Painting Artist Statment

The inspiration to my works originated from the links between mental illness and creativity and the outcomes of the links between them. It was a subject that I found really interesting and wanted to bring it into my work. I started to develop the theme of obsession and the compulsion to make or control something by creating repetitive and very obsessive circle drawings with biro, on reflecting on these I decided that without realising I was controlling a situation that was developing within the drawing until I felt comfortable with it. I wanted to develop this idea and concept so I started using ink to create unpredictable shape that I could then control with the obsessive circles. I felt these worked very well, but I wanted to introduce paint and came up with the idea of provoking unpredictable marks by folding the canvas material up and then painting a series of circles on it before opening it up and controlling it with the circles.

For my final body of work I decided to build the paint circles up until they covered the whole background before making the decision on adding the circles, however the amount of circles on there balanced out the uncontrolled and I felt comfortable leaving it without adding any more to it. The terms work as all about making the work comfortable and controlled enough to leave it with me feeling confident about it. The paint allowed me to become more controlled than the ink did with my mark making which to me allowed me to take my work to the next level of development and it became a lot more successful to me.

Throughout this work I have been heavily influenced by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama who now lives and works in Japan with a mental illness and her use of repetitive marks was a great influence on my work. Her mental Illness makes her see Hallucinations that she then reflects in her work to ease her mind. I have looked at a great breath of artists to make sure that I get a good diversity in me work such as Kara Black, Niki de Sant Phalle and Agnes martin. My work this term has been constant developments of the last one, the each lead onto each other some didn't work as well as I hoped, but they lead me onto the next development.

When I developed my concept I wanted to create something that completely gave me peace of mind that was balanced and controlled to the point where it need to be, by creating this work it has actually made me realise how controlling I am in everyday life and what my response is when something isn't how I want it to be.

Drawing Artist Statment

The inspiration for my drawing project this term started with looking at people's movement in different situation that they didn't realise that they are being watched and photographed. I started by taking a series of photograph in busy places at the same position to track peoples movements. From these I did very quick drawings keeping something's constant in the pictures and the movement in the figures. I did these on a small scale but kept the figures constant, the drawings had a ghostly feel to them as I have drawn them on tracing paper and have then layered them on top of each other.

I have then developed and experimented with the different media such as charcoal and inks to see what worked best and to give me a spring board on what way to take my project.  I decided to go with a simple figure that always worked on the same scale in relation to the paper it because it looked quite powerful and bold, but it had no sole and feelings to it. This was something that occurred to me when I was taking the photographs even though all these people look normal, but very different I knew nothing about their lives or how they were feeling. Everyone in the photographs had a generic walking face.

This was something that I wanted to show in my work so I started shading in the figure that I had developed several times a day depending how I was feeling. This worked well so I decided to do some large scale works. For my final development I have drawn out fifty figures and have passed them around different places such as my flat, studio, work and home to get people to shade them in depending how they are feeling. The drawings that I received back where all really interesting and varied and truly reflects what people are feeling. Throughout the project I have been heavily influenced by Henri Michaux and Ellen Gallagher because of their use of tone and shape, but also the ideas behind them