REFLECTION: Part 2 – project 1 Space, depth and volume

Reflection

Part 2: Project 1- Space, depth and volume

‘NARCISSUS’ 1560 – ? Valerio Cioli 1529-99

I feel to have achieved a real sense of depth with the figure, Narcissus, without any use of outlining. I’m thinking that the most important thing is that, as you begin to draw, you don’t see the image in terms of outline. From the start, it is volume, depth and space so that as soon as the first marks go down on the page, you’re beginning to ‘sculpt’ the image from the surface. But with only two dimensions to work with, your only tool is light. I’m interested to think of light as a tool and it’s a most demanding tool. In this drawing the play of light across the back of the figure produces all the tension and rhythm of the structure of the bones and muscles, the volume of the shape of the body and the depth of the figure on the page. I found that the slightest carelessness or sloppy observation in the tonal values had alarming results, completely changing the shape of some parts of the figure and losing the ‘believable’ illusion of space and depth.

There was no need to use any outlining of the figure and it’s interesting to compare it to other sketches I’ve done at the V&A.

These were done mainly using line and a pencil and while the figures have volume there is not the same strong illusion of space and depth as in the figure done with the rubber and charcoal. They remain sketches, partly because there is nothing happening in the space around the figure I suppose. Considering the section in part 1 on using space, this makes for some consideration…!

The section of the drawing of Narcissus which excites me the most is in the bottom right hand corner where the underside of the foot can be seen. Because of the play of light against dark, the foot appears to be jutting out of the picture plane towards the viewer.

Another point that I’d like to make is that confining the drawing to the use of the rubber and the charcoal has resulted in a piece of great subtlety. From the charcoal stick, it wasn’t possible to achieve the strong dark which I would have liked, to indicate the trapped areas of dark and at first I felt rather restricted by this. But now I just love the subtle and almost imperceptible changes of tone.

Making work about the space between the surface and the implied three dimensions

I puzzled for a long time as to what this meant and am not sure I have understood it now. From my research I have learnt how artists use space in a painting and that there is an interplay between the surface and the implied three dimensions. So taking these two elements I played around with some compositions to emphasise them, using my original three-dimensional drawing. It’s not the easiest image to build a composition around one image in particular really worked.

I began with drawing on the iPad and I was really trying to bring the surface texture to the fore in order to contrast the three-dimensional element….

I then cut out the three-dimensional figure and began working with creating other dimensions in the image. I kept in mind with these images that the drawing is of Narcissus and so I tried to highlight this theme.

The first of these six images has the three-dimensional figure contrasted on a plain black surface and this has the effect of high-definition – the image becomes the dominant feature in the space. Or does it? If the eye dwells on the space and not the figure, then the depth becomes mysterious, endless, suggestions of loneliness, cut off, certainly sculptural!

In the second, third and fourth image, the three dimensions of the figure becomes part of a further three-dimensional world and you feel to be moving endlessly back into the background. The surface texture is only fleeting in the light thrown across the body.

The fifth and sixth images carry further the idea of narcissus. From a visual composition viewpoint, I feel that the final image is the most successful of all of them because there is the sense of the surface in the background image but intriguingly the line drawing of the face contrasts beautifully with the three dimensions of the figure…love the combination of line and form.

EXHIBITIONS: “Soaring Flight” – Peter Lanyon’s gliding paintings

‘SOARING FLIGHT’ Peter Lanyon’s gliding paintings 

Courtauld Gallery Jan 2016

An experience not to be missed!

It was really interesting to stand in front of these amazing paintings and to feel that you were being taken on an experience. Lanyon’s ability to translate his experience of gliding into painted landscapes is extraordinary. I didn’t feel to be just looking at paintings – I could feel the power and intensity of his emotional response to this activity and this leapt out of the frame for me and drew me in! It seems to be summed up in the Introduction to the catalogue where Ernst Vegelin Van Claerbergen, the Head of the Courtauld Gallery, writes what was said of Pieter Bruegel the Elder ‘that when he travelled through the Alps, he swallowed the mountains and rocks and spat them out on his panels, so remarkable was his ability to convey nature.’ I agree with this link with Peter Lanyon.

Peter Lanyon is recognised as a leading landscape painter in post war Britain. He was able to take landscape painting to a new dimension, not just reproduce the scenes in front of his eyes but to experience the landscape, in other words to ‘inhabit the landscape as fully as possible’. (Catalogue page 11) To this end he took up gliding and the paintings in this exhibition are about these gliding experiences.

What was also interesting for me was that his passion for the environment led his to make connections with the human condition and in many of the paintings the viewer was taken deeper into the image to discover these connections for himself.

I’m very interested in exploring this idea of conveying experience through paint rather than reproducing an image, in my own work. I can feel the same measure of personal involvement and love of the environment in the work of Kurt Jackson.

 

 

EXHIBITIONS: Painting the Modern Garden – Monet to Matisse

PAINTING THE MODERN GARDEN – Monet to Matisse

Royal Academy

February 2016

I know what artists mean when they talk about avoiding the blockbusters! The Royal Academy was heaving with people as expected and it was only possible in many cases to just catch a glimpse of the paintings on the wall. But as long as you kept a cool head this didn’t stop the enjoyment of this incredible exhibition.

Gardens have been a passion of mine for many years and throughout the course I’ve used our own garden as the starting point for my work. It was therefore inspiring to have the opportunity of seeing many artists who create their own gardens and find there an infinite source of inspiration for painting. In the nineteenth century there was a great horticultural movement when gardening as a modern pursuit began and this exhibition focused on how painting flourished in response to this. Monet of course is the chief exponent of this development and it was breathtaking to be able to stand in front of the Agapanthus Triptych of the three paintings of Water Lilies. As described in the catalogue,”…eliminating any hint of foreground or sky made the compositions more abstract, thereby transforming the water garden into swirling fields of coloured light, punctuated by water lilies assembled into groups of white ovals rising on the left and floating across swathes of violet-blue.”

Claude Monet – section of Agapanthus Triptych

I enjoyed the exhibition very much and it was interesting to be thinking about composition as I walked through the different rooms. I found that I quickly tired of looking at garden views no matter how beautifully painted. It was more interesting to look at the garden painted from different viewpoints, in particular close-up views and quiet, intimate viewpoints. It was a joy to find one of my favourite artists represented (I think the only woman artist there), Berthe Morisot – ‘Woman and Child in a Meadow’ and next to it was a magnificent painting by Edouard Manet, ‘ Young Woman among Flowers’. To be able to see such work is a privilege beyond words.

Berthe Morisot – “Woman and Child in a meadow”

Edouard Manet – ‘Young Woman among Flowers’

However it was the room devoted to Avant-gardens which was the most exciting for me. This took the exhibition into a different level – I could have stayed there all day. I’ve had the opportunity of seeing Emil Nolde’s work on several other occasions and it was pure delight to see a group of his flower paintings here in the exhibition. He appeared to create gardens wherever he moved to…”had a transformative influence on his art.”(Catalogue, page 239) He wrote, “Whenever we returned from the big city…I was soon overcome by an irresistible urge for artistic creation. The flowers in the garden would greet me jubilantly with their pure and beautiful colours.” These paintings featured densely packed, vibrant flowers painted close up – the colours and shapes went far beyond simple images of flowers and you felt to be looking deeply into the artist’s inner feelings about life. What an opportunity to see these!

Emil Nolde – ‘Flower Garden (O)’ 1922

Emil Nolde – ‘Flower Garden (M) ‘ 1922

Wassily Kandinsky ‘Murnau Garden 1″ 1910

Wassily Kandinsky – ‘Murnau Garden 2’ 1910

I’m finding that the research for the course that I’m doing is having an impact on how I look at paintings. I was thinking about the recent research on artists who create and deny depth and noticing particularly the use of the surface  as paintings become more abstract. This was particularly evident in Monet’s work as I could see a progression through the years. Creating depth seemed to become less and less important to him, yet as the realism and structure faded, the power and impact of the images increased for me.

Claude Monet – ‘Chrysanthemums’ 1897

REFLECTION: ASSIGNMENT 1

REFLECTION

ASSIGNMENT 1

Preparation for the assignment

Before starting assignment 1, I want to go over what I’ve learnt from this module. It has been a fascinating study and certainly opened my thought to a range of possibilities for composition. To sum these ideas up…

1. Look for the wider potential in observational drawing and don’t make assumptions. Don’t just draw the obvious.
2. Take into account the space in your composition. What’s happening there?
3. Look for the compositional potential in everything. Changing scale can reveal endless possibilities.
4. Elements of rhythm, weight, volume and structure in a composition. This will obviously apply to all subjects, not just the human figure.
5. Consider the important aspect of guiding the viewer’s eye into and around the composition.
6. Researching Prunella Clough has thrown further light on these areas. Her work centred on the less obvious, even the discarded, and I was particularly interested in the fact that the notes she took in her visits to the industrial areas of England and elsewhere formed the starting points for her work and not sketches. This way of working probably opened up a more creative and individual approach to composition.
7. I think the most significant thing I’ve learnt however is that composition is about innovation. It is so easy to always begin a composition in the same way, a bit like always choosing the same palette. These exercises have shown that other approaches lead to new and unexpected compositions.

Now to apply these ideas to my own practice…..

The area that I’ve struggled with the most in this project is the use of space in a composition so I feel I want to explore this further. I also want to explore the concept, picked up from my research on Clough, of writing descriptions of places and experiences, rather than sketching or using photographs.

After completing the assignment…

I completed three pieces for the final assignment in Part 1 and feel that I’ve been able to put into practice several of the ideas on composition in this part of the course. This has been a very rewarding first part to Drawing 2 and has broadened my concept of composition. I now see that there are so many ways into a piece of work and that it is important to be open to explore these. The challenge of using ‘space’ constructively in a piece, I have tried to achieve with the use of watercolour washes and this was the first step into the composition so that the background didn’t become as add-on but really determined the composition from the start. I also enjoyed using the written word as the preparatory ‘sketch’ for the first two pieces. The words printed the scene of the cold winter’s walk on my memory just as strongly as a sketch would have, in fact even more strongly, and I was able to respond to my thought images in creating the atmosphere of the paintings.

Interestingly, of the three pieces of work I did for the assignment, I think the third image of the tulip bulbs is the most successful and rewarding for me. I think it is ‘intriguing and engaging’ and yet contains the original image. I followed much of the first project ideas in taking an item which was not beautiful and developing this into a creative piece.

Contrasting this approach with the first assignment piece, I can see how the different approach in which there was too much intrusion into the creative process did not leave room for the image to reveal its possibilities. I’m pleased to have done a piece which hasn’t worked for me because it emphasises the points raised in this first section.

So this has left me with an exciting thought as I end this section. There has to be in all successful (?) compositions an element of the unknown to the artist, an element which is revealed by the painting itself. If , as Roland Barthe suggests in his essay, “The Death of the Author” , that the artist is the first ‘reader’ of a piece of art, then this element of the unknown is essential. This happened in the second and third assignment pieces and is something to remember in my own work.

But overall, there seems still too much control in these pieces. I feel I want to take the elements I’ve studied in this module and work in a less cerebral way. Exploring materials in the next section may allow for this.

 

 

EXHIBITIONS Oct 2015 – Jan 2016

EXHIBITIONS Oct 2015 – Jan 2016

AI WEIWEI exhibition

RA   Oct 2015

This was an experience not to be missed. I went along not having very much background information about this important artist and not expecting to enjoy it. One of the reasons for this is that I have never engaged with the strong links that sometimes happen between politics and art. However this exhibition completely changed my viewpoint.

Visually the exhibition was stunning. Most of the works are very large and have powerful visual impact. This is Ai Weiwei’s first major survey in the UK. From the start the viewer is confronted with pieces whose impact goes far beyond the visual. In their presence you cannot help being drawn in to the events which have led to their creation. The information on the wall and the audio guide’s commentary provide excellent background plus the videos of the artist speaking about his motivation and ideas. The video in room 3 accompanying the piece entitled The Wave was particularly powerful in its coverage of the victims from the recent earthquake… and the subsequent response from officials concerning the causes of the huge death toll. It was very difficult to watch the images but it gave real meaning and power to the huge sculpture in the room.

There was real involvement from the many people who were visiting the exhibition and a sense of quiet contemplation. It was impossible not to feel this. This artist was opening our eyes to events and practices which needed to be seen and he was using art in a way which I had never experienced before.

 

PAINTING PARADISE

Queen’s Gallery Oct 2015

This exhibition dealt with the Queen’s collection of paintings of gardens.

 

GOYA: The Portraits

National Gallery November 2015

The portraits of Goya are not my favourite subject to go and see but I went along to the National Gallery nonetheless because I’ve found that sometimes it’s the exhibitions which I don’t want to see that end up being the most thought provoking. This was no exception!

I admit to knowing little about Goya and so the acousti-guide was necessary. This provided me with information about the people in the portraits which of course was interesting. However it was the fact that Goya is considered to be one of the greatest portrait painters which has given me so much to think about and that he was uncompromising in his depiction of the character of his sitters. I just couldn’t see this! Looking at many rooms full of these very large paintings of individuals, I struggled to see the brilliance of his work. The technical skill is without question and I was intrigued with his use of brush strokes in the clothing which seemed almost impressionistic at times, in particular in the painting of Ferdinand the 7^th. Since the exhibition I have spent some time revisiting some of the paintings on the National Gallery’s website to see this “new realism where there is no flattery”. I wonder if I am not being diverted by the portraits of Rembrandt who was painting almost 100 years before – they are some of my favourite works of art in which the physical and psychological aspects of the sitters are clearly depicted and in some way revered by the artist.

I think I shall have to find the time to revisit this exhibition – perhaps at a time when it is less busy and one is not fighting to see the paintings!

 

JEAN-ETIENNE LIOTARD

RA December 2015

Extraordinarily fine paintings in pastel – Swiss artist in the 18^th century

CONTEXTURAL FOCUS POINT: Prunella Clough

RESEARCH: Prunella Clough

PRUNELLA CLOUGH
UNCONSIDERED WASTELANDS
Deserted Gravel Pit, c.1946 Oil on board

 

Tate: Prunella Clough 1919-1999

Clough was an English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. She became an engineer’s draughtsman and mapper during the war. Much of her early work is focused on the urban landscape and images of machinery and labour. Towards the end of her life this changed to an interest in abstraction but always with a figurative base. Both her figures and mechanical images retain a flatness of form. She was however wary of abstract art that had no connection to the outside world but stressed the need to go on looking and experiencing things. Her abstract works often use bright, contrasting colours and sometimes found objects.

From Tate press release :

Prunella Clough devoted her career to finding beauty in unconsidered aspects of the urban and industrial landscape. Her focus on the minutiae of urban life, lorries and factory life, bright colours of plastics and rubbish in the streets, created images of beauty and the unknowable.

She believed that art can be made out of the ordinary and has a place in everyday life. An illustration of this can be seen in a sale of her art which she had from her studio in which she slashed all the prices and sold for amounts which were well below their worth. She always carried a notebook with her and spent her time filling the pages with details about what she was seeing and experiencing in the areas of housing estates and factories – Battersea power station, gasworks at Fulham, coke years at Woolwich, chemical works at Redhill. She collected visual memories, debris on a beach or the sighting of a faded maroon bridge, a padlocked gate, a rust stain, a street grill. She looked especially at things which created the remains of use, are blighted by time. Her affinity with bleakness and her disregard of anything which suggested prettiness may have been a reaction against her privileged background. She was descended from the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and was brought up in London’s Belgravia. The reaction to this started at a very early age when she began painting in Blackshore, a ramshackle collection of fishermen’s huts and then at the busy fishing port of Lowestoft.

She never belonged to any group or school …her work is distinctive and private

From ‘Prunella Clough regions unmapped’ by Francis Spalding

Another important influence on her work was poetry which she shared with her father. She was an avid reader and learnt how to read a musical score. Mostly her work is about the environment around her but in later life she also captured the landscape of the mind.. She was less interested in the representational appearance of things and more in the mood or atmosphere generated.

Page 27   ‘Surrealism had taught Clough that poetry could be found in unexpected conjunctions. It also altered her way of looking.’ Interesting quote from Andre Breton from catalogue entry for 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition: “ the artistic problem consists today in bringing a more and more objective precision to bear upon mental representation, by mean of the voluntary exercise of the imagination and the memory…” These two factors, poetry and Surrealism, brought into play the element of the ‘marvellous’, the mystery., which she seems to sum up in this quote frpm ‘Picture Post’ in 19949.

“Whatever the theme, it is the nature and structure of the object – that and seeing it as if it were strange and unfamiliar, which is my chief concern.”

Chapter 3 – page 47

“Each painting is an exploration in unknown country, or, as Manet said, it is like throwing oneself into the sea to learn to swim.” PG, ‘Picture Post’, 12 march 1949

Prunella Clough’s art gives us the feeling that we are in the presence of the overlooked, the forgotten, objects which we pass by and don’t see. This has been a fascinating research area coming at the end of Part 1 on exploring composition. I can see how Clough took the unexpected and created her paintings from the poetry and mystery she saw in them. This is an element of composition which I haven’t considered in my own work.

 

REFLECTION: PART 1 – project 1

REFLECTION: PART 1 – PROJECT 1

As I reflect on the first project in the course I am aware that I’m looking for something extra during the coming months. I feel that in the other four courses I have ticked the boxes – that is to say, to the best of my ability I’ve carried through the assignment requirements and learnt a lot on the way, both in terms of skills and about myself. However I’m at the point where I want something more from the course. Rather than ticking the boxes I want to approach each module from the point of view of what can I learn about my own practice in completing this work. I have no doubt that there will be space within the course outline which will allow this or perhaps this may lead to me failing to tick the boxes…just have to deal with that!

 

Project 1 – Observational drawing

‘Exploring composition’ fits so well with my practice at this stage and I want to use these exercises to really understand the essential elements of composition within the picture plane. It seems to me to be a very complex subject and one which up to now I’ve not really got to grips with.

‘Composition is the relationship you set up between all the elements in your artwork.’ (Page 17 OCA course outline Drawing 2)

In this first project focusing on observational drawing, it was interesting to see how changes happened as the initial idea is ‘nudged’ into different ways of looking. In the different studies I played with ideas which came, sometimes driven by using different media, sometimes driven by simple creativity. Experimenting with different media helps this process along as the different tools that can be used necessarily will result in different outcomes because of the nature of the implements. I enjoyed the difference in the outcome of using first charcoal and then pen and ink for example.

However, in analysing the sentence above which describes what composition is, the phrase ‘all the elements’ needs to be pulled apart. What are all the elements? The picture plane? The initial image? The medium used? Up to now, these have been the elements forefront in my thought when I begin to work. But taking this further, are there other elements, especially when one considers that part of the task is to lead the viewer’s eye into and around the composition?

So, to add to the above list, I need to ask myself what holds my interest when I look at a painting, capturing and holding the viewer’s eye so that one never grows tired of looking? What does that? I’m guessing that it’s a number of things… and I suppose it may be different things for different people. Ideas that come to me on this: colour, tone , texture; arrangement of forms over the surface; the relationship of form and colour; balance? I can see that all of these elements are important and can result in a satisfying composition. However I suspect that there is more…

Looking back to the aim of this project, which is to reflect on the wider potential of observational drawing, I feel that my studies have done that. I’ve taken the original image and worked with it. So many ideas and possibilities have flowed from that and I’m sure there are still more to come. It has been a creative process and probably the end result shows that, despite the elements of the original image still being evident. However, there are so many more avenues to explore with this – I wonder if you ever come to the end. It is surprising how much can come from just one image!

So what do I take away from this exercise? Not to stay with simply representing the image which is in front of the eyes. Work with it, stretch it, destroy it and let it reveal what it has to say.

Project 2: Research on Elizabeth Blackadder

Elizabeth Blackadder

Elizabeth Blackadder- ‘Orchid, Blue Vanda’

Elizabeth Blackadder- ‘Still Life with Iris’

Painter and printmaker, Elizabeth Blackadder was born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1931. She is well-known for her paintings of flowers and still life, both in watercolour and oils, but she also painted landscapes and portraits. Her interest and love of flowers began very early in life when she spent much of her childhood alone and began collecting, pressing and labelling local flowers. At first glance her flower paintings appeared to me to be botanical paintings and it was only when I began to research her life and interests that it became obvious that they were much more than that.

Blackadder has always had an interest in collecting objects and is fascinated with the art of non Western cultures. She visited Japan several times in the 1980s and 1990s. In order to understand the composition of her paintings I felt I needed to know more about the influences on her work and so I spent some time researching the ideas behind Japanese art. In ‘Japan Style’, a catalogue from an exhibition organised by the V&A and the Japanese Foundation, 1980, Kodansha International Ltd, 1980, there is an essay: Japanese Aesthetic Ideals by Mitsukuni Yoshida.

“In its constant search for variety of form, Japanese design had developed its own peculiar form of symmetry, which did not depend as in Europe on precise geometrical values. For example, the Japanese preferred to use a diagonal, rather than a centrally placed horizontal or vertical line when dividing a rectangle symmetrically.. In other cases they would seek to achieve a balance based on inner meaning rather than shape…”p 18

Japanese art focused primarily on a love of simplicity in which the arrangement of objects was composed in a standardised way in narrow spaces where there was nothing irrelevant or unrelated. The subjects of the paintings centred around the natural world, reflecting their love of natural beauty. It could be said that Japanese art is a pursuit of perfection.

I then did some research into Zen philosophy and the concept of empty space or ‘emptiness’. I was trying to understand the concept of meaningful space as opposed to background when thinking through the composition of a painting. This was definitely enlightening. ‘Emptiness’ in Zen philosophy is not complete nothingness, it doesn’t mean that nothing exists at all.

I didn’t feel able to accurately comprehend more of this concept in what I read but it left me with the sense that within the spaces that Blackadder leaves between objects, there is movement and life, that they are active spaces in which there is a connectivity. I could see the strong Japanese influence in her work in the arrangement of forms (cats, ribbons, flowers, plants on an empty or abstract background). The natural world features consistently in her paintings.

In studying her flower paintings I was trying to see what part the white spaces played in these works. At first glance they seem like botanical paintings and certainly the uncompromising white spaces have the effect of highlighting the objects. During my visit to the Goya Exhibition at the National Gallery in November, I took particular note of the treatment of the background. In many cases it was simply a dark space behind the portrait and this had the same effect of bringing the subject to the forefront of the image. Even in this it seemed to have a purpose.