Orchestra in the making..

I really need to get a move on with these, but I'm attempting to create an entire symphony orchestra of representational, abstract oil paintings. For each board, I'm trying to imagine the sounds of the instrument playing a piece of music in my head, then painting appropriate marks, so that hopefully a sense of rythm will find it's way into the brush strokes. The link between music and art really intrigues me, so I'm attempting to bridge the gap. Being a cellist, the first board I did was a representation of a cello. I might even try to find some recordings of solos of each instrument then try to paint from these. These are the first few that I've finished. I think by the end of it there should be about 20 different boards. Sorry the quality of the photos aren't amazing, really need to brave the photography department soon.

I love oils!

I've always thought of myself as a 3D kind of girl, but actually, after doing a workshop in oil painting I think I maay hav converted. I still enjoy making texture out of the paint, which I suppose I've brought over from my love of materiality from working in a three dimensional way, but I'm definitly enjoying working with these oils. I'm still exploring all the different ways to manipulate the paint to create images, to date, palette knife use is probably my favourite, though I've been advised to be even more abstract and start using random object around me to achieve different effects, so more of this to come! Here are some experimental pieces from the workshop, we had so many boards to work with - fantastic :D

canvases ready to go!

So we finally sorted out the canvases, all 16 of them and the photos, now the art begins, which is kinda nice, sort of get lost in the planning sometimes! I'm not sure how I want to do mine yet, I have to do 2 canvases, so 4 halves of faces. Many thanks of course to all the lovely fine art people we managed to rope into having their photos taken for this.

Group Project commences....

Currently in the works is a group project! I'm teaming up with about 7 other people to create a project which for now is called "Inverse". The intention is to create an inverse gallery, ie, a white cube, about 8 ft x 8 ft x 8ft, showing 16 canvases on the outside, which will have portraits painted on them, with two half faces at each edge of each canvas, in order that half the face on one canvas will flow on to the other half of that same face on the next canvas, but we all have naturally different styles of painting or making so hopefully it should look quite interesting! The plan is then to transport this inverse gallery out into the public domain, documenting this with film and photography, which will then be displayed in the final private view, along with the inverse gallery in the centre of the room. I'm very excited to try to incorporate my newfound love of abstract oil painting in this project! It's just all the planning that needs to happen now, but it's all under way so I shall keep you posted.

Catch up of some early works from first yr

So here are some of my pieces of art that I did in my first term of uni, they're a bit of a mix of styles and ideas whilst I gathered my bearings. Now I've moved on to some painting, heavily influenced by sound, which I'll post on here as soon as possible. This image above was an experimental piece where I was looking at language/music as a system. Having researched morse code, I found a beautiful quote, "Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence." I then wanted to write this in morse code, but experiment with my interest in materiality and texture, so I allocated different materials to each letter and recreated the quote in morse code then used it to make collograph prints.

I tried further experimentation into music and art and ended up creating this piece above, which is a physical representation of the sounds and the movements associated with chakras. I performed the various yoga positions, having painted my hands and feet with the colours that were in correspondance with the yoga positions, creating an abstract piece, which I then worked into with charcoal, adding records to amphasise the link with music.
Having felt somewhat pressured to work with music and art, I thought about what else I wanted to look at, and felt that I wanted to look at escapism, which in hind sight seems very apt considering how I was feeling uncomfortable working with music and art and looing for a way out perhaps. I began to look at tunnels as a general symbol of escaping, and mixed this with my interest in domestic objects, which has been carried through from previous projects. I spent some time experimenting loosely with materials to depict this concept, really though I feel I was getting a bit bogged down with concepts and so more recently have tried to move away from that a little bit.


And that is a general catch up on the year so far! More stuff to come...