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.