Artist Research-
Henri Matisse
Considered one of the undisputed masters of 20th century art, French artist Matisse, known for his use of colour and his fluid and originality. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp in developing plastic arts of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled a Fauve, by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
His fondness for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he spent the summer of 1904 painting in St. Tropez with the neo-Impressionists, his paintings of this period are characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, and use pointillism in a less rigorous way than before. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject’s natural colours. his exhibitions garnered harsh criticism being likened to “A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public”, however with the favored words of other fauvism artists his work was presented in a new and much more favorable light.
His work holds a lot of things that I myself would love to present with some of my paintings, the essence of figures and the statuesque qualities of said figures is something that I have found myself being drawn to in the early stages of creating collages. His colour palette is another intriguing quality for me, especially the large blocks of colour that spread across his work, this is something that I think would be effective to include in my own work as it would break up the collage images from one another and set them apart as individual elements that make up one collective painting. I have also found myself using a lot of line within some charcoal sketches, and have been experimenting with the possibilities of this media when it comes to lie weight. This is something that I can pick out within a lot of his work and something that I believe would be effective if I carried it across into my own work.
William De Kooning
Born on April 24, 1904, in Rotterdam, de Kooning throughout his career, he moved seamlessly between abstraction and figuration through painting, drawing, print media, and sculpture. For de Kooning, one body of work often informed the next, and his method of painting was characterized by a drive for exploration and experimentation. Beginning the early 1940s, de Kooning often made use of women as his common subjects. However, it was in the 1950s when he became more fascinated with presenting women in his artworks. his pieces became somewhat of a sensation because of his use of imagery. For instance, he experimented on aggressive brushwork, and he focused on putting greater emphasis on certain areas in his paintings such as large breasts, exaggerated extremities and other features that revealed a man’s typical sexual inhibitions. These paintings had broader brushstrokes that gave his works a more intense appeal. In de Kooning’s paintings of this period, we can clearly recognize the methodologies and expressiveness of Van Gogh . As for the style of his works during the later years of his life, he was able to present a significant different between his early pieces and his paintings during the late 1980s. More people became fascinated with his painting style and techniques, which led to an increase in his profits and with his high profiting career he also left a stamp on contemporary abstract painting as a whole.
The areas of his work that I am particularly drawn to are the large areas of blended shape and tone, I really enjoy how the background peers through a thick smudge of paint and I believe that this is something that I could incorporate into my paintings within small areas to break up a large block of colour or an image that I would like to partially disguise. It was his use of abstract anatomy that I was drawn to and with a lot of my collages being dominated by facial features I believe that this would be a great style for me to incorporate. I have tried to hide some anatomy behind pattern and I like the effect however altering the anatomy as a whole seems like a great way to make it less obvious and striking as a whole.
Alberto Giacometti
Giacometti Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker, one of the most important
sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealistic influences in order to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perception which led to an inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.
Although painting only makes up a small portion of his creative works, this is the part in which I am drawn to. I enjoy how he uses outline to create works that are visually diverse and it becomes an alluring effect as it becomes hard to read yet the little colour that he uses becomes a defining feature throughout the piece. I find that when painting my favourite portions are those that I leave sparse and only defined with dark outlines this is where the influence of Giacometti plays a part in my own work. I think that using this style benefits my work a lot as I enjoy a lot of elements in making up a painting and therefore leaving outlines in this way makes my painting easier to read and less decorative.
In 1931, Giacometti began to participate in some of Andre Brenton’s surrealist group’s activities in Paris. Although he was later expelled from the movement due to his ’realistic’ works of models, Giacometti’s interest in surrealist forms and themes such as sexuality and trauma continued. Sculptures from the early 1930s which resemble toys or games invite the viewer to interact with the sculptures (a massively innovative idea for the time). Giacometti preferred to use models who he knew personally, including his brother Diego, his wife Annette, and his lover Caroline. Rejecting classical ideas of perspective, he also often recorded his models from memory. Alberto once said, “Diego has posed ten thousand times for me. When he poses I don’t recognise him… When my wife poses for me, after three days she doesn’t look like herself. I simply don’t recognise her”.
Frank Auerbach
Auerbach has made some of the most resonant and inventive paintings of recent times, of people and urban landscapes. Auerbach is often associated with a circle of figurative painters in London, known for being an innovative body in the realm of figurative painting. He states that in his process he “wants everything in the painting to work, that is, every force, every plane, every direction to relate to every other direction in the painting – so there’s no paradiddle or blot somewhere. I feel very strongly that if a painting is going to work, it has to work before you have a chance to read it.”
Auerbach doesn’t visualize a image before he begins painting. In the early years he would paint on top of the previous day’s work, hence the very thick surfaces. However, since the 1960s Auerbach has scraped down the whole surface before the next attempt. The final picture therefore, is in a sense done in one go, but it has actually required 30, 50 or perhaps 200 separate versions that are deemed not good enough, before the final image suddenly emerges. For practical reasons he does not paint landscapes from life, but rather works from drawings created on site. I also enjoy working from my own paintings and drawings, I think that it gives you an opportunity to take on corrections you have given yourself before starting a piece and therefore you have an idea of what you want to alter before even starting.
Personally I like his painting style and the way he utilises the marks made by the brush and makes them a large part of the texture throughout the pieces. I also really like the dark outlines that separate the coloured portions of the painting, this is something that I also enjoy doing when painting, I think that this is a great way to add structure back into a painting. His colour palette for these urban landscapes seem to stay similar, I like how there is a mixture of bright tones and more earthy tones to balance out the palette.
Gillian Ayres
Ayres being one of the most famous British abstract painters she is critical of her colour palette and shape but her influences don’t hold that much weight, she states that her influences can range from ice-cream to shells to fabrics and random forms. Gillian Ayres was influenced by North American artists like Jackson Pollock. He painted giant dripping paintings. Like Pollock, Ayres worked on her painting while the canvas was flat on the floor. She also was inspired by Henri Matisse, with whos influences you can see in her work. Her medias have swung between acrylic paint and oils throughout her career, much preferring oils in recent years.
I think that her paintings are beautiful, they evoke such happiness and their simplistic colour palettes often staying with primary colours are very appealing to me. I enjoy shapes that hold a lot of decoration in a painting and shapes that can overlay that of others, This in my opinion can make a simplistic colour or shape more visually dynamic. I would like to include more shapes and colours like this in my paintings in the future I think that these would help break up my otherwise busy or cluttered paintings.
Camille Souter
Largely self-taught, her earlier work shows the influence of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the strong, emotive calligraphic styles of Klee and Pollock. However, her titles were nearly always descriptive and indicate an intended link with some aspect of the visual world. Her paintings moved away from the excitement and experiments of Abstract Expressionism and resolved into a quieter quasi-Impressionist mode of landscape painting. Her brushwork is now used to convey the dramatic activity of plant growth and moving skies. After starting her family she painted views of her garden and the surrounding countryside, however within the same year she was painting strange poignant series of slaughter house and meat paintings. Following on from her abattoir pictures, she exhibited a series of fish canvases, which depict the slimy coldness of dead fish. In these paintings, however, she achieves complete cohesion, of shape, colour and design of pollock, cod and other varieties of fish. Since the early 1980s she has worked in the Shannon Industrial Estate, using airports and flying as a theme and has taken flying lessons. The slanted view of ploughed fields and hedges seen from an aircraft has led to her adopting a more angular approach.
I am particularly fascinated by her earlier works of abstract expressionism and how she is able to achieve shape and colour with a very limited range in palette and actual strokes of paint. I enjoy the simplicity of her work and how it is able to take on such interesting forms from very little shape. I would like to use this influence to create works that have a simplistic undertone to them rather than a full and crowded feel.
Barbara Rae
Internationally recognised for her work that occupies a position somewhere between abstract and landscape painting. Her visual language captures nature in interesting ways, making use of block shapes and bold colours to create a world that is easy to lose yourself in. Despite the subject matter, her themes are thoroughly human in nature, as she explores socio-economic and historical aspects of a location to expose the impact of mankind. She journeys to remote areas for inspiration, such as the west coast of Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and the Southwest of America, most recently the Arctic north of Hudson’s Bay. A large part of her practice is researching the history behind the locations she studies, the geography, but above all, the local history. She records time passing.
The intensity of colour chosen to interpret what she sees creates work generally semi-abstract or wholly abstract without losing familiar signposts in the location under study. Her work is intuitive, fearlessly creative, and based on both written and observed knowledge. Rae is respected internationally as a great colourist, for her innovative techniques, and for her ability to convey images with simple brush strokes and abstractions.
I really enjoy the style of abstraction that she utilises in the creation of each piece. I think that the way in which she is able to convey such strong imagery through what appears to be a limited amount of brush strokes and a limited colour play shows how confident she is in her ability with her medium. I love using contrasting colours when I paint therefore I think that using this artist as a reference for my next paintings will help me have a clear idea of how to keep my painting style simplistic and allow my colour palette to be limited yet achieve a strong contrast in the colours used.
First Painting-
initial collage
I found this image of a stone statue that I was really drawn to and knew i wanted to make the focus of the piece. I picked textures and pattern that I found interesting and wanted to display in the collage also. I didn’t really think about the palette I was going to use for this which compared to the thought I put into my other paintings at this point I learned from doing this first one. I really enjoyed some of the patterns and shapes I chose.
Charcoal and wet studies ( acrylic paint, Indian ink, water soluble markers)
I kept pretty close to the original sketch at this point and added a lot of emphasis on the facial features which were a little distracting in my opinion. I was leaning towards the black and white acrylic painting that I completed as my main reference at this point.
Collage manipulated with photoshop and procreate
I wanted to mess around wit the original collage but ended up not really liking the results of my editing. I used the original collage more than these however I still thought that these were important in the process between the collage and the final painting.
Acrylic Painting ( made form all of the above)
when looking at the finished outcome I knew what mistakes I made throughout and therefore learned what I could do to fix it in the future. I think that the colours a little too bland and dull and most of the focus is brought to the centre of the painting where all the green is. I think that the colours got too muddy and murky due to not spending enough time mixing the colours and also not experimenting with the colour palette enough. I kept it too stale and unoriginal and it wasn’t something that I had a lot of enjoyment with. However I saw it as a learning curve and something to improve upon as my paintings could only get better from this point on.
Second Painting-
initial collage
I really fell in love with this collage, it is still one of my favourite, however i know now what i would have done differently with it. I used a lot of bright colours and textures to make something that was going to be really fun to paint. I wanted to make the orange glasses the main focal point of the painting and utilize orange throughout the painting.
Charcoal studies
I made some charcoal studies one which I rendered out and spent a little more time on than the other which is a lot lighter and less dense. I knew that taking two different approaches when doing these sketches would allow me to have a good range of reference for the painting process.
Collage manipulated with photoshop and procreate
I wanted to make the original image brighter and more garish, I really loved these edits looking back on it but at the time I thought that the palette would benefit from being more expansive. If I was to paint it again I would use these as a closer reference as it would make for a brighter and more appealing image in my opinion.
Acrylic Painting ( made form all of the above)
I wanted to try and make this painting a lot brighter than the pervious one, however I still think that if i had used the photoshopped refences it would have looked a lot more appealing. I really liked the glasses being the focal point, however I took the eyes away and utilised the absence of the human presence with the glasses. I think that this worked in favor of the piece however I wish that I had tried to cover it in a different way as it looks murky and a little strange in that area. I really like the fur textures that I added and how bright I was able to make it, although I knew that the things I had wished id do differently in this painting would inspire my other paintings moving forward. Although it was an improvement on my pervious painting so I was confident that they would continue to improve.
Third Painting-
I made this collage with the face separated to see how it would translate in a painting, I like this collage due to all the textures and colours but to avoid a muddy look I wanted to try using a lighter colour palette.
initial collage
Charcoal and wet studies ( acrylic paint, Indian ink, water soluble markers)
I did some fast studies to make some more material to work from. I thought that this would help the painting process along and offer something else that I could look at while painting.
Collage manipulated with photoshop and procreate
I really loved this edit that I made, I thought that the colours were interesting and the limited palette would be appealing, however I wanted to use more than one reference and thought that using multiple would become more helpful and result in a less contrived painting.
Acrylic Painting ( made form all of the above)
I wanted to use a lot of different colours and try and keep the palette bright and airy to eliminate the muddy look. I think I was able to achieve this and I really like all the diverse textures in this piece. I wish that I left some of the areas more open with just some outline and did something different with the face however it was a clear improvement from my other pieces up to this point and I still enjoy the busy texture filled aspect of this piece. However after the point of finishing all the paintings up to this point I know how I could improve upon it.
Fourth Painting-
Initial collage
With textures and shape in mind I created this collage; I felt like a lot of my other collages looked slightly stiff and the faces seemed to congregate within the centre of the page. I took correction on board and created a collage with no visible facial features and kept a close eye on diverse textures, patterns and shapes that would compliment one another in the painting process. Before I felt that I was making the collages something visually ornate and something recognisable instead of keeping what a finished painting would look like based off the imagery I was selecting. I really like how there are multiple shapes and textures within the centre of the collage that makes your eyes move across the whole thing rather than stay fixed on the centre like some of my other collages before.
Charcoal and wet studies ( acrylic paint, Indian ink, water soluble markers)
I wanted to continue creating tonal charcoal, acrylic and ink studies before the painting process, this is due to its ability to help me translate my ideas into a study before moving straight into the painting process. I think that having as many references as possible is always effective, it gives me an idea of what works well in a painting and what I might want to change before even beginning my painting. I enjoy keeping my charcoal studies limited to line work and some cross hatching in varied ways, thus making the translation of the shapes easier. I completed three wet studies before being wholly satisfied with my transition between painting and collage. I used a black Indian ink and some black and white acrylic paint. I tried to make one busier than the other with much more coverage of the page and darker tones while I kept one light and easy to translate. This would help me see what worked for each area of the collage best, in turn helping me with the painting process.
Collage manipulated with photoshop and procreate
Before I ventured into the process of painting I wanted to manipulate the original collage to make some bright variations, making the image for decorative and painterly, in this way it would allow me to see what my collage would translate like with acrylic paint before even beginning my painting. For this reason I think that this process is paramount in the transition from the first step of creating the collage and the execution of the painting at the end. I used photo editing software along with using procreate (a drawing application) to manipulate the colours, textures and add other imagery into the collage. I decided to add the image of the fish that can be seen in my first painting, I thought that it would add another element of interest into the painting and allow for more interest. I would go on to use all of these edited images in the process of painting, along with all of the charcoal and wet studies that I had completed prior.
Acrylic Painting ( made form all of the above)
I began this painting like I do all my others and added a base wash and some outlines all with acrylic paint before I began blocking in some of the colours I thought I may want to use. While doing this I was looking at all my reference material and had some idea of what I wanted to do with each section. I change my mind a lot in this process and begin experimenting with how much paint I should add to each section and how open I should leave it. For this panting most of the pale blue areas are left exposed to the original base tone with only some messy strokes of contrasting colours applied over the top. I think that this worked well especially on the left side of the painting which is a lot more abstract in nature than the rest. I in mind the style of Barbara Rea for this section and utilised her style of application and brush work along with her primary and contrasting palette to allow for a lot of freedom to this painting.
I wanted to have a balance between adding dark and contrasting primary colours along with light and airy pastel tones to the painting… I thought that this would be a great way to balance out the palette and make it easier to translate due to its busy nature. I wanted to replicate some of my favourite textures from artist Gillian Ayres, I really love the gestural style that she uses and some of the circular shapes that she utilises would be perfect with what I had already painted at this point. This style can be seen in a honeycomb like texture in the left hand corner, an area of the painting that I’m particularly fond of. The textures and colours that I used within the painting are things that I like in the final outcome, I used a lot of different brush types including palette knives and pieces of card to achieve lines outside the capabilities of a brush. The types of marks I was making were both helpful in achieving separation between all the different elements and also in experimenting with the styles of the artists aforementioned
I think that I was able to achieve a painting to a higher standard of skill compared to that of my three previous paintings and this learning curve was particularly due to taking on correction and guidance. I think that I was also able to achieve a brighter colour palette and one that is more appealing that that of the other three completed prior.
Fifth Painting-
Initial collage
This was one of the first collages that I made. I really enjoyed the top part of it which is why I wanted to make a painting from it. I wasn’t sure of the face and or how I was going to rework it in a way that would match the rest of the painting.
I took a few steps once again before leaping into the painting process. I made some charcoal and wet studies that were quite dependent on the initial collage. However when I looked over them I instantly knew I needed to do something to the face in the centre to balance out the rest of the piece. my attention was drawn to the centre which I didn’t want. I moved on to some smaller paintings and added some collage to the paper and painted over and around it to see what I could so with preexisting images. I added some netting to the top of the face which I thought hid it enough in the smaller scale. However I still wasn’t wholly satisfied with the outcome.
Charcoal and wet studies/ A3 paintings ( charcoal, water soluble marker, acrylic paint)
With the changes I had in mind I manipulated parts of the paintings I had created and added them over the initial collage to see how it would translate. I also played around with different colour palettes and drew over some areas to see what I could add into the final outcome. As you can see I didn’t have a plan and made a lot of diverse collages. I ended up liking the ones with a more primary colour focus. Yet I still wasn’t set on what I would do to the face in the centre.
Collage manipulated in photoshop and procreate
finished acrylic painting outcome
I used all of my materials at hand to create this painting. It went through a lot of back and forth between adding more details and taking large areas out and reworking large areas. I began painting the face in the centre but ended up disliking the amount of focus it brought to the centre. I then took some liberty and added some tissue shapes into the centre and tried to blend it into the surrounding portions of the painting. I found it getting muddy in some places so I tried adding some lighter colours which I now really like. I used the influence of artists Barbara Rea and gallian Ayers for a lot of this painting and I think their styles translate quite well into my own. I think that the way I translated the buildings is quite effective, I wanted the images to be unrecognizable at first glance, in this way the viewer would need to examine each part to decipher an image. however I do enjoy the outcome of this piece as a whole. Its large scale compliments the collage really well in my opinion. It was one of the largest scales I have worked on which comes with its own challenges, however I would like to work on a similar scale in the future.
sixth painting-
initial collage
I wanted this collage to have a mostly architectural focus as some of my others had a focus on material, texture and pattern. I didn’t know how it would translate into a painting from the start as I had only done a small amount of architecture in my paintings. I knew that I was going to be challenged with this one however I was excited about the colour palette of the collage from the start.
charcoal and acrylic studies
I made a quick painting and charcoal study to see how I was going to approach a larger painting. However I really didn’t like the painting, It was too crowded and muddy and I knew that I would need to use some similar textures throughout to create something that would look more cohesive. I also wanted to completely change the colours that I used due to it looking muddy and too crowded.
Collage Manipulated in Photoshop and Procreate
I edited these to have a more cohesive and appealing palette. I wanted to bring these tones into the painting and some of the smoother textures to create a piece that would be more appealing than the smaller version I had completed.
