Finished Heart Embroidery For My Animation. A Heart Surrounded By Embroidery Folk Patterns From Around

Some lino cuts for the book i’m working on...

A marionette of the Moon which I've recently finished. I made her with salt dough and sewed her dress. I have never made a puppet before, so this project was very interesting and enjoyable :)

I started off with planning her out. She is inspired by The Spanish play ‘Bodas de Sangre’ by Federico Garcia Lorca’. In this play, the moon is a character inspired by Spanish magical realism and represents wisdom and fate.

I made the body out of wire and salt dough To link all of the separate joints together I put wire hooks into the pieces, hooked them all together and then out them in the oven to cook. The dough cooked for a few hours. However, some parts were still uncooked when I took it out of the oven so some hooks slipped out. I put these back in with a glue gun and left the whole body on a radiator for about a week to allow everything to dry through. After it was all dry, I painted the face and hands and created the dress which I painted with water colours. The colour surprisingly came out quite well on the fabric. Some came off onto my hands when handling the puppet but apart from that, the paint overall stayed on well. I also embroidered stars onto the dress with white thread and added dots of silver paint, to represent the night sky.

To attach the strings to my marionette puppet I glued hooks onto her hands and head and attached the strings onto two sticks. This worked fine and you can move her head up and down and her arms and hands. I planned to put strings onto her feet too however it was difficult to string the marionette up under her dress and it was also unnecessary as the feet aren’t really visible. 

I loved this project a lot, I’m happy with the final outcome. :)

Lino cut which I am currently working on. Inspired by folk patterns around the world to make one design

Some sketchbook pages for my pathway project, ‘A distance forms around our bodies’

As my resist dyeing didn’t work, I decided to use the fabric and print my designs on top with white acrylic paint. This is to mimic a traditional blue print. I think that all of the shapes turned out well and I am quite happy with the outcome as the design looks quite illustrative.

Observational drawings of a pig’s heart.......

Putting up exhibition space :)

          Ethics and art - How considerate does an artist have to be?

Contemporary art seeks to challenge traditional boundaries, almost seeing how far it can go before it crosses the line. It can at times be confusing, confrontational and controversial and can shock or thrill the audience depending on the subject matter. Contemporary art can be anything from an installation to a painting, a performance to a sculptural piece, it can even be a random object that is claimed to be art. As there is no uniformity or formula, the artist can use any medium and can exhibit anything he/she wishes to.

Controversy in the art world has always existed. Even in Caravaggio’s religious works in the 15th century which depicted religious figures in a very realistic manner. One of his most controversial paintings at the time was ‘The Death Of The Virgin’ which depicted The Virgin Mary on her death bed. The controversy was not of the subject matter but more about the way that this biblical scene was painted. The Virgin Mary can be seen with her hand over her slightly bloated stomach and bared ankles which the audience found very upsetting. For these reasons it was rejected by the Chapel of Santa Maria della Scala for which it was commissioned by in Rome. It was also said that the woman that modelled The Virgin Mary for this painting was a common prostitute working in Rome. This brought further distaste to the artwork. Nowadays, it is a revered masterpiece however when painted, it was disputed over. A controversial modern day representation of The Virgin Mary is ‘The Holy Virgin Mary’ by Chris Ofili’. This painting depicts The Virgin Mary surrounded by the backsides of Women from adult magazines, balancing the canvas on two pieces of elephant dung. Ofili stated that it is a ‘hip-hop version (of the figure)’. The painting stands out with its vibrant use of colour, the yellow and purple starkly contrast with each other making the painting quite jarring and bright. Many would not find the artwork offensive at all however at the same this portrayal offended many religious people. It is difficult to please every individual audience member although I think that there is an unspoken responsibility to have mutual respect for the audience and be considerate of groups of the audience that may see your work.

When it comes to exhibiting artwork, ethics are important to consider. This form of ‘moral accountability’ encourages the respect of the audience. However, everyone will have a different opinion and take on the artwork and our life experiences will cause us to interpret art in various ways. At the end of the day, it is up to the artist to decide what to include in their work but some may argue that this doesn’t mean that the artist shouldn’t be held accountable for any content they exhibit. On the other hand, some artworks are intended to be controversial and aim to shock. The series of work 'Plum Grove' by Peter Howson (1994) does just that. This series of paintings, influenced by the break-up of Yugoslavia and the creation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, aims to portray these events in a graphic manner and the effect of the war on the civilians. Howson was the official War Artist for the British contingent of the UN Peace Keeping Force to Bosnia in 1993. As a result, his paintings included rape scenes, violence, and other graphic scenes which he witnessed himself or from eye-witness accounts. His paintings depict people in contorted positions with green and blue skin tones giving a sense of distress and pain. The paintings are quite expressive and have a sense of movement alongside a sense of exaggeration, exaggerating various features of the figures giving a further sense of suffering. The paintings undoubtedly leave the audience feeling uncomfortable. Although this series of work is in a way raising awareness of the events, some may say that censorship is necessary. Audience members who were not victims of the Yugoslavian conflicts or who have never experienced war of any kind can’t relate to the imagery as much as war survivors or people who have witnessed similar events. Although the subject matter is distressing and upsetting, the audience members are all effected in different ways based on their life experiences. The artist can choose whether or not to censor their work or to take ethics into consideration depending on the emotions they wish to stir up.

Appropriation, borrowing or recycling aspects of someone else’s work, plays a big role in contemporary artwork too. For example, in Banksy’s piece, ‘Show me the Monet’ (2005) a framed image of Monet’s painting is visible with orange shopping trolleys and traffic cones in his famous lily pond. I think that it shows the over-commercialisation of Monet’s work and art in general. Nowadays it is easy to see images of artwork online and it’s also common to buy merchandise with various pieces of art printed on. The imperative ‘Show me’ in the title of the piece further emphasises our consumerist society and ever growing demand for instant gratification. All of this has contributed to the devaluation of the artwork. Although the physical painting still costs a fortune, it is accessible on many platforms and is over-marketed so its purpose and meaning have been lost in the process.

I think that when it comes to handling delicate subject matters, it is important to somewhat take the audience into consideration. Some artwork is made for the audience to question and to be shocked by and will affect everyone in a different way but I think that there can be some occasions where a piece of controversial artwork can become disrespectful. Overall, I think that it is the role of the artist to push the boundaries of modern-day society and to adapt when necessary; a sense of mutual respect for all opinions and all views is important. Despite the fact that nowadays, art is created to challenge the audience and express emotion, I think that it’s the role of every artist to know what is appropriate and what isn’t depending on the subject matter they wish to portray.

 References

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/howson-plum-grove-t06961

https://artswithanna.com/2018/09/28/ethics-and-arts/

https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39894/1/that-time-this-chris-ofili-the-holy-virgin-mary-hip-hop-pissed-off-the-art-world

Some prints of plants that I have been working on in the textiles workshop. This explores negative space, the space inside and outside of plants. Some are studies painted directly onto the fabric with ink and some are printed in coloured ink.

Van Gough and the quality of paint

Van Gough ‘Olive Trees’ -  Oil on canvas, 1889,  51 x 65.2 cm

Van Gogh, born in 1853 in the Netherlands, despite only selling one painting in his lifetime, he is one of the most well-known post-impressionist artists in the entire world today. His particular painting style and unique use of paint have made his work instantly recognisable. His early works, like ‘The Potato Eaters’ are dark and sombre and reflect the paintings of Dutch masters. However, his style began to evolve after he purchased Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, which were delicate and full of colour and extremely popular with impressionists at the time. He also went to Paris in 1886 to join his brother and there met the great impressionist artists, Monet and Gaugin. After this he gradually developed his bold style.

The work of Van Gogh is intense in colour and his strong brush-strokes give his work an emotional quality. The technique that he used for most of his paintings, and which he became well known for, was Impasto, which is the thick application of paint onto a canvas so that the brush and palette knife strokes can be visible. This not only gives the painting a rich texture but also gives the illusion that the paint is coming out of the canvas.

‘Olive Trees’, 1889, by Van Gogh is a painting of huge significance in Van Gogh’s life. Gaugin visited Van Gogh in 1888, they argued and disagreed during this visit. The tensions between them caused Van Gogh to cut off his own ear. He was taken to an asylum at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, and despite the fact his mental health was deteriorating, he produced a range of diverse and stylistic paintings that depicted the hospital and the grounds around it. One of these paintings is ‘Olive Trees’ which is exhibited at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. This painting is oil on canvas and uses the impasto method heavily. The brush strokes are extremely distinct and the trees are twisted and contorted perhaps reflecting Van Gogh’s own state of mind at the time. Furthermore, he was fully aware of the connection of olive trees to the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, where Jesus prayed before his betrayal and ultimately his crucifixion. It is likely that this painting represents Van Gogh giving up his suffering to God amongst the olive trees as Jesus Christ, making the ancient trees a symbol of surrender and repentance. Van Gogh was religious and even had the position as a missionary in Belgium earlier in his life. He believed that we encounter God in nature, which inspired his En Plein Air paintings.

‘Olive Trees’ is just one of the many examples of how Van Gogh connected religion with nature in his own style. His use of the Impasto method gives his work a particular sensitivity and striking quality which, without a doubt, influenced the art of the twentieth century and his legacy will surely live on.

Sources 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8IinPk5PqI

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/4971/olive-trees

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Olive_Trees_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

https://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/biography.html