Assessment Show!

These are the pieces from the project I am showing in my final show. They are far removed from the experiments relating to skin I had conducted. I have changed my project completely since then. I no longer am doing it on that topic but rather on the figure in general.  I needed to broaden my project in order to be better able to gain ideas and produce work less stifled by concept. So I did.

The work above was inspired by a series of photographs I had manipulated. I found a folder of old family photographs that belonged to my grandmother. They must have been taken around five or six decades ago. Most were monochrome but there was the odd colour one. I had the strange and unaccounted for idea of using pixilation on them. An image of a person on the television who had their head censored spurned this. I used Photoshop to achieve the effects. I did many of them and used many different and intriguing effects. 

You may ask how did this inspire them as they seem to have no relation. An image of a blond child disrupted by pixilation conveyed to me the idea of everything being divided into cells - as in a grid. So I got a piece of material that was structured in a grid format and applied paint on it and made numerous prints. The one above was the most successful. I love the manner in which the colour tone changes from left to right. It seems to vibrate against the lifeless black background. I also like how it refused to print in certain areas for some reason - this was perhaps due to ineffective application of paint. 

I was also working on gesture drawings during the same period. I wanted to make my drawing style a little loser and less formal and strict. I wanted to only draw the basics and suggest an item using as less lines as is possible. I wanted more vitality and expression in my draughtsmanship. I decided to combine  both the grid and these loose lines to make the following works. I became entranced by using paint in strange and outlandish ways. I love using the card to remove it, leaving a faint hint of what was once an opaque stroke. I liked taking something so definite and measured like a grid and dragging paint across it. It completely obliterates the stern power it would have had I had left it as it was originally printed.

Skin!

Originally my project was going to deal with the relationship between colour and how this can be used to describe and convey human emotions and thinking. However, I found this was extremely difficult to get ideas from so I have decided to change to looking at the human being in a different manner. I have decided to look at skin and how this translates to paint. I am interested in how human beings approach skin and view it. This is an experiment I did. I mixed paint with toothpaste and it created a lovely consistency. I used toothpaste because it is a cleaning product. It is used to clean teeth and refers to the cleaning of the body and how we have such a preoccupation with it. I wanted to combine both concept and medium without being pretentious or overt about it.

This is just latex poured on top of it. I was trying to recreate the texture of skin and perhaps the appearance. Not sure if it is entirely successful but it is rather interesting none the less. 

This was made by applying a layer of PVA on a sheet of white card. I then applying toilet roll and a further layer of PVA. Then, using a strong piece of plastic card, I stretched blobs of paint across it. I really like affect and how the paint mixes with the PVA. However, if you do too much work it can cause the toilet roll to combine with both mediums and it all becomes a repulsive mess. Restraint is key.

I was interested in recreating the look of stretch marks but in a very free and abstract manner. I don’t want to necessarily recreate a photograph. That would be rather pointless to me at the moment. It serves no purpose in the context of my project.