Tuesday Tutorial – Subject Proposal

The mind is something I have always been interested in and I intend to refer back to my notes to help inform my future work. From pondering the following theories/themes on the conscious mind I have narrowed down what really interests me about the mind; dreams. I am interested in why we have them, the symbolism of dreams and why people have matching dreams, whether these common dreams are universal or simply cultural, and most of all, the reality of dreams.

Internalism and Externalism (two differing beliefs about the location of the conscious mind) and Synesthesia (a neurological condition in which one stimulation of the senses evokes another, for example, a sound producing the visualisation of a colour.

We questioned a lot of philosophical ideas about the relationship between our minds and our reality. Why is it we don’t question the oddness of dreams the way we would in our waking state? Do our dreams temporarily become our reality if reality is defined by what we perceive through our eyes and our brains?

Basically I would like to add a dream like quality to my Subject work, being mindful of surrealism, abstract painting and metamorphosis to inform my work.

 

Cathays Library Exhibition

I’m really excited about the exhibition in March this year, especially as there’s so many of us who are interested. We’ve all got different jobs to do to make it happen and we’ve all got different ideas for what we want to make.

I’m planning on making a painting based on the concept of a zombie virus outbreak in Cathays. I think Cathays is a perfect setting for such a scenario as it is basically formed around a massive graveyard, and being a mostly student populated area, it feels pretty lethargic and zombified anyway. I plan on doing this in the style of the old horror movie posters we all know so well, here are some examples of the Ghana movie posters I looked at for my Subject work last year.

  

There’s something comical about all of them, but ‘I Hate My Village’ is just hysterical.

I love this creepy look they have, it definitely had an impact on my field work, for example…

I crudely painted my boyfriend’s face to look like a zombie and photographed him, here are some oil pastel drawings I made from them.

 

I like the high angled one on the right, it has more of a sense of impending doom. I also like the idea of a sickly yellow background… it’s crazy how much this project harkens back to my work last year.

I think i’ll make some more drawings, but i’m most likely going to convert that drawing into a painting and give it a title, something like ‘The Daze of Cathays‘ or ‘The Daze Over Cathays’, hopefully people will appreciate my attempt at a play on words.

Monday Life Drawing

I feel it is important to keep myself drawing, not only because I lose my touch if I don’t draw for a long time, but also it is good to include drawing in my Subject work as it helps me gather ideas.

For example, my aim is to make plants look alive, so by observing the human form and practicing drawing it I can somehow blend the two together (which is what I plan to do for the rest of the year).

Here are the 5 minute poses.

  

 

I was warming up here to be fair… No tonal work. All lines. Da Vinci would not be impressed. Oh well, here are some longer poses, possibly 10 minutes?

 

 

And I believe this final one was 20 minutes, believe it or not.

---

Second week in with Barry.

Not quite sure what’s going on in these ones…

Although like the shading in this one.

I’m going to keep drawing people in my sketchbook and try to incorporate some of the movement into my paintings of plants.

Field term 2: Anna Bhushan – Mindful Meditation

Yesterday I attended another one of Anna’s meditation classes, the first one of a six week course she will be running, each roughly 2 hours long. Yesterday’s session was basically a recap of what we did with her in our first workshop for ‘Art and the Conscious Mind’ in which we focused on Mindfulness and Awareness of the breathing.

We mainly paid attention to the air entering and exiting the nostrils, taking regular breaths and counting them as we went along. Focusing on one’s breath can actually be quite difficult as our minds tend to wander, we need some kind of stimulation all the time or we just get bored. But giving all of one’s attention to one’s breathing can have surprising effects, mainly beneficial. For example, during yesterday’s session I forgot where I was at one point, and felt as though I was floating at many points because of how relaxed I felt. However, I felt very drained afterwards. But I have not had such a good night’s sleep as I did last night in a long time.

In our workshop with Anna a few weeks ago, she taught us about Ensos, which are a Japanese symbol that represent personal creativity. They are essentially circles drawing in one arm movement from one end to the other. No two look the same, and I believe you can tell a lot about a person by how much pressure they applied to the paper, how much ink they used, how much space they occupied etc. Below are some photos of the Ensos I drew.

 

I am going to try my best to attend all of Anna’s sessions to see if there are any changes (hopefully beneficial) to my work. I believe breathing is everything, it affects everything we do in life without us even realising it and therefore it is something we should take the time to pay attention to every now and again.

Field term 2 – Dream Painting

I have thoroughly enjoyed this term’s Field module as I feel I have indulged in something I have a great interest in.

After reflecting on what we have spoken about in the past few weeks I decided to make a small painting of a dream I once had. It was James’s first workshop that inspired me to make this piece as we experimented with the idea of painting visual experiences. I decided to paint a (different) dream I had in a rough and childlike way. Here is the finished version.

It is something I have always wanted to do but never have, so it was really exciting doing so. I also found it oddly personal; giving life to something my brain conjured up for me. It’s weird to suddenly be faced with something that has only existed in my head before.

I have been thinking about the theories of Internalism and Externalism and I have come to a conclusion that it is an entirely subjective opinion and, at the end of the day, is about one’s beliefs, and it can’t be argued about.

Overall I am very intrigued by the idea of the mind not being entirely reliant on the brain, which is where my interest in dreams comes in. James made an observation of dreams which I also often think about, and that is the connections of symbolism between dreams. For example, many people dream about their teeth falling out when they are particularly anxious about something. I have found myself wondering recently whether this was a common dream 100 or 500 years ago, or is it purely a cultural thing? Are dreams full of symbols which we can’t understand, or are they simply manifestations of the things we are exposed to? Perhaps both?

Either way I find it dead interesting, and intend to write about it in my dissertation.

Here are some quick sketches of my ideas for a painting.

Here is my final painting for this module, based on my drawing of a dog.

I didn’t stick to the loose painting style I had intended but I was eager to portray this dream in a very detailed way as I wanted to see it with as much clarity as possible. I’m really happy with the outcome and I want to make more of them, hopefully relating them to my Subject work.

I figure this shouldn’t be too difficult to do as my goal for Subject so far has been to make plant life look human/lively. For this painting I have portrayed a dog as an aquatic creature with gills and fins, therefore the main outstanding theme within both these modules is metamorphosis. I plan to merge the two as I have really enjoyed observing my dreams (unconscious mind) and recreating them through paint.

Field – Robert Pepperell 2nd Lecture: Location of the Conscious Mind

Throughout this session I had ‘Where is my Mind?’ by the Pixies in my head as the question we were tackling was: Where is the mind located?

A.) In our brain? Our Body? Neither?

B.) When/Where do we end?

We studied this painting by Johannes Vermeer titled ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ 1662/63.

 

Robert quipped ‘It’s interesting how painting – just coloured pigment on a surface – makes one imagine a person, a life…’ and explained how, although this ‘woman’ is not actually there, there is still a life behind (or within) the painting. We as observers can’t tell what the woman is thinking or feeling, and further yet, where the feeling is; in the paint or in our minds? I said ‘perhaps it’s in the artist’s mind, as they are the only person who could have known for sure what the letter was about, and what the woman would have been feeling’, but Robert quickly came back to the original concept: ‘But where is the thought?’.

Annoying, right?! I come out of these lectures wanting to float around and say ‘what is life? What is life?’ over and over. But nonetheless I keep coming back, because it’s interesting stuff.

---

Theory time!

Internalism: The theory that the mind is in the brain.

People who went/go by this theory are (from left to right) William James (b 1842), Hermann Von Helmholtz (b. 1821) and Chris Frith (b. 1942).

 

Helmholtz believed that experience is subjective, that our sight is made by our brains, the things we see are not actually in the real world.

Backing that theory up is Chris Frith who believes, for example, we are not seeing a tree for what it is, we are seeing a picture of it in our head.

This is the general belief within science today, that thoughts are generated by the brain, an organ inside our head.

This theory has basically been proved by DECODING NEURAL SIGNALS: Scanning someone’s brain whilst they are having a thought. With the use of a machine invented by Jack Gallant – a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley – a person’s thoughts can actually be reconstructed and projected on a screen as an image. This person will watch a movie, and their brain patterns (being cleverly scanned and recorded) will basically match the movie. The image will be fuzzy and somewhat off colour but the basic shapes and movements that are going on in the original movie will be reflected in the person’s brain scans. This kind of means that viewing and imagining are the same thing.

Whoah.

Below is an example of the outcome of this experiment.

Robert said: ‘You will never find a specific location of the brain for consciousness, as it is all conscious at the same time‘. He explained that there are ‘Neural Correlates‘ but this is not evidence as to why we think.

Externalism: The theory that the mind is not in the brain.

Robert introduced us to a phenomena called ‘Change Blindness‘ which is a flashing image in which something changes and generally goes unnoticed. This is essentially how magicians work.

Humans can only focus so much; the world is what we see/perceive/interact with, and this becomes our reality. If something goes unnoticed by us, it pretty much doesn’t have an existence as far as we’re concerned.

A way of summing up the Externalist view is: ‘We are not our brains, it’s the outside world which we rely on.’

(Clark, Philosopher, 2008) Believes by using technology we are spreading our minds out into the physical world. E.g. if one was to know a friend’s phone number off by heart and call them, or not know their number off by heart but instead find it saved on one’s phone and then call them, the outcome would be the same. I suppose this is the Quantum Physics way of saying technology is latching onto our brains…? Eating our brains?… Zombies? Basically, technology is giving us the tools we need to bridge the gap between our non-material minds and the material world.

Leonardo DaVinci believed that when it comes to Externalism and Internalism, we only have to choose between them if we put boundaries on them both. DaVinci being the ‘No Lines’ man disliked the idea of outlining objects/figures when drawing them, as lines don’t actually exist. When it comes to drawing there are no real lines, just dark shapes against light shapes. As humans we can never be sure where we end and where objects begin, it is only because we place boundaries on everything in life that we have an idea of what reality is.

I grabbed another quote from Robert saying: ‘Skin is a permeable membrane that does not separate us but connect us to the world’. Which basically backs up what DaVinci was going on about. The idea of the part boundaries play in our perception of reality is really interesting.

 

 

Venus Fly Trap Painting

This painting slowly became the bane of my life. I have been working on it since before Christmas and it has undergone many, many changes. I struggle with knowing when to stop working on one painting to get on with something else productive, therefore I have decided to be less ‘perfectionist’ and more loose with my painting. So far I have really liked the results.

This painting was made by taking inspiration from my early crayon drawings, particularly these…

I think this one (above) has a very ‘print’ style about it, that is something I could consider doing…

Here’s my painting in it’s varying stages…

Here is my painting finished, I’m not 100% happy with the outcome and could probably continue working on it if time was no boundary, but I am eager to move on to other work.

I was eager to use red in this painting, but I shall save that for the later paintings when I paint them in full bloom, just to make them look angry. For now i’ll stick to cool colours to show a journey/progression/change. I wanted to make the fly trap look as though it was ‘spaceless’, not floating in space exactly, but not sitting on a window sill either. I thought of Georgia O’Keefe and the way she placed her objects in endless space, and although there is no clear description of where they are, they definitely have spacial qualities. So by studying the tonal qualities within her painting I tried incorporating this skill into my work. I think this was necessary as it looked so lonely in the space I put it in and therefore improved it.

I think it’s funny how I have gone from painting and drawing very tightly to deciding to keep my work loose and expressive. As arty-farty as that sounds it means I will work faster, enjoy what i’m doing, and probably make more interesting paintings.

Dissertation Ideas – Pre Proposal Stage

After having a talk with my chosen Constellation tutor Mahnaz Shah, I felt a lot clearer on my ideas for my dissertation, which, of course, are only early ones. I knew I wanted to write about painting, for definite, and eventually decided my main interests in painting include surrealism, abstraction, symbolism, application and the unconscious/subconscious mind. I am particularly interested in dreams so I came to Mahnaz with those basic ideas.

So far I am open to either writing the full 10,000 words, making a presentation based on a 6000 word paper, or making an artefact (most likely a painting) and writing 6000 words about it.

Some artists I can refer to in this early stage are:

Edward Wadsworth – whose work I discovered in the Tate Modern gallery in London – created very unsettling, nautical paintings that look dreamlike and unreal. Was originally part of the Vorticist movement and eventually joined the Surrealists. I find his sea-side paintings very affective; the composition, his use of colour, his subject matter and his overall painting style collectively give me the creeps. I find myself physically drawn into his paintings but frighten myself as a consequence.

Sidney Nolan, whom I have recently found out about, illustrated the story of the Australian bushranger Ned Kelly in the Australian outback. I not only admire and relate to the dreamy (and slightly creepy) style in which he painted, but also his choice of paint application. Application is something I am fascinated with in the subject of painting, and something I intend to express in my dissertation.

As a starting point/potential basis for my hypothesis Mahnaz suggested ‘The Relationship between Dreams and Painting’. I was hot on this as I am learning about the unconscious mind and its relationship with art in my Field module with Robert Pepperell. I’m finding it really interesting and could definitely ramble on about it through my dissertation! So I have taken this hypothesis on board.

I am also going to look into the writings of Carl Jung, as I am aware that he had an interest in symbolism and man’s relationship with symbols. I think I will find this challenging as I am a slow reader, but a way around this is to plan exactly what information I want to gain, find it, use it to back up my hypothesis and then reference it. I shall begin looking for important and relevant information next week using the sources available in the library.

Constellation – Mahnaz Shah: Essay

Essay Question:

How would you define the concept of the ‘Strange’ and the ‘Ugly’ within your subject specialism? What is the difference? How can it inform your practice? How did the Mannerists apply it in their works?

I found this handful of questions frustratingly personal and difficult to put into 500 words which had to include an introduction, main body AND a conclusion. However, I appreciated that this was probably a pre-dissertation warm up and that it is important to learn how to find your own research.

Here is my essay.

Q.) How would you define the concept of the ‘Strange’ and the ‘Ugly’ within your subject specialism? What is the difference? How can it inform your practice? How did the Mannerists apply it in their works?

 

In this essay I will be discussing the meaning of the Strange and the Ugly, how the Italian Mannerists applied these themes in their works and how I, as a Fine artist, relate them to my own work.

I would define the concept of ‘strange’ as something that we as humans perceive to be real even if we know that it isn’t. For example, the alchemical engravings of the seventeenth century displayed unusual, perhaps even disturbing imagery, yet because these engravings were so beautifully illustrated, one could believe they were based on real life. For example, Johann Joachim Becher’s 1664 engraving ‘Oedipus chimicus’ (DE ROLA, S.K. (1988) The Golden Game Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century. First paperback edition 1997. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.) is very visually precise, yet it includes images such as Mercury (the winged messenger God) and owls with human heads.

I personally think certain art to be ‘ugly’ if it seems to only be art for arts’ sake. If there is no beautiful intention behind the work, then that surely brings new meanings to the word ‘ugly’. For example, Damien Hirst’s ‘A Thousand Years’ 1990, (The Guardian. (2012) Damien Hirst – Review. [Online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review [Accessed: 18^th December 2014] (consisting of a cow’s head, colonies of breeding flies, and a bug zapper) is received in many different ways. When viewing this installation one is faced with both life and death, and, depending on one’s philosophical bend, it can be seen as either ugly or beautiful, or perhaps both. However, Hirst’s work is well known for having an element of shock, and I believe shock can be distracting and perhaps too obvious. If one compares Hirst’s work to the subtlety of the Mannerist’s, Hirst’s work simply looks vulgar. The Mannerists played with what was believed to be strange or ugly in their time. In the 16^th century it was a general belief (particularly within the church) that anything of exceptional beauty was evil. Florentine Agnolo Bronzino’s painting ‘St John the Baptist’ (Spyros Thallassinos. (2013) http://makeyourideasart.com [Online][Accessed:18^th December 2014] would have confused and shocked people all at once, as he had depicted John as being a young, handsome, scantily clad man. This was the Mannerist’s way of using beauty as a tool to confuse the church. It is this kind of subtlety that is absent from Hirst’s work, however if there is any kind of subtlety, it is most likely only existent in the artist’s mind.

The ‘strange’ and the ‘ugly’ differ because what one might consider to be strange might simultaneously be what one considers to be very beautiful. I personally believe beauty is found in strong emotion. Beauty – as an opposite of ugliness – is a concept that is all round considered good or positive. But as a word it also implies something that is artistic and moving. Therefore, I believe that if art does not have an affect on the viewer emotionally, it is fair to consider it ugly (from the viewer’s perspective, anyway).

If I can remember to consider the emotion in my work, I can feel confident with being able to manipulate these two concepts in a way that has an impact on the viewer. In other words, by connecting the ‘strange’ and the ‘ugly’ to emotions, I can create something that is emotionally stirring and therefore, affective.

The themes of the ‘strange’ and the ‘ugly’ are constantly apparent throughout life. Artistically, they can be used as tools; much like the Mannerists did by subtly contorting beautifully painted religious figures into impossible stances. The subjects I have been discussing are very personal and I shall embrace my own new-found definition of the ‘strange’ and the ‘ugly’ as I believe it will push me to make art that is not only authentic, but also connected to me personally.

Bibliography

 

• DE ROLA, K.S. (1988) The Golden Game Alchemical Engravings of the Seventeenth Century. 1^st Paperback Ed. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
• THE GUARDIAN. (2012) Damien Hirst – Review. [Online] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review [Accessed: 18^th December 2014].
• THALLASSINOS, S. (2013) Masters of Art: Agnolo Bronzino (1503 – 1572) [Online] Available from: http://makeyourideasart.com/art/masters-of-art-agnolo-bronzino-1503-1572/ [Accessed: 18^th December 2014].