VSW32 Fine Art Project Development VSW33 Fine Art Project Advanced A VSW34 Fine Art Project Advanced B The final three units of the BA in Fine Art unrolled as a single large project. We were required to develop our ideas into a coherent body of work and to present this in the context of an exhibition proposal. Click here to see the completed project. I was ready to finish my final project. I had made a start but I hadn't found a direction, so during the summer break I jettisoned most of my tutor’s advice and spent time just sitting on the rocks at my local beach. I pondered how the only certainty is that nothing is certain. The colours of the crumbly rocks were fascinatingly Australian, and the cracks in them were mysterious. The constant erosion and deposition of the sandstone and its susceptibility to cracking spoke strongly to me of uncertainty and impermanence. ... So first I experimented with various ways of representing the colours and textures of the rocks ... … I found that placing mirrors in cracks allowed me to keep my options open about what the cracks displayed ... … Theinterplay of natural rock, the artwork and reflections in the mirror became increasingly intriguing (click on the arrows to advance the slides) ... ... I wanted more crack shapes; I developed these through (1) photographing, (2) sketching, (3) painting on paper, (4) colouring sand painting on mirrors and then (5) photographing these along with other mirrors. ... Throughout the process I tried to keep in play:
... I still needed to connect works into a coherent exhibition that would give viewers a developing experience as they strolled though it. I wanted to show that we can never be quite sure of what we are seeing, so the first two rooms display actual works on mirrors, where viewers can see different reflections as they move past them. The third room contains digital photographs of the mirrors with different reflections in the cracks, some simple and some more complex..
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VSW31 Fine Art Studio Practice To complete my degree I am required to produce a coherent body of work suitable for presentation as a public exhibition. We can do whatever we like, but we have been warned that third year standards are much higher than those in second year. Our tutors seem to have been told to stop praising and encouraging, to raise the bar, and to focus on extending and challenging everyone. We should not plan to work in a particular medium. We are expected to work with concepts, and choose materials depending on the demands of our concept. So that we would explore widely rather than simply choose a topic, we chose three words to see where they are taking us. I picked terra-firma, migration and memory and started writing about investigating “the processes by which we commit our memories to the land, and how it receives and releases memories of the people who belong to it or come to live on it.” During the first unit (one quarter of the project) I experimented with three related concepts, using mixed media: Mapping the landscape. Palimpsests, with erasure and layering of partial images. The Body in the landscape. Neither of us are excited about the Mapping, but my tutor likes the Palimpsest experiments while I prefer the Body in the landscape. I have decided to interpret his insistence on the Palimpsest as an invitation to consider and politely decline his first challenge.
I will resume work in March when I will be asked to add another word. It will be impermanence. My earlier work was about change and the cycles of existence (this fits with my meditation practice). I have looked at decay and regeneration in terms of organic material and in terms of the rock cycle of coastal sandstones. I feel a need to cycle back towards these ideas and to make it clear in my formal proposal that I intend terra-firma ironically. I’ve observed that students who are ahead of me haven’t had an easy time. I don’t know where this adventure will take me, but I am not expected to start painting seriously for another twelve weeks and meanwhile there is still a lot of experimenting to do. VSW21, 22, 23, 24 |
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I concluded that works in a series must share something that an artist accords thematic status to. This can be anything the artist wishes and is clever enough to elevate to that level. Artists will always find new creative ways; they just have to present their work in a way that signals the connection. Titles can help but visual clues are more important. Series that are planned ‘top down’ are more likely be tight than series that are investigative or experimental.
This explains my question about whether my pear series consists of four or five works, and it explains the difficulty I had in finalizing my bedroom series. I had already put a window into each painting. I hoped that this would be sufficient to connect them, but I also decided to experiment with applying the paint in a different way in each painting. They were not even all the same size and shape.
This explains my question about whether my pear series consists of four or five works, and it explains the difficulty I had in finalizing my bedroom series. I had already put a window into each painting. I hoped that this would be sufficient to connect them, but I also decided to experiment with applying the paint in a different way in each painting. They were not even all the same size and shape.
I did five things to help them com together:
- trimmed two canvases to match the size of the others,
- added a purple curtain to every window that didn’t have one yet,
- left out one canvas where the purple curtain didn’t work,
- think about their order,
- imposed the same title on all.
Where the Light Comes Through I-VII. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 46x61cm.
A body of work is similar to a series but more varied. Cycles of the Intertidal (VSW24, previous post) consists of artworks that have significant connection with each other. These include a group of nine encaustic boards and a book with nine sketches: are these one series or two? In relation to each other they are surely separate, but in another context, and suitably displayed, they might mesh into a single series. Adding in the video and sculpture, the formal differences are so great they a best considered a body of work on a single theme. |
VSW24 Painting: Art Project
Our shoreline is subject to remorseless weathering and erosion, and continuously recycles through natural processes of erosion, removal and deposition. Science refers to the water cycle, the rock cycle and biogeochemical cycles to trace the Law of Conservation of Matter at work. I have studied the shoreline at my home beach, Fishermen’s End, searching for evidence of changes in the rocks. My aim has been to interrogate the assumption that the ground we stand on is solid and unchangeable.
I have attempted to represent this ‘natural recycling’ through mixed media selected for their potential to reference the mutability of the land and the water as well as the physical materials of which they are composed. My aim was to integrate a visual vocabulary consisting of lines, curves, cavities, deposits and textures with encaustic and pen and wash, two media which are both moveable and removeable. I also integrated natural materials – rock and pigment – collected at Fishermen’s End.
I have attempted to represent this ‘natural recycling’ through mixed media selected for their potential to reference the mutability of the land and the water as well as the physical materials of which they are composed. My aim was to integrate a visual vocabulary consisting of lines, curves, cavities, deposits and textures with encaustic and pen and wash, two media which are both moveable and removeable. I also integrated natural materials – rock and pigment – collected at Fishermen’s End.
The body of work consists of three cyclical elements: a ‘time’ clock, a non-narrative video loop and a spiral-bound field journal. In addition there is a small installation of natural sandstone. The clock is suggestive of cycles of geological change while the video references processes of coastal erosion. |
VSW23 Painting: Development and Extension
VAR31 Art Visual Research 3
Studying art online requires a camera for submitting work, and we are also encouraged to use still photos in developing work and to experiment with video. Below are two short videos and some series of still shot manipulations.
Top: 'Edge to Edge' (33 secs), an exercise in manipulating shapes.
Centre: 'Piggery - the Final Cut' (1:09 mins), a reflection on animal slaughter.
Below: some painterly versions of simple snapshots.
Bottom: the original photographs.
Top: 'Edge to Edge' (33 secs), an exercise in manipulating shapes.
Centre: 'Piggery - the Final Cut' (1:09 mins), a reflection on animal slaughter.
Below: some painterly versions of simple snapshots.
Bottom: the original photographs.
These are the original snapshots:
VSW21 Painting: Strategies and Materials
Project on Imperfection
This is an example of how Curtin University (through the OUA) teaches multiple techniques within a single project. I enjoyed injecting some humour into this one and making it relevant to where I live. I borrowed the title from my friend Helen Menzies’ successful children’s books. Once I'd decided that I would locate 'imperfection' in the dangerous life our local ducks lead and issue them with a stern warning, all I had to do was work through eight ordered steps.
1) Prepare four supports with different types of surface to test.
2) Choose a topic that relates to the notion of imperfection.
It took a mere five minutes to squirt the paint onto each canvas. This is how they looked straight after pouring.
I titled the canvases around and then abandonned them overnight. This is how they dried:
What ideas about abstract art did I challenge?
- that it is sacred and serious.
- that it can’t convey a message.
- that it lacks social function.
- that it is sacred and serious.
- that it can’t convey a message.
- that it lacks social function.
8) Find an inventive way of displaying the deconstructed works.
VSW21 Painting: Strategies and Materials
VSW22 Painting: Concept and Process
VSW23 Painting: Development and Extension
Three of the Year Two painting units built on the basic introduction to texture, figure and field, tone, colour and transformation given in Year One. It was a tremendous learning curve, and relied upon vast amount of experimentation. When I look over my outcomes I feel that only a few look finished. Given the huge amount that was expected in a very short time frame, plus the different concerns of all the exercises, this isn’t really surprising. But it was all worth the effort. Below are some of my more interesting outcomes.
VSW22 started by asking us to consider the effects of time, both through the day and conceptually. Clockwise from top left: Morning, pen and wash (30x21cm) Evening, watercolour (30x21cm) Night, oil (40x30cm) 'Love, Hate Decay,' acrylic (50x50cm) 'Things Fall Away,' acrylic and collage (50x60cm) Afternoon, acrylic (35x45cm) |
VSW22 continued with the theme of place, where I live. Clockwise from top left: Local earth pigment and collage (56x38x5cm) Oil paint (21x30cm) Manufactured pigment and seawater (38x56cm) Local earth pigment and manufactured pigment (38x56cm) Acrylic, watercolour and collage (38x56cm) Local earth pigment (38x56cm) |
VAR25 Drawing A
VAR26 Drawing B
The first year BA drawing unit surveyed a range of drawing activities but in Year Two the units became very skills centred. The focus was on line, shape and tone in Drawing A and on perspective drawing, shape morphing and layering in Drawing B. The exercise arcs spanned the simple, the difficult, the imaginative and the impossible. Sometimes I didn’t understand what I’d been practicing until I finished and my outcomes were often unexpected. Below are some of my favourite drawings. Buried behind all those enjoyable activities were hours and hours of skills practice, the sort of practice I could continue with indefinitely. Thanks to Dr Ben Joel for conceiving and delivering the units.
These self portraits in silhouette combine line, shape and meaning:
These self portraits in silhouette combine line, shape and meaning:
To emphasise dark tones and contrast we had to imagine an underground cave, with lit candles on a floating table:
Then we set up an all-white still life to practice drawing at the light end of the scale. I chose a memento mori theme:
Perspective required a lot of attention:
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Finally I experimented with both planned and unplanned approaches for the exercises in layering. In the top two I combined a lot of drawings, seven on the left, ten on the right. The two at the bottom involved putting bamboo pen drawings over ink marbling.
VART2026 In the Footsteps of the Impressionists
"I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give
marvellous results. But it cracked, cracked too quickly.
I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things
to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”
Maurice Utrillo, 1914
I started 2014 with a standard and acceptable History of Art course and followed that up with a unit called In the Footsteps of the Impressionists. This was a two-week study tour actually in Paris. I spent hours in the Louvre as well as chasing after Impressionist painters. I spent some time experimenting with pen and wash.
"I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give
marvellous results. But it cracked, cracked too quickly.
I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things
to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.”
Maurice Utrillo, 1914
I started 2014 with a standard and acceptable History of Art course and followed that up with a unit called In the Footsteps of the Impressionists. This was a two-week study tour actually in Paris. I spent hours in the Louvre as well as chasing after Impressionist painters. I spent some time experimenting with pen and wash.
Bottom right is the first pen and wash I did. On an afternoon in Montmartre, exhausted, I sank onto a café chair and did my first pen and wash, just the scene in front of me.
Utrillo said of his work, “I got it into my head that only plaster – real plaster – would give marvellous results. But it cracked, cracked too quickly. I had such a search for truth that I wanted to stick real things to my picture, like the leaves of a tree.” In 1914 that wouldn’t have been considered extremely avant garde, but in 2014 it's quite old hat. So, for the tour exhibition, I produced another interpretation of Saint Pierre de Montmartre and the Sacred Heart. I tested plaster-of-Paris, sand, leaves, shells, sticks and natural pigments: with PVA glue to stop it all cracking:
I decided to simplify my composition and started with lots of small thumbnail drawings:
I tried a larger version of the coloured one with oil pastels:
Then I took to acrylics I and changed it a bit a bit; the three green circles on the left were cut-outs I used to experiment wit bushes:
I asked friends for feedback and one supplied me with a simplification, which I liked. I cropped it down to a small area in the centre:
finally picked up my "real" materials and produced a textured version with plaster and dried leaves as Utrillo wanted. I used sand, shells and coffee grounds to vary the textures when I found I couldn't move the plaster into the brush rhythms of the acrylic version:
Going through this process taught me a lot about developing an artwork rather than just jumping in. I wonder what Utrillo would have thought of my version. I'm sure he would have been happy about the plaster-of-Paris and real leaves
VSW11 Printmaking: Materials and Methods
What a rollercoaster! Equipped with a Study Guide that said there were some very good videos on YouTube, I found myself googling how to make a linocut and new things like monotype and collograph. This was definitely new territory. We had to choose a single theme and stick with it for twelve weeks. I decided to respond to the decay process of a mallard duck that had the misfortune to die in my garden.
I printed the motifs I'd been working with onto strings of prayer flags and installed them in a star formation over the duck's resting place. Then I began documenting the decay of the flags, which echoed that of the duck as vegetation grew over them all.
It was an unconventional introduction to printing perhaps, but it enthused me to the extent that I have replaced my original foot press with a real one.
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