, they can be stylized and have artistic license and still be successful both visually and conceptually.  I am satisfied with my progress, I am a little bit concerned about the time scale of getting them finished but hopefully I will get quicker at painting them as I learn the techniques employed better.

Starting my Degree Show Work – Painting from Collages

Today I started painting towards my degree show, painting from collages contrasting natural landscape imagery with imagery of environmental harm. I am painting in glazes and building up layers on top of a thin underpainting. It is an incredibly time consuming process and I after I have finished these six works it will be the most time I have ever put into making artwork, but as it’s for the degree show it seems the right time and I want my work to be the best that it can.

These pieces are going to be highly detailed and hopefully visually appealing. I want them to attract the viewer and expose them to environmental harm and what is being lost. Over the rest of the term and over the holidays, I am going to be constantly working on these pieces. It is important that I don’t rush them and so it’s good I have started early. Hopefully I can get them all done.

Working on a Large Scale: Landscape Exploration, Nature Juxtaposed with Environmental Harm

After experimenting with contrasting nature and environmental harm in a landscape format, I decided to experiment with painting much larger to see what sort of impact that made and whether or not it brought anything to my work. I don’t think this experiment was particularly successful. I am glad I tried it and definitely have gained knowledge from it on reflection but I don’t think it highlights my concepts or works visually.

There are qualities about this work that I am happy with, however after a recent tutorial, I was posed questions that I hadn’t really considered and shown the faults in my work. I can see now that this work isn’t working on reflection, my skill in painting this work even though it was only a quick experiment is not good enough, the work is not believable and it quite cartoony. I have come to realise that I am no longer painting from life, and I should be. I am painting an imaginary image, an imaginary landscape that I am portraying to the viewer. It has no sense of reality and so exposing to the viewer the realities of today’s landscape and challenging traditional landscape nostalgia is not happening here.

I am determined to improve my painting work, my cut out collages have been a successful element of my project throughout and I cannot believe I haven’t thought about painting them before. They work, they are attractive and challenge the image of the land. Painting from something that is successful will hopefully make my work more successful and translate what is working in the collage into the paintings. Displaying these kind of paintings and a selection of collages for the degree show is definitely something I am considering now. I am also now thinking that painting large for the degree show is not a good idea. Why change how I work now? to impress? If scaling up means that my work is suffering, I need to tackle something more manageable.

Drawing up a Large Scale Painting

After previous painting experiments, I have decided to explore working larger, both to see if working large is a possibility for the degree show both visually and in terms of time. If it’s not successful or I don’t feel it adds an impact to my work then I can rule it out after experimentation, if it is a success I can start thinking about beginning my show work.

Working on a large sheet of alkyd primed paper, I decided to start drawing out a large scale landscape contrasting natural land with imagery associated with environmental harm such as landfill and pollution. I plan to continue painting the piece contrasting natural greens with the greys of factories, smoke and pollution etc.

Robert Bateman: Contrasts

Robert Bateman created paintings that contrast the natural land, environment and wildlife with land that has been harmed. The examples below show a forest contrasted with imagery of deforestation and wildlife with litter and oil that could harm the animals etc. This fits in with my ideas surrounding contrasting the natural land with environmental harm, although this work almost has a before and after theme to it.

I think the work is interesting in the fact that the artist hasn’t just directly split the image in half, there are more elements or the split isn’t directly in the middle.  Rather than integrating the imagery as I am currently doing, showing the beauty and the harm together in an image, the canvas is split into separate sections, maybe this is something I could think about exploring. Although I don’t want my work to emit the idea that the natural and the harmed land are separate because they exist in the same environment.

Large Modern Day Landscape Painting: Combining Darker Colours and Bright Colour

I decided to combine my darker paintings with the bright painting. It was mentioned in my gap crit, that I could paint a dark landscape and paint all the things that are harming and polluting the environment in bright colours and so I have experimented with that.

This work draws the eye specifically to the harmful imagery polluting the land. I haven’t stuck whole pieces of litter to the work as I don’t think they were particularly successful and didn’t fit in with the sense of perspective. This work incorporates pollutants, litter, waste oil and crude oil, the viewer is faced with materials associated with environmental harm. Even though the eye is drawn to the bright areas, and people may notice the work more as its brighter, I am conscious that the bright colours could be portraying the idea of a beautiful landscape, accepting pollution. I will have to decide whether to carry on or use darker colourings again.