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.

Methodically painting a snowstorm

I spent most of this week working on my snowstorm painting.

Once I was freed from my masking tape hell hole, I moved onto using masking fluid for the snowfall. It was a bit hard to wrap my head around, but my process would be the following:

• Splatter masking fluid all over the page

• Paint over the unmasked section on the top half with burnt umber and ultramarine blue, using more blue as I went further into the distance to convey atmospheric depth

• Remove the masking tape and splatter more masking fluid so that the houses would also be obscured by snowfall

• Proceed to the rest of the painting

This how the painting looked once I removed the masking tape. I decided to eventually blend the houses into the rest of the painting but I also really like how crisp it looked at this point. In the future, I’d like to try playing with similar textures in other paintings.

I proceeded to blend the houses in the background to create depth and started to add details to the foreground.

Annoyingly, I didn’t document the rest of the painting enough, but to sum up the rest of my work:

• I added in more details to the foreground

• I used an abstract blooming effect for the tree on the right

• I slashed watercolour in the corners to create a vignette effect

• I removed the masking fluid and splattered some white ink on top

Now, I just need to go back in with various materials to adjust the tones of the painting. I primarily want to focus on lighting up some of the houses again (by dabbing with a tissue, using masking fluid and maybe sandpaper).

Bibliography

The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution, dir. by Clare Beavan (Fresh One Productions, 2013).

Masking tape extravaganza

As I previously mentioned, I wanted to work on a painting of the recent snowstorm which took place in Dundee. I chose this image as I find that the expanse of snowy rooftops is effective at conveying just how much the snow took over the city

(I also how it includes a known landmark, so you can identify that it’s in Dundee).

This made me think of Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s The Hunters in the Snow in which the high vantage point also accentuates the expansion of snow.

In composing the painting, I chose to emphacise this expansiveness by raising the horizon line and make the houses would extend past the painting. I also accentuated the hill in the foreground and moved around the branches so as to form a spiral composition and create a sense of swelling.

After doing a couple thumbnail drawings, I transferred the image to a roughly A3 sized watercolour paper. I then started covering it in masking tape, which took up most of my week. I decided to be really precise with this, since it makes my job much easier later on. It also allows me to be a lot more abstract in the way I paint it, as I have that solid foudation to rely on. That being said, this has caused me to lose my mind and I can’t look at masking tape the same way anymore.

Bibliography

Bruegel the Elder, Pieter, The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, Oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Smith, Zadie, ‘Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Imaginary Portraits’, The New Yorker, 12th June 2017.