Initial Ideas

pen on tracing paper,
both 14 X 10 Cm

I have decided to take drawings from my photos using tracing paper so I can layer them and then make a path of the figures that I have picked out from the crowds. My first set of drawings I included the background, but I feel that this is distracting from the figures as I just want to monitor the movement of the figure. Therefore for my second set of drawings I have only drawn the figures so I can clearly see the path of them and can pick up there energy.

I have then layered them together to get a flat image, this creates a ghostly effect on the further back layers which I really like. I have also enlarged the images on the photocopier so I can experiment with adding tone and block colour to see what works and how I will develop the drawings. I think I need to keep working quite fast with this project and not get bogged down to much with the thought behind that. I haven't looked at any artists yet which is something that I will make a massive move on next week as that will massively change my work.

                                      

photocopy of tracing paper 14 X 10 Cm

pen on tracing paper 21 X 15 Cm

Aboriginal Art, Ellen Gallagher, Neville Gabbie, Paul Noble and John Lancaster

Aboriginal art

Aboriginal sand art

Aboriginal art is a offering to to the gods and a show of respect, they are often painted or created in the sand so the gods can see and appreciate the work. The main form of the work is concentric circles and patterns focusing around these to signify power and authority. There is a great religious connection between the art and sacrifice to the gods. There is a lot of rituals involved and the art is also used to mark territory in between tribes. The colours are quite muted and warm because the colours are made out of natural things that the tribes could find, there was quite a limited pallet. The works show the history of the aborigines they tell a story like any good piece of work. 

The work is often about the myth of aboriginal dreamtime, this type of art is made by both a man and a woman as a pair to keep the sacredness of the work in balance. The main features of the work are representations of fire, air and water. The circles show a transition of energy between the past present and future, as I said before it tells a story of the aboriginal culture. I looked at the work because of the visual connection between my work and the aboriginal, but not I have researched it I understand the meaning behind it and the work couldn't be anymore different. However I think what I have taken from this is that the shapes that I am using need to become more instinctive and free, almost like they flow and not as structured.

http://www.aboriginalarts.co.uk/art.htm

Ellen Gallagher 

an example of a section of her work

Gallagher is an artist that has become very popular in the the last twenty years, as an artist she creates sculpture, photography, painting and drawing. She brings together images from myths, history and present crisis to create her work. Her recent exhibition at the Tate revealed that there was many recurring themes within her work race being one of them. She creates her work as an ongoing response to things that are happening in her life and as a constant documentation that things are changing for the better.

Her work is made up of many different images usually as a collage, these are the particular artworks that i am interested in. All the images when placed together are really interesting, but also the fact that the create a larger image or a complex pattern in the way they are placed is also really interesting. Her influences are said to be amongst Agnes Martin, and she has excited across ther world. I personally find that some of her work is quite creepy a lot of the figure have had there eyes cut out this makes them look like they have know soul, I think this is how Gallagher might have felt at the time in her early work. 

There is a awful lot of work that go into her pieces there can be up to 60 processes in each piece, which suggests that the actual process is quite painful, but also that the art is more about the process than the actual work. This is something in common with mine, I am really focusing on the process rather that the work at the moment and I think that this something I would like to refine.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ellen-gallagher-9553

Neville Gabbie 

A still from his video for the Jeerwood prize

I wanted to look at this artist because of one particular work I saw at the Jerwood Drawing prize I saw this year. It was his video of his chalk drawing, I would it really interesting because like my work it is more about the process and I think that I want to try videoing my work as I make it to create some sort of performance. The video itself is quite ironic in the fact that he is wearing a black suit that is obviously going to get dirty form the chalk and it is suggested that he does this to show that this is his job and he is in fact very serious about it.

This particular piece is one in a series that he is creating while in a residency at Bristol university, he is experimenting with the properties of chalk, ice and oil in relevance to climate change. At the university he is working with scientists to explore the effects that climate change is having on the world, his experiments include cutting, pouring and drawing with these three materials. 

http://www.nevillegabie.com/about-neville-gabie/

Paul noble

The Nobspital Drawing

Paul Noble is an artist that's work is mainly instillation based and tends to be on a very large scale. Noble focuses of bleak issuer such as unemployment, but his work is visually very appealing and interesting, it's is I fact really fun and playful. He focuses on the issues that gate and annoy him as I have said before with unemployment, he makes works about a aimless existence and a social hopelessness, it's almost as if the artist himself feels inadequate. Noble writes stories with his work he is a firm believer that a place doesn't have a story we bring the story to the place, something that I find very true. We attach memories to places almost as if we are scared to forget them. 

I wanted to really look at his drawings because he makes these huge drawings made up of a tiny little marks, that could be a small squiggle even a number, but because of the scale of the drawing you can't even tell. I think that these drawings are incredible, they take him almost a year to finish. The marks that they are made up of are all obsessive small marks and they seem to blend into each other this is something that I would like to take from his work and reflect into mine.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-noble-2767

John Lancaster

Wave motion 57 X 76cm 2005

John Lancaster is a lecturer at De Montfort, and a lot of his works are abstract and he tends to stick on the themes of structures and interiors in his early work, but he has recently gone on a conquest to explore colour and the influence that that has one your work, he pushes the boundaries with colour combinations and like my own work uses small repetitive marks to create shape and pattern within his work. 

He strongly believes that colour is a catalyst and by picking the right colour combinations you can make and break the work, it can create something "wonderful and surprising". His work is all about colour that is his main inspiration and this is what he makes his work about. I really like his work in particular his wave motion paintings.   

http://www.jlancaster.co.uk/main.htm

First Body of Work

Yayoi Kusama, Revived soul-1995- 300X150CM 

This week I have decided to get out of my sketchbook half way through the week and start creating bigger work and start including paint into the work, I have been painting circles then developing my obsessive marks around them using both circles and line. I have then moved this on to a series of three A1 sheets which are again larger painted circles on a colour background, which I have then worked into. 

Series of three paintings, Acrylic and biro, All 84X60 Cm

I liked these because of the addition of colour and I wanted to create them bigger, but I also wanted to take them onto canvas now. On this I did the same however I varied the sizes of the circles to create depth and more space in the work, before then working into it with a sliver pen to contrast the background, but it also gives the impression of movement in the painting because of the shine on the pen.

Acrylic and pen on canvas 130 X 100 Cm

To then develop my work further I created a series of four smaller canvas', I felt this was a good move however I didn't know where to now take my project and push it further so I wanted to look at a greater range of artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Mark Bradford, these have given me some good ideas on how I can push it further and lead onto another set of work.

Acrylic and pen on canvas 30X21 Cm

Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford

Black Venus 2005 400X200Cm

Bradford's work is based on his everyday life and his past memories; he uses everyday materials and rubbish that he finds everyday to use in his work, there isn't actually a lot of paint used in the process.  Most of the work is about the neighbourhood that he grew up in and lives today in the Latino area of LA, he still lives in his childhood's house and has changed his mum's hair dressers into a studio. He is a very personal artist who is trying to get people to understand his life; this is the point of his works.

Bradford particularly likes to use billboard poster paper in his work and is known as the paper chaser, but also what the billboard means the quality of the paper is important to him as his mum had her own small business this became personal to him, the more simple and lower quality of the billboard the smaller the business and the closer to his heart it is. This is one of the obvious reasons his work is so abstract because of the materials used. The work is described as a patchwork, and the materials that he uses are the aftermath of everyday life and they each bring that little bit of history to the work. Bradford is trying to show the story of his life through the work and maybe the pain, the colours seem to be predominantly dark, those you would associate with pain.

http://whitecube.com/artists/mark_bradford/

Vitamin P2

Van Gogh

Self portrait 1889

Van Gogh

Van Gogh is a artist that I have mentioned before as an artist that has always been associated with mental illness. He is thought to have had quite a tortured life that had a massive impact on him mentally that was reflected in both his behaviour and work. It is suggested that one of the roots of his mental illness was in fact the death of his brother who died exactly and year and a day before he was born, as a child he was constantly blamed for the death of his brother, his parents believed that he replaced his older brother. To add insult to injury his parents gave him the same name as his dead older brother which made Vincent feel as if he was always trying to be someone who he's not. This is said to be the start of his trouble.

Sunflowers 1888

Van Gogh is inspired by past classic painters such  as Rembrandt, Millet and Van Ruysdael. This was the style to paint at the time and Van Gogh painted in a very different style when he was younger, this was before he ha any major influences but also before he has and professional training. Van Gogh from the staring point of his training questioned the teaching where others would just accept the answers, this is something that he does with all his work he is always pushing and questioning the limits in his work. By him doing this in college his tutors began to worry about his mental state then. 

Van Gogh's work is often concentrated of everyday objects, but his paintings are a lot more interesting than the objects. His work is made up of loads of different marks that aren't blended and are textured, this is like the obsessive drawing condition that I have researched. Van Gogh created his work because he wanted people to feel an excitement from an everyday object, he wanted to enhance the normal, take it from reality.

 His work didn't become famous until after his death, but his later years in life where quite hard on him he didn't know where he was mentally and he was believed to have given himself lead positioning from his paintings. Which I suppose if the ultimate irony for an artist, his work actually killed him. I think that people like his work because of his natural flare and consistently developing style that he created. My favourite work of his is " The Starry Night" which is one of his most famous, but I just think that the movement that he manages to capture within the painting was incredible. It is thought again that Van Gogh might have suffered from hallucinations which is where he got this image of movement in the sky from. I think his story is quite sad, but at the same time the art world wouldn't be like it is today without him.

 Starry Night over the Rhone, 1888

Personally I am quite a fan of his works and I really like the painterly style that they are made with, the texture and the marks that are made are really carefully placed, but they also seems to be part of this giant elaborate pattern that seems to take over the whole image. My favourite work is "the starry night" Because of the pattern in the night Skye and the mixture of dark and warm colours. I know this is typically one of his most famous paintings, but there is something so instinctive about his work it's so well accomplished. I would like take inspiration from the work and experiment with really thick paint and oils, the only downside might be by using oils they wouldn't be dry by the end of my project. 

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

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

Revived soul-1995- 300X150CM

Kusama is an artist that is still alive today creating work and taking part in large exhibitions such as her one at the Tate Modern London in 2012 which I went to. Kusama has suffered from a mental illness all her life that allows her to see hallucinations which are both visual and aural. In her early years she was told that this was cause by the art and was encouraged to stop creating work, but she took no notice to this and carried on. She made the right decision as it is now proven that this statement isn't correct and her creating works if anything probably helped the illness.

Kusama's work in her early years was very organic and mostly of natural forms and it is suggested that the inspiration of these is from the seed farm that her parents owned when she was a child. Her work then became darker and there was fewer works throughout the war in Japan, she takes a great amount of inspiration from her surroundings and her work is very much in the moment, there isn't a great deal of planning that goes into it. At this time she kept her work very private and she did use it as more of a personal release of emotion.

Infinity Net (white) 1959 194 X259cm

 In interviews later in the life she has said that the head gets so filled with "visions" that she has to let them out and the only way that she and do this is to put them on paper. Her work is a direct translation of what's in her head there is no particular fancy concept behind it, it's just simple and effective. Kusama's work follows the movements of cubism and surrealism, but by mixing the two she gets a new movement; something that no one is able to follow in the same way a strange juxtaposition of the two.

Sprouting- 1987- 130X162CM

Kusama left Japan in the 1950's for New York a lifelong dream of hers, however she found it very hard to live there for the first few years because of her very poor financial situation and this became a very psychologically traumatic. Because of this as you would expect bought a whole new dimension to her work. Her work became wilder and more vibrant. The colours changed to bright hues, sometimes even neon and the patterns became repetitive. She started to experiment with photography and film, using herself in the work.

She also started playing with sculpture, her most famous sculpture works such as "compulsion Furniture" was based on sex because of very scaring incidents when she was younger, her mother used to send her to spy on her father sleeping with other women. She said it took her years to even consider thinking about until she was ready to start releasing it from her head in the early 1960's. Kusama has lived in a mental hospital since the 1970's in Japan after her condition go worse after moving back from New York. Her studio is across the road where she is allowed to go and create her work on a daily basis.

Her work has always had an element of hope to it, as if she hopes that by creating all these works, one day she will be cured. There seems to be life within her work as if she is putting everything into them, as if she will never get bored, there seems to be no boredom threshold to her work. I believe that she will keep creating work until she dies because of this everlasting hope within her.

Infinity Room-filled with the brilliance of life. 

Throughout her career she has created this personality of the strong, powerful, independent women, who is always happy, and always wears bright clothes and a wig, but in reality when she's in her studio she wears normal clothes and is just this normal grey haired old lady. It's like she has a split personality, the difference between expectation and reality. She is trying to be someone who she's not and this confuses me, but again it could just be a way of dealing with her illness.


Yayoi Kusama- Tate exhibition book- 2012
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/yayoi-kusama

Initial Ideas

Van Gogh, self portrait 1889

Mono print with pen, 42 X 30 Cm

I have done some research into different types of mental illness so I could develop my ideas and in what way I could take my work and how in will make my work. I have found this really interesting because mental illness is something that isn't really understood and new discoveries about are made every day. After my research I have been looked pacifically into mental illness that makes you obsessively draw and write as this is the illness that I was most interested in, however I looked at the links between art and mental illness and discovered that the was a really strong correlation between the both. In particular there is a link between bipolar disorder which is one of the main illnesses I was looking at in my first research. 

one of my drawings 30 X21 cm

According to research I found that there was a high possibility that artists can develop a mental illness because they tend to question the boundaries and limits to things that normal people don't. I have conducted research into artists that have lived with mental illness to see how there work develops. I have started to make drawings in the way that someone who suffer from this obsessive disorder which also ties in with my idea of really trying to test my boredom threshold and push it to the limit. I think that my next move will be to develop the patterns and to see how I could take it further by doing more research and then drawings.