Project 1, Work in Progress

When I started this course I was keen to continue from where I left off in learning to paint.  So although it's been a while ( 7 months), I was excited about painting again.  This is my work in progress.  It's about 14 x 18 inches, in acrylics and I'm using various photographic reference pictures, mostly ones that I have taken but other bits either made up or referenced off the net.  I think the biggest difficulty I am having in working in this pieced together way is getting tone and colour looking right.

 For example as I have put the figure in a different setting I decided to change the colour of his trousers which took me a while until I felt they were acceptable…… for now anyway.  I have been trying to create some sense of depth whilst also concentrating on the main figure by means of keeping the figure's colours more saturated than the background and using hints of complementaries in the background around the figure.  Something I recall Seurat did.  The guy going up the stairs I have tried to keep as nondescript as possible.  But looking at it on and off today in between the sunday chores and delivering Avon, (yes I confess I have another secret life as an Avon lady), I feel the background tones are not right and maybe I have kept some of it too grey and muted.  I wonder what Monet would have advised.  You know when you get asked those questions like: " if you had to get stuck in a lift with someone who is alive or dead?"  I think Monet would be a good choice,…….. along with Einstein.  Anyway, it's all part of the challenge and learning isn't it.

Statement of Intent

Well at long last after introductory sessions on the fine art course we are now able to start our own projects.  As required this is my 300 word (give or take a couple) project brief or statement of intent:

Project 1

My overriding motivation and theme is to look and contemplate perception,  sense of reality, people and life.  My work will be a response to my observed reality, my view from my sphere, my observations and interpretations by looking at society and everyday life in my world.  The reality that I accept as set is in fact just filtered through my mind and its interpretations and experience and is also subject to my associations.  I want to also try to look at the alternatives and comparisons, I will try to look at people and life in different lights and perspectives, which along with other various elements may include humour.  No one true sense of reality exists and I want to stop, question and explore other ways of seeing my observed world, taking different slants and angles on a familiar environment.

I intend to paint, sculpt and probably use print in response to my theme.  For painting and print I will take photos to use for reference and sketches along with imagination to create compositions and narratives.  Most likely I will be using acrylic paint, and I will also use the opportunity to further my understanding of colour and light.

 In print, being a new subject to me, I will no doubt be using etching whilst incorporating other techniques as well but this is open to experimentation.  All of my work will incorporate the human figure, the human condition and how we fit, based on my understanding of my world.

In sculpture I will still be thinking about the above but more specifically exploring ways of indicating the figure,  not necessarily in a solid way, this will include thinking about the transient aspect and how we fit into space. 

The Queen on the toilet.

Artist Christina Guggeri uses digital photo manipulation to create a series of heads of state in a way we wouldn't normally see them.  I love the idea of things out of usual context and have been thinking along those lines for my own work. These will bring a smile to your face, well they gave me a giggle, but then, I am funny like that.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/artist-doctors-images-to-show-world-leaders-on-the-toilet/story-fnjwubk7-1227185799129

Man who can hear colours

Really interesting article about a man who can hear colours.  Ties in with my recent synaesthesia and perception post.  The guy can actually only see in black and white but uses technology to allow him to experience colours as sound.
 
http://thespiritscience.net/2015/01/12/this-man-can-hear-colors/

Egg Tempera

After looking at certain artists that use egg tempera I have become really interested in this medium.  Traditionally used by mixing pigment with egg yolk and used mostly on wood panels as not flexible enough to use on canvas.  My initial trials (avoiding expensive outlay on pigment) involved using tubed water colours and egg, although the recipe I’d seen online also recommended clove oil, which I did use and my sketch book has stunk ever since.  I think that is used to stop the egg going off although I have the feeling it slows the drying process too.  Egg tempera normally dries quickly.  I think that a drop of vinegar can be used instead to stop it going off. The pigments do seem fairly expensive and in theory anything that can be ground down to a fine powder could be used.  Turmeric has to be a good one as when it falls out of my chaotic cupboard it seems to stain everything!.  I’m sure though that a lot of things are not particularly fade resistant.  (Maybe I should investigate the things in school dinners that my daughter has permanently ingrained on school tops). I have been made aware of egg tempera in tubes though quite expensive but I must admit I do like the idea of mixing my own, although some pigments are quite toxic apparently. But then, putting that into perspective, is that any more toxic than the occasional lung full of Mr Sheen, Fabreze or other household substances not to mention the dog’s constant methane emissions. I wonder if organic eggs are best.  I’m not sure what they do to un-organic eggs but I know I can’t stomach them so they must have found a way to adulterate them. Well thinking in terms of powders etc my latest trial was to use graphite powder as the pigment just to see how it feels.  Using a photo as reference I had a go.  The egg binder acts like a varnish and seals the graphite so it doesn’t come of on your finger if you rub over it. (I wonder if it could be also used as a spray fixative -  that would eliminate another household toxin,….in my house anyway).  As I understand it egg tempera is quite a transparent medium that is built up in glazes or layers.  That was the case with this graphite mix.  

Evaluation. January 2015

Evaluation of work over Introductory modules:

At the moment performance art and moving image feel alien to me as a means of expressing art.  Sometimes even unsettling.

The act of producing art has always been a physical act to me involving dexterous manipulation, a direct brain, eye to hand expression that gives me more of an immediate personal and intimate, spontaneous outlet.  Maybe I find comfort and control in physical contact with my medium, whereas performance art and moving image take me out of this comfort zone.

Having said that I have always been fascinated by the prospect of animation, the idea of bringing something that isn’t organic to life, the possibilities of it’s form.  The only barrier would be my lack of knowledge in terms of the technology needed.  I have a love of making things and a love of detail and the prospect of creating little sets, scenes and imaginary worlds in which to stage my creations I find really exciting.

When I could I have always made things and my attention had moved to learning to paint during the last couple of years, but the sessions in sculpture have re-ignited my passion for this subject.  I can’t honestly say I learned anything in the session as I did have some prior knowledge but I enjoyed making the head cast which, being figurative, is my main sphere of interest.  I do find that I think very three dimensionally, usually figurative, and more often than not my artistic ideas are thought in terms of sculpture as a means to put form to them.  I have been limited in materials for practical reasons whilst doing the occasional thing at home but I am now hoping to expand my experience, actualise my ideas and use other materials and also different mould making materials and methods of casting.   I’ve been made aware of installation as a separate subject but to me it’s an off shoot of sculpture and another potential medium.

Printing was quite a revelation to me as I had no prior interest if I’m honest and not any experience either.  These sessions I found the most engaging and interesting as I was gaining knowledge for potential future use.  We covered some basic but effective processes which had successful outcomes in themselves but can also now be adapted and built on for further experimentation, and as I see it, another medium I can utilise as an outlet for ideas.  I like the fact that print allows you to also think in terms of layers.

I particularly enjoyed doing an etching which is similar to line drawing, something I have always enjoyed in pen and ink, it allowed me to work in a more detailed way which I love and discovered a print has a unique quality of its own. 

Painting had become my main focus when starting the course.  Discovering painting a couple of years before, I had been learning to paint in acrylics having discovered techniques like glazing.  I had been really excited about starting these sessions but they had not been at all what I had expected.  In my opinion there was no successful outcome and I did feel quite despondent, this was for various reasons including the fact that I had no real experience of using oil paint and the painting module was very short with no time for suitable preparations.  At this point I don’t think I had been aware that these were short introductory sessions either. I still have a passion for painting and want to not only get to grips with oil but also gain experience in painting from life.  To date I have mostly been limited to working from photos, which I will continue to do to achieve the subject matter I require of people and life, but I feel the experience of painting from life will be extremely valuable in terms of furthering my understanding of colour light and form, a lot of which is lost in photos as the biology of the eye means it sees things more enhanced with more subtleties of colour.

My ponderings on Perception, Synaesthesia and Art

As an arty person I find it quite natural to have an interest in perception.  I believe that any art I produce can only ever be subjective as no one else can perceive the world quite like I do.  That is not to imply that my reality is any better than anyone else’s, not that we would ever know of course.  I believe we all have a very unique perception of reality as this perception is a result partly of our physical apparatus which must be quite varied as are our physical appearances and also a result of our learning, experience and conditioning which all affect the way we see an interpret.  For example CBT teaches how we have mental filters which we unconsciously use often to reinforce deep rooted beliefs.  It allows the mind to ignore and filter out those things that don’t correspond to these beliefs.  A simple example would be the difference in several peoples’ eye witness account of the same occurrence. 

I wonder how the artist’s perception of the world differs from people who claim not to be artistic or creative.  One condition that relates to a less than average way of perceiving the world is ‘Synaesthesia’, (American spelling ‘synaesthesia’)

synesthesia, neuropsychological trait in which the stimulation of one sense causes the automatic experience of another sense. Synaesthesia is a genetically linked trait estimated to affect from 2 to 5 percent of the general population.

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is the most-studied form of synesthesia. In this form, an individual’s perception of numbers and letters is associated with colours. For this reason, in all the subject reads or hears, each letter or number is either viewed as physically written in a specific colour (in so-called projector synesthetes) or visualized as a colour in the mind (in associator synesthetes). Many synesthetes, however, have more than one type of synesthesia. A number of types have been reported, ranging from music-colour synesthesia, in which musical notes and sounds are associated with colour visualization, to tactile-emotion synesthesia, in which certain fabrics and textures conjure certain emotions in the synesthete. Examples of other types include sound-colour, spatial sequence, flavour-temperature, flavour-sound, sound-smell, time units-colours, and personality-smell. 

(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/578457/synesthesia)

Synaesthesia has been linked to creativity as it is purported to be 7 times more common in artists, musicians, poets and novelists than the rest of the population.  I do have a personal interest and it’s a fascination subject.  It has been assumed Kandisnky was a synaesthete as his colourful abstracts are a response to music, ( Kandisnky also had some interesting thoughts on spirituality and art).  Included in the many listed as having synaesthesia is also Hockney.

Researchers have suggested that at the start of life all of our brains work this way with interconnectedness and as babies we are all synaesthetes.  Although they have located genes that they feel are responsible for synaesthesia my own thoughts are that it is not so much a ‘condition’ or ‘dis’ function but rather something that was there and should still be there but has somehow got lost or overruled.  Just like all children are artists and growing up many lose that sense of wonder, curiosity, imagination and their creativity. 

To quote Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Maybe it’s due to learning language and the human desire to label, categorise and pigeon hole everything neatly that shuts down these connections in the brain.  We are often told about the neuroplasticity of the brain, so all brains potentially could have the extra connections and make all sorts of connections depending on the way the brain is used, and in anyway, a similar experience can be induced by drugs.  I think maybe the lack of synaesthesia is due to education and conditioning and I realise an argument to my theory of it being the normal way of perception would be that people’s synaesthesia experiences differ.  For example those that have coloured numbers have different colours to specific numbers compared to other people (although not the case in my family), so how can this way of perception be correct?  Well going back to my original comments on how we perceive differently:  how do we know that my red is anything like the red that you see and so on.  Also, going deeper it would seem that in life and nature everything is connected.  With my limited knowledge I believe that the visible light spectrum and sound for example are both electromagnetic energy at different frequencies.  Maybe sound does have a correlating colour?  Just because we don’t usually perceive colour with sound doesn’t mean it’s wrong.  Different animals for example perceive the world very differently.  Dogs after all hear things way out of our audible range, birds and some insects see colour beyond our visible spectrum.  Sound vibrations have been shown to produce complex patterns and shapes.  Science has shown that matter is barely matter at all and everything is made of vibrating energy.  Patterns in nature conform to numbers.

Well going back to art, isn’t appreciation of art in itself a synaesthetic experience?  If we look at art it is not limited to our sense of vision, it often evokes emotions and other sensations and reactions.  We associate colours with emotions and feelings not just in art but in everyday language, ie, feeling blue, green with envy etc. 

There is no real conclusion, just my own thoughts and ponderings and no doubt my own bias towards a world as perceived through a creative brain.

 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_most_beautiful_painting_youve_ever_heard/

http://www.synesthesiatest.org/blog/wassily-kandinsky-abstraction 

://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111123-evolution-brain-synesthesia-taste-colors-sounds-creative-science/ 

http://www.livescience.com/17156-synesthesia-taste-words-benefits.html 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/finding-butterfly/201104/are-you-synesthete 

http://neuwritesd.org/2014/06/28/synesthesia-the-sky-the-number-7-and-sadness-are-all-blue/ 

True meaning of Christmas ????

 Can't seem to find anything about the artist but I love these sculptures:


http://earthweareone.com/dramatic-fairy-sculptures-dancing-with-dandelions-by-robin-wight/