Guide to the blog

To see all posts please click on 2007 on blog archive.
To view the Greenaway films please click on one of the stills on the left and it will load above.
Thanks,
Ellie Richens

Finished Soutine Piece

Here are two of the pieces for the soutine finished piece. The one above was a blown up version of the side of the cow.



The one above is the piece I am submitting as my assessed piece.

Finished Sculpture Painting

Here are the completed sculpture paintings. I am really pleased with this one as I found it challenging both in terms of the unprimed canvas and because of it's scale (I am used to working small scale). However, it has definately made me appreciate large scale works more, as well as inspiring me to do them in the future. I feel quite a sense of pride in the finished piece, and retrospectively, quite enjoyed it :)

Finished Shapes Painting

Here is my completed shapes painting. I am very pleased with and feel it was so much more succesful than the one I started originally. I am glad, for once, that I did not resolve it as I find this piece much more inspiring.

Caravaggio

In his 1986 film, Caravaggio, Derek Jarman portrays Caravaggio as a victim of his own desires. In truth, Caravaggio spent years on the run as a murderer, which is the basis for the film. However, Jarman, extends sympathy towards Caravaggio, who is merely caught in a visious love triangle with his beautiful female model and a young homosexual apprentice who is obsessed with his master.

Derek Jarman shows how art and life cannot be seperated and that such high passions for things such as art can run deep in people's lives. It would be impossible to disjoin the two ideas, as they are centrally running themes in this film, and all of the main characters are connected, and indeed attracted, to Caravaggio because of his artistic influences.

If I understood this film to define both painting and the role of the artist, I think then that Jarman is suggesting that some of the most incredible painters, and the more succesful ones, were devoted to the point of obsession not just with their art but with everything they cared about. I think this is true of many of the 'masters' of painting, although whether or not it actually improves your work (or your state of mind) is quite enough matter altogether.




The film itself is very dark both in tone and appearance and this reflects the style of Caravaggios' pieces (as shown above). I think it is very similar to that of Caravaggio's paitings but obviously his paitings are more like a snap shot in time that you cannot create with a film.

Peter Greenaway film

Another Peter Greenway film, 52 Seconds long.

Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keefe has long been a favourite of mine and also of my GCSE art teacher, who had endless books on her work. The quality and depth of the paitings amaze me more than the subjects for me, which for obvious reasons, are not everyone's cup of tea. It is useful to study her work when using colour as she does it do well, particularly with oils - which I have used frequently throughout the colour project.

Picasso

I have deliberately chosen three completely different pieces for this example. I love picasso's work I have both the picture above and the painting on the bottom on my bedroom walls. However, most people seem only aware of Picasso's style as the middle picture which surprises me. This style is the one I like least of picasso, although a bright use of colour, I find it too busy and distracting and in some ways unsettling, whereas the one above I like the simplicity of.



As I have already said, I do not like this style. Although I am a big fan of colour and use alot of it in my own work, this is just too much colour for me, and it seems there is too much happening all at once on the page.




I love this piece, the texture and colour as well as the choice of subject really appeal to me. It inspired one of my AS projects, and I can never get enough of looking at it. I would love to see the original and analyse how the texture was created.

Peter Greenaway and Jean-Luc Godard

For this project we were required to watch 2 art films by Peter Greenaway and Jean-Luc Godard. I much preferred the Peter Greenaway film, "A walk through H" in which the narrator goes on a journey following drawings and maps given to him by Tulse Luper.

" Like all the best surrealist art, it combines the pedantically methodical with the devoutly inconsequential..." Nigel Andrews, Sight and Sound.

Interestingly, the film was not obvious, yet not obscure, in many ways like painting. I took us on a journey as a painting tends to do, and with no clear end. It is probably the best way to make a film about painting and certainly the best way to make an impression.

I think if I was to create a film of painting it would be best done in this style. Like painting it self, the ambiguity leaves room for interpretation and will mean people view it in different ways. In regards to who I would choose to do my own film about, I would have to say Joan Miro, whose work for me is bizarre enough to be made into a moving picture without to much added surrealism.

Digital Version

This is digital version of what it may look like. I played around using paint to get an idea of how the colours mix. The final colour I used as my background will probably be a slightly different shade of blue.

Lilac Background

This a VERY rough version of what it will look like with a lilac background.

Nearly Finished!

I have nearly finished the coloured piece that I restarted. I have honestly spent a great deal of time and effort on it. As you can see I have the basic first layer down. I am scared to do the bacground now! I wish it could be white as I really do feel this would be effective but since we are not allowed to use white paint, I'm going to do a really light wash. I have tested what the colours may look like by using paint a roughly colouring in back grounds, so far I think a bluey-lilac would work well, I think I have a tube similar to this that I could dilute with linseed oil. I also thought black would have been good, but, alas, we are not allowed to use that either!

The Inner Life of Painting, Matthew Collins

I think Collins is aware, as I am, that he is one of the few art critics who is accessible to nearly everyone. Like, ‘This is Modern Art’, I found Collins very readable and without airs.

The significance of the medium of paint has decreased in the past century, since the industrial revolution, the world wars and improved education amongst other things. This, in my view, has lead to many artists being able and feeling forced to find new, original ways to express themselves.

This does not mean that painting has been forgotten, but more that the approach to painting has changed. During the last part of the 20th Century, a whole new era of art developed and you could argue painting was dragged with it (arguably kicking and screaming).

What Collins is trying to state in his essay, I believe, is not that the paintings are bad quality, but the medium as a whole has lost the integrity that once it held. He describes in his essay how the art we have had for fifteen years is a “new kind of art” and this type of art is now “fashionable”.

One of the main points Collins makes is that today’s paintings try to ‘keep up’ with other mediums, such as instillation art and new media. It is for that reason, Collins says, that painting is now following the tradition of these mediums and not following the tradition of it’s own. Following this statement Collins suggests that they are not “connected to the past in any real way”.

Because it defines itself by “this new tradition” much of today’s art is “visually boring”. I understand what Collin’s is saying here. Surely a medium which has carried itself for centuries cannot reinvent itself based on art that is “non-visual”? It is competing with types of art that are, at a basic level at least, not as concerned with aesthetics as they are with ‘trying to say something’.

Personally, I couldn’t describe what attracts me to a painting in the first place, which is surely the point of art in the first place. When we write down in laments terms what makes a painting mean something to us, surely we take the magic from it?

I like simplistic bright colours, one of the reasons I am so enjoying this project, yet I rarely paint this way. Why? I couldn’t really say. All the years of restrictive art education, as well as restrictive exam syllabuses had lead me to stay stuck in my comfort zone. A talent in painting that stuck to a ‘technically good’ piece would get a more successful mark than a piece with meaning, thus I was always encouraged by teachers to do so. I produced some lovely pieces which I felt very little for and I became quite disillusioned with it.

Since beginning my degree my passion for art has expanded as my knowledge has increased. Painting is a craft, but not one that is exclusive; anyone can paint. It has, and continues to have, such a vast history that it remains impossible to define in any concise way. Collins seems disappointed with paintings new era but it’s always changing.

Old and New

This is a picture of the old piece I did for paint. I know Laura says we should work and rework our pieces as often as possible, I trapped myself into a corner with this one. What I had in my head just did not and would not appear on canvas, so I completely changed what I had oringinally developed. I'm very glad I did this as I really enjoy the one I am working on now. It is very time consuming however, and probably has about ten hours worth of work so far!

James Elkins: A Short Course in Forgetting Chemistry

I liked this essay by James Elkins and his ongoing example of Monet. He makes a point in the essay that art is different to every person who paints, and therefore cannot be said to be a certain way. This must make art very difficult to teach.

I remember early on in school, when I was about 13 or 14, being set a task to copy Monet's waterlilies for an art project on impressionism. No matter how accurate the marks were it did not hold the vivality or movement Monet's did, which is exactly what Elkins is talking about in his essay. What it did do however, was make me aware of just how the paintings were built up, and made me really study a paiting in detail for the first time.

Because that artist created that picture from his head, it was his passion. Therefore no matter how passionate you are about Monet's own piece of work it will always be like a bad copy. The skills involved in creating that picture was that of building the picture up itself. Us copying it is simply that, and we are not intuitively placing marks as we know where they should be. This will always make a picture stale, even possibly unwittingly.

3rd piece

I have restarted the last piece for our paint module as even after trying to resolve I became frustrated and uninspired. The piece I started I am really enjoying and feel much more positive about.

I have always been enthusiastic about this part of art and one of my GCSE piece's was squares based on Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella's work. I have done quite a bit of artist research for this unit and will upload it shortly.