Painting Jaeden

Over the last week, I had Jaeden sit down a few more times for my portrait of him. As it was difficult to have the same lighting as in our original sitting, since the Sun sets a lot later now, I decided to take it in another direction than it was originally headed. The softness I was striving for remains, but the image is a fair bit darker and warmer. As much as I enjoyed how it looked originally, I do prefer the direction it has taken.

I’ve really enjoyed how much the thick and rough-textured paper allowed for more experimentation in the paint application. Because you can’t tell if it gets frayed, since the paper is so textured anyway, I was able to use sandpaper and a rubber to create interesting texture variations. It also allowed me to have more push-and-pull approach to the painting, since I can blot and even sand it down to remove layers of paint, without affecting the integrity if the paper too much.

This week, I also looked at the work of Samantha Keely Smith, who was recommended to me by Jaeden. Her work combines the world around us and our inner world into, as is written in her artist’s statement a “landscape of the psyche”.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but the colours and composition in her work reminded a lot of romantic paintings, especially Turner’s seascapes.

After the semester, I would love to focus on more abstract work. One way I could do this is to do some colour studies of paintings I like or photos I have taken.

I would also like to experiment with various chemical processes, like Smith does in her work. This could first be done in watercolour, looking at how spraying water, using turps and other mediums might affect the integrity of the paint, before trying out similar processes in oil once I have access to studios.

Bibliography

Smith, Samantha Keely, Signify, 2015 Oil on canvas, available at: https://samanthakeelysmith.com.

Smith, Samantha Keely, Premonition 1, 2016 Oil on canvas, available at: https://samanthakeelysmith.com.

Smith, Samantha Keely, Amplify, 2017, Oil on canvas, available at: https://samanthakeelysmith.com.

Smith, Samantha Keely, From Ashes, 2019, Oil on canvas, available at: https://samanthakeelysmith.com.

Turner, John Mallard William, The Eruption of the Soufrière Mountains in the Island of St Vincent, 30 April 1812, 1815, Oil on canvas, Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool.

Turner, John Mallard William, Sunset, c. 1830-35, Oil on canvas, Tate, London.

Turner, John Mallard William, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, c. 1834, Oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

Turner, John Mallard William, Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche and Thunderstorm, 1836/37, Oil on canvas, Frederick T. Haskell Collection, Art Institute of Chicago.

Turner, John Mallard William, Slavers, Throwing Overboard The Dead And Dying, Typhoon Coming On, 1840, Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Turner, John Mallard William, Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, exhibited 1842, Oil on canvas, Tate, London.

Portraiture and Kristeva

I started the week with my Fantasy Exhibition Project. We had pre-recorded it, which was a lot less stressful than if we were to present it live. Even though I tend to really enjoy public speaking, doing a live presentation online just sounded like unnecessary stress. So I was quite relieved to have it presented as a video.

The next day, I asked my boyfriend Jaeden to sit for a painting. I still have some work to do on it, but I’m rather pleased with it so far. Once I have time, I would like to emphasise the shadow on the side of his face and change the anatomy a little bit. As you can see in the before and after picture, I already started doing this in that first sitting, but I still think I could make a few tweaks.

That being said, I want to make sure to not lose the softness the painting has right now. As such, I want to look at portrait artists whose work has a softer feel for inspiration. One such artist is Gwen John, whose work strikes the right balance between softness and contrast. I think keeping her work in the back of my mind (/on my wall) will be very helpful in trying to strike that balance myself. I might try doing some smaller watercolour self portraits to practice this.

The rest of the week was spent wrapping my head around the works of Julia Kristeva. The lectures we were given were relatively difficult, as the lecturer took an unconventional, more literary and performative approach. However, I wanted to write my essay on Kristeva, whose work on the abject had previously captured my attention. And spending longer on the lectures was definitely worth it: they were undoubtedly effective in conveying how the Semiotic can be utilised to bring more nuance to a conversation. They were also a nice gateway to Kristeva, whose writing style is even less conventional than the lecture’s. That being said, here are my notes on Kristeva, which are certainly a lot more conventional (and accessible).

This definitely took far longer than I had expected, unfortunately leaving me with less time to work on my essay. But I definitely think it was worth it, as it has given me a far deeper and multifaceted understanding of Kristeva than if I had just been given a traditional lecture.

Bibliography

John, Gwen, Self portrait, 1902, Oil on canvas, Tate, London.

John, Gwen, The Convalescent, 1918-19, Oil on canvas, Tate, London.

Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980).

Kristeva, Julia, Revolution in Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

Kristeva, Julia, Murder in Byzantium (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

Kristeva, Julia, Passions of our Time (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Plath, Sylvia, ‘Words’, Ariel (London: Faber, 2010).

Yeung, Heather H., Julia Kristeva: language, aesthetics, politics, transcript, University of Dundee, delivered 15 March 2021.

Fantasy Exhibition Project

I spent most of last week finishing up my fantasy exhibition project with my group, so this week’s entry will focus on that project.

Our theme was (dis)Connection, which I picked because it related to my own work on dissociation and detachment. For the exhibition, I wanted to make sure that the theme wouldn’t be treated as a binary (i.e connection vs disconnection) but rather a continuum to better reflect lived experience, in which it’s not necessarily one or the other and where it is constantly evolving. I also wanted to look at how making and consuming art is effective in rekindling connection.

The first artist I picked was Celia Paul. I chose to showcase her work as it tackles her relationship to herself and those she is closest too (most notably her mother and sisters).

In my presentation, I chose to reference the following quote about her by Zadie Smith, comparing her to Lucian Freud, who was in a relationship with Paul for a decade:

Freud painted the visible: flesh, breasts, eggs. Paul’s work is a visionary account of ineffable qualities, like love, faith, silence, empathy.

Her work expresses that ambiguity I was talking about: depicting both a sense of proximity to the subject, expressing love and compassion, and detachment, causing a feeling of yearning, melancholy and solitude. Depending on the piece, she leans into one more than the other, but most of the time these feelings are conflated.

The other work I showed was a series of colour studies by JMW Turner. Even though Turner’s work focuses on the outside world, most of his paintings were actually done in the studio. As such, they tend to be based off sketches or memory.

These studies convey the mind-eye connection Turner developed, which allowed him to portray such striking seascape paintings, especially before the existence of cameras. It also makes you wonder how much working from memory, rather than from a picture, might better express the impression made onto the mind’s eye.

Besides this research, I worked on the creative space with Ludwika. In the exhibition, we wanted to encourage the audience to actively engage with the works and themes explored in the exhibition. As such, we wished to somewhat bridge the gap between the audience and the artists (this was also done by featuring both ell known artists and local ones). Here’s the work I did for this part:

Overall, I’m rather pleased with our Fantasy Exhibition Project. I think our concept is quite compelling and I enjoy the variety of artists we featured. It was also refreshing to work with other people than my flat mates for once!

Bibliography

Paul, Celia, Self-Portrait (London: Jonathan Cape, 2019).

Smith, Zadie, ‘Self-Portrait by Celia Paul’, New York Review of Books, 21 Nov 2019.