Artists of interest

The book 'Freud at Work' by Bruce Bernard and David Dawson.

Published by Jonathan Cape, 2006

This book has been a marvellous insight for me into the working practises of Lucian Freud, not just through the interview with Sebastian Smee but the photographs showing his work, the sizes have been a surprise, the studio space in which he worked.

The conversation between Sebastian Smee and Freud and one of the first things discussed is the amount of time that Freud spent in the studio, even though he had not been well.
Freud stated 'Well, it's all I do. It's all I want to do. It's simply a question of keeping well, really.' (2006:11)

There is awareness of time running out for Freud, his failing health seemed to be a reminder that by not painting created a sense of a terrible waste of time.

This discussion talks about his relationship with Francis Bacon, which was very complex, actually it seems that a lot of Freud's relationship with other artists seem to be quite complex.

A statement given by Freud in relation to what he felt made a portrait, he states 'It's to do with the feeling of individuality and the intensity of the regard and the focus on the specific. So I think portraiture is an attitude.' (2006:31)

After this conversation the rest of book are images of Freud at work, paintings in progress, Freud actually painting. Furthermore there are photographs that show the models and the work in progress. The photographs have been taken by Bruce Bernard and David Dawson.

The photographs that show what the actual size of the paintings and I realised just how diverse Freud was, he was able to change dimensions to create a sense of tightness and clarity, I believe this is reflected in the Queen's portrait. This painting 'Elizabeth II in 2001 the actual size is 9in by 6in.

Elizabeth II by Lucian Freud 2001

9in by 6in

Another aspect of this book is seeing how and where Freud worked his studio really was grimy and for me I would really struggle to work in that type of atmosphere.

David Hockney 2002

This image for me is fascinating because looking at the actual size of the painting placed on easel of David Hockney. Everything around the room has an air of neglect and you can see the fabric which is strewn across the studio room which seemed to have been used in other work of Freud's.

This another image taken from this particular book, and Freud's studio in summer could be very hot and stuffy and he would often remove his shirt during these times, what does interest me is the apparent chaos of his brushes and paints, the paint marks splattered on the wall behind him is all so random and disorganised and Freud is dynamic and fluid in this image, and yet when you glance at how his shirt and tie is placed, seems out of place within this image.

Nan Goldin Born1953

Nan Goldin is known for documenting her surrogate family of friends as they engage in intimate, uninhibited, or illicit activities. These unusually lit images are frank confrontations with personal experience, frequently presented in poses that mimic the styles of the fashion world. Goldin visited that world through photographs she took for a New York Times Magazine cover story – “James is a Girl,” by Jennifer Egan – that appeared on February 4, 1996. King’s languid and mature pose in this photograph speaks of a teenager who has experienced much; it appeared in a cropped form on the magazine’s cover.

Nan Goldin has spent more than twenty-five years creating edgy portraits. In 1996 these startlingly direct color images were the subject of a mid-career retrospective organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which traveled to Winterthur, Germany; Vienna; and Amsterdam, among other international venues. She has earned the Mother Jones Photography Award, a grant from The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maine Photographic Workshop Book Award for Documentary Book of the Year. Born in Washington, DC in 1953, Goldin earned her BFA (1977) and 5th Year Masters Certificate from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/goldin_nan.php

Nan Goldin’s work is blunt and her work is unforgiving not only to the viewer but of the person being photographed and the unforgiving nature is reflective within my recent images taken of Emma.

Furthermore Nan Goldin’s images do not come across as professional and there is no sense of predetermined aspects when the image is taken, rather the work is reflective of capturing a moment in her life and there is no contrition reflected.

Furthermore my images are imperfect and at times there is graininess due to the fact I do not have an expensive camera to use, however this does not detracted from the starkness of the images.   

    

Nan Goldin 1997

Holly Roberts

Roberts excels by rewarding us with her sensuous presentations of complex ideas that switch on our senses and logical facilities. Her slow-time pictures extend the most vital experience of photography, the interaction period between the subject and the maker, to express potential realities that comprise human consciousness and ask for a studied examination. Hopefully, Roberts fingerprints, that critical juncture where nature, knowledge, and knower intersect, will lead us to more carefully notice how vast, interrelated, and astonishing our world really is. Robert Hirsch.

http://www.hollyrobertsstudio.com/index.cfm?current_page=about.cfm

 

30+ years of paintings, talked about one painting at a time: what went into the paintings, what I was trying to say, what was happening at the time of my life that I made the paintings. The paintings themselves are narrative, and this adds a little more to the story that they tell.

http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Lately I have been working into the photographs using inks and pens, furthermore I have been scratching into the pieces.

 Asking for Money - Holly Roberts

When looking into the work of Holly Roberts I do find her techniques really interesting which does relate to my work. One of her works ‘Asking for Money’ is such an interesting layered piece, and the complex characters that are revealed have an element of creatures/animals this piece that I do find curious. 

Bob Singing - Holly Roberts

 

Whereas the piece ‘Bob Singing’ is an simplistic piece and yet I find the marks and shading reflected in some of my photographs especially the ones that I took of myself and then these were worked into.

However I do find some of the pieces of Roberts a little bit twee and dainty at times, however this does not detract from the mark making and technical work that is reflected within her work.


As I have been creating ink drawings I have looked at the work of Marlene Dumas (b.1953) her work is also very raw and confrontational at times. She works from newspaper cuttings and photographs never from life. Dumas does not shy away from pornography, death, murderers she explores all aspects of human identity. Her paintings are loose and fluid which is how her compostions aspects of her work feel as well.  

 

Amy Blue 2011

 

"Stressing both the physical reality of the human body and its psychological value.Dumas tends to paint her subjects at the extreme fringes of life's cycle, from birth to death, with a continual emphasis on classical modes of representation in Western Art, such as the nude or the funerary portrait. By working within and also transgressing these traditional historical antecedents, Dumas uses the human figure as a means to critique contempory ideas of racial, sexual and social identity." 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Dumas

 

 

Reading Group

This reading group was to help myself and Amelia in preparation for the essay that is required for this module, therefore these are the notes that I wrote down as the session took place, these notes may not seem coherent to others! But I know they will be invaluable to me in the future.

The four words that I relate to my practice at this moment in time.

 

Painterly Process

Deal with Identity

The imagery is expressive

Portrait Style

 

When writing about my work how I make a statement or a claim I have to be able to give an example.

For instance I began by stating that my portrait style is pushing the boundaries of traditional portraiture when really I should state that I am playing with the boundaries of traditional portraiture this statement allows some discussion within the context of an essay.

When looking at my work it is exploration, relentless, confrontational, disturbing, no escaping the visual impact, there is an undercurrent of unsettling emotions. There is a sense of voyeurism.

Angela suggested that the work of Nan Golding is someone I should be looking at as there are references to my work because there is no apology for her subject matter and her approach, she makes no attempt to neaten the image, the viewer can take it or leave it.

Angela also suggested the work of Holly Roberts because she takes portrait pictures of people and then paints into the images, almost removing the element of photography and creates a metamorphosis of some creature unrelated to the original image removing the identity of the original person within the photograph, there is a loss of evidence of the original layer so the final image is very ambiguous, her work is about introducing different layers through the material process. However my work does differ from the work of Holly Roberts because her work can be quaint.

When referring to another artist be very clear why they relate to your work and the differences.

Materials and processes

Themes and enquires in questions 

I suggested that the photographs of Lucien Freud working in his study are interesting to me and as we looked at the imagery the only relevance really was the atmosphere.

So when looking at artists look at what may be relevant or similar and/or different, learn by looking

My images are cropped the images of Freud are special – so what association do I actually have with Freud?

I also suggested the work of Frida Kahlo her work is reflective, interesting style, duality, alter ego. However Kahlo as an artist is over exposed and an obvious reference to use as she spent her life exploring identity in her representational paintings. This is the same issue when looking at the work of Jenny Saville, so Angela suggested that you can flag up that you know about their work, investigate how and whether they can relate more to the work you are producing but then stop.

I need to read around Nan Golding and when I have learnt all I need to know and which is relevant regarding my work stop.

Find two or three artists or movements that are in context for your work.

Furthermore regarding my work I need to constrain myself to keep working within the shower room, the room is my boundary.

Choose what to focus on now: Looking at Gaze, Ego, Feminism

 

Amelia suggested that I consider Anish Kapoor when thinking about the mirror:

Concave, top of orbit, positioning yourself of the viewer, formal qualities, fragmentation, disorientation, mirrors challenge representation, he disrupts the understanding of the viewer.

So Anish Kapoor could be someone I could associate with.

Helen Chadwick, Laura Knight are other artists which I should look at

Methods, Methodology – more into photography or mirrors.

So find another 4 words or next piece of work- keep researching and see what relates and does not relate keep a check against the lists.

For instance Kahlo do I need to use her or not?

Don’t package the essay with stuff that doesn’t matter

As look at German photographers regarding young people – there is a relationship with the camera and young people, teenage photography confrontational.

Also Hockney talks about photography regarding reality – so selective not reactive of life, the reality of who you are in a photograph.

Furthermore software is changing photography, there are now apps for hyper realistic and painterly interventions.

A way of life? or Identity

My work life as a Medical Laboratory Assistant and when you take into the ratio of male MLA's to female MLA's there is a vast and distinctive difference because this particular role is usually filled by woman, it is underpaid and we are distinctly undervalued and it has always been like that since the post of MLA's was created.
My home life is not unusual by any means but it is not easy and once again its a common situation for the single parent to be female on a low wage struggling to survive and I am not an isolated group because this situation happens to many woman from many different backgrounds.
So within my creative work I look at my life and how my work interprets that particular arena and how I have extended this by attempting to visually creative some form of dialogue regarding my daughter's particular generation and this particular age group and the emotional and physical issues is hard to define.

However I have found a quote that for me does sum up how I feel about my work at this moment in time.

Lucy R Lippard argument is used within a discussion regarding feminist art in the book Art and Feminism, Lippard declares that feminist art is "Neither a style nor a movement' but rather a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life".(1982:20)

Therefore I want to ask the question or rather am I not understanding Art and Identity by feeling that maybe Identity is a way of life for individuals and how they live and what is reflected within that sphere 'Identity'. 

Any moving on the work I have recently made, I was incredibly impressed with the level of work being produced by other MA students and I have felt very inadequate and awestruck, and I have been inspired to create work using ink to sketch with and I have only produced these two images, what is interesting about these pieces is that I have attempted not to copy the photographic images but to be inspired by them from memory therefore they are not a true representation and in doing this the reality has been removed and the essence of the image remains.   

I have continued to create more ink sketches using a variety of coloured inks and I started off looking at creating ink images of Emma's face.

Due to comments made by students and also tutors I am aware of how I compositionally positions the image on the paper and how they differ from when I am taking photographs.

Recognising that when I use different mediums I see visually a different way of positioning of the object/person. This is a very interesting area for me to look at as the MA continues.

I have looked at the work of Marlene Dumas and I am interested in how she uses the gradient of colour within her work, and within these ink drawings I have been experimenting with certain colours. As you can see above in the variety of ink sketches that I have created.
Furthermore I have attempted to create a large piece once again using the blueish hues.

 

 

 

Within the piece above the looseness of the brushstrokes seem to be scratchy and the body seems mishaped and the stance is awkward, the eyes are averted, this piece is difficult and I feel as a viewer very uncomfortable to look at which is an element which fits within this image.

 

This module has been difficult and complex and time has been a terrible issue on top of everything else, I hope that I can develop from this module and learn from the issues which have arisen.

 

 I created this finale piece and I know that it is not like the paintings that I usually make, but the contrasting elements of the oil paints and watercolour inks creates a nightmarish element and the face is distorted and not much like my daughter's.
However there is a finality to this piece which for me is a positive conclusion to this module.

The work in this module has been based around the book 'Art and Today' and the chapter 'Art amd Identity' by Eleanor Heartney because Identity has been underlying my throughout this module, I started of exploring that develop and mould my identity through society in which I live, our lives change and shift and so does our identity. I found that when myself and my daughter collaborated that this work was about defining ourselves as individuals and how difficult this is at the age of fourteen as you develop into adulthood leaving childhood behind.

Considering the work I have created during this module I have thought about how I would like them to be displayed during the assessment when taking all of these images and what they mean and how the viewer will see these pieces.
So I have put a note into the parcel which will be sent off to the OCA, and in I have asked that the painting by hung up and either side I want the ink drawings pinned up, furthermore I have printed off 20 photocopies of my daughter and I want these scattered onto the floor leading up to the images, so the viewer will have to either avoid stepping or actually step onto these images. Because these images regarding Emma are about how we as adults often ignore or avoid any confrontation regarding teenagers, we prejudge what they may be interested in and what affects these individuals during this stage in their lives.

Finally Caroline and I have discussed who the photographs of my daughter is disturbing and fboth myself and Caroline realised that these images have a sense of the images of Leah Betts (b.1977 d.1995) there was an image of her on a ventilator which raised the profile of the drug ecstasy and also the images of Rachel Whitear (b.1979 d.2000) she died from a heroin overdose, which led to a large scale anti-drugs campaign.  


Leah Sarah Betts (1 November 1977^[1] – 16 November 1995