5 Key Points – Context
1.) John Stezaker
2.) Victorian Death Masks and Phrenology
3.) Billy Kheel
4.) Lucien Shapiro
5.) Cindy Sherman
5 Key Points – Documentation
1.) My Masks and Claustrophobia
2.) Face Painting and Painting
3.) John Stezaker Inspired Painting
5.) Sewn Masks
As I have been going along with my work throughout this year, I have been sewing masks out of canvas. It began with my interest in the head (mainly Spiderman’s head) as the main object of identity and all the possibilities of it.
The masks have evolved somewhat as year the weeks have gone by. I stopped looking so intently at Spiderman and started thinking about what he meant to me.
The first…
To the last…
I like these both, as the first one embodies the idea of a sort of inadequate superhero and the newest one holds my own identity away from Spiderman in it.
I’m somewhat in danger of confusing myself here, as I have so far aimed to keep Spiderman as a subtly running them throughout my work, but this last mask suggests I am moving away from that.
Or perhaps viewers will be able to tell the connection I am making between Spiderman and myself by keeping the ‘Lady Mask’ mouthless and passive suggests a Spiderman influence, but perhaps my own feminine identity mixed in with it. I shall experiment with both and see what works best.
Ever since I have been putting myself into my work I have noticed a similarity with the work of Cindy Sherman, an artist who became well known in the 80’s who dresses up as different people and photographs herself in various poses.
The makeup is always over pronounced in a purposefully crude attempt to re-countour the face to become somebody else’s. It almost looks clownish…
These photographs are meant to represent film stills or memorable moments in time.
Sherman questions things like modern day society, the affect the media has on every day life (such as film, television, magazines etc) and also what it means to be a woman in this world. I relate to her use of mixed art forms, as she combines theatrical/performative art with photography, a basis I have recently been making work from. I have also begun to touch on my femininity being part of my own identity, therefore Sherman just popped up from my artist memory as someone who would be perfect to refer to.
I particularly like her clowns for their warped backgrounds and unbearably bright colours…
Artist Statement:
My work is a comparison between my childhood fears and adulthood fears, focusing mainly on my tendency towards hypochondria. The image of Spiderman was my starting point as he represented my childhood fears, and from this image I have been thoughtful towards the connotations of a superhero mask and their stripped down representation of identity. The expectations of a superhero to be unbeatable is relatable in day to day life, and this vulnerability of being human is what I aim to convey.
I have been working in a mixed media format with the intention for each artefact to inform a new one. Beginning with my simple mask designs which are made from raw, unsophisticated materials like canvas and felt, to my finished paintings which are made through slightly more refined processes, symbolising the switch from childhood to adulthood.
I have found a particular interest in Peter Blake for the way he brashly combines fantasy with pop culture in his paintings, using bright, saturated colours to achieve this. I have also found Cindy Sherman to be an inspiration for the way she uses her body to fuel her practice. I have taken on her ideas of modern day identity and added my own personal aspect to it, using specifically my face/head as a model. In conclusion, I have been using self-portraiture as a means of documenting my own individual response to fear.
My latest creation was made from yet another face painting. I took the design from the first canvas mask I sewed earlier this year, where I was originally going for a ‘Luchador’ style.
I enjoyed making my first ‘face painting’ painting so much that I decided to make another one. I had hit a brick wall and worried these were too literal, but I wanted to make something new and exciting, and I wanted to enjoy making it!
Here are some photos of my painting in progress…
And here it is very nearly finished; i’d perhaps like to add darker tones to the subtle hair…
I am particularly excited by the layers I have made to create this sickly, unbearably luminous colour scheme. I am also proud of the textures I have created; some slimy, some rough and dry, some shiny etc.
I am still interested in this idea of Spiderman having part of my identity, but now I want to marry it with portraiture in a kind of comic bookish style, hence the bright colours and dramatic rectangular format.
I have recently discovered the work of Billy Kheel in a quest to find inspiring textile artists to give me some more ideas. Turns out there are just as many exciting textile artists out there as there are painters!
Kheel’s work explores the effect of material and process on the emotions involved in the piece.
What caught my eye first were his felt pieces with L.A. Athlete designs on them, his most recent work. This was due to the bright colours, block text and seemingly simple process. They have an attractive ‘baseball card’ collection look.
Wilt Chamberlain
Felt, Thread 42” x 24”, 2014
Fernando Valenzuela
Felt, Thread 42” x 24”, 2014
I also admire the way he conveys the likeness of people through such an unsophisticated material as felt. As I am looking for this idea of an alternative portrait I find this really inspiring.
As someone who is a slow worker, I feel it is important to study artists who encorporate simple process into their main body of work so feel encouraged to do the same.
I have recently discovered Shapiro’s work which consists mainly of masks made from throwaway objects. His work tackles subjects such as time, multiple identity and addiction (rather similar themes to my own).
He also creates an interesting combination between the old and the new; specifically between ancient tribalistic imagery and urban modern day style.
His work itsself exhibits an addictive, obsessive quality as it consumes so much time. His meticulous assemblage of the collected ephemera shows the meditative process to be part of the work as well.
Female Mating Ritual Mask – Lucien Shapiro
(Shapiro combining objects from today such as bottle caps with the idea of ancient ritual)
Male and Female Mating Ritual masks worn together
I found this video (link below) of Shapiro taking part in a Harvest Moon ritual on Friday the 18th October 2013. The artist’s blood was drawn as a way of thanking the fruitful summer season and welcoming the winter season of harvest and hunting. This seemed to combine sculpture/collage with performance.
Lucien Shapiro – Hunter’s Moon Ritual
This ritual performance made me think of when I made my face molds. Watching Shapiro have blood drawn from either hand made me uncomfortable, and this fear I have of needles reminded me of the fear I felt whilst making these molds, almost like it was a ritual in itsself, perhaps a ritual which involved replicating one’s own identity so I may live on in the material world once I have passed into the next one.
Part of the inspiration for my focus on portraits and the head in general is the ancient process of Death Masks, particularly the ones from the Victorian era as they had such a morbid fascination with death and this appeals to me. Either a memento for loved ones or perhaps a reference for a portrait painting.
Also, the Victorians knew how to make a nice cast, often from either wax or even bronze. Comparing this ancient Chinese death mask…
With the masks made in the 1800’s…
It is interesting to see my own facial casts compared to these masks of the dead. The meticulous detail in these masks above are so eerily still, highlighting the discomfort it would cause if the subject were alive. In a nutshell, it is doubtless that these were recently deceased people.
When a person died, they would also sometimes be placed in lifelike poses with rosy colouring and sometimes even open eyes painted over their eyelids (I have once experienced something startlingly similar to this, showing that not all modern people think the Victorians were mad).
Robert Noel was a Phrenologist whose work took place in the Victorian era. Phrenology is (more like was) the study of the shape of the head and how it could potentially affect the person’s personality. A very vague study but no doubt interesting; the ability to determine a person’s actions by examining the lumps in their head, not much unlike a horoscope or palm reading.
All these old beliefs and rituals have been giving me conceptual ideas to further my work and it’s meaning.
Stezaker creates collages which cleverly combine classical movie stills with things like vintage postcard images. These below are part of a series titled ‘Masks’ (2006).
Stezaker combines male and female identities by splicing various parts of the subject’s faces and putting them together in a way that looks flawed in a somewhat elegant way. I myself have been playing around with thoughts on my own identity and the ‘masks’ people wear, but looking at Stezaker’s collages pushes me to keep moving, that I can use quick processes like this to make more work.
These collages break identity down into it’s most simplistic form. As I am considering the concept of masks in my own work, I find these really helpful. The shameless blockiness of the photo layering somehow does not disrupt the joining of the images, as one can still see what Stezaker was aiming to do. I stole this idea of ‘lazy photoshopping’ into my work.
I have recently completed another painting which took me slightly longer than my last one as I came to a lot of difficulty and unsurities. Here it is finished.
This collaged idea came from my research on John Stezaker.
Using the same format as the last painting (having two in one) only with a slight twist. I went with this idea of defragmentation of the features to create a glitchy affect. Personally, I aimed to create a sense of panic and claustrophobia in this painting, hence the separation of the eyes. These were inspired by the plaster masks I made whilst creating alganate molds of my face. They represented the hard shell which enclosed my face and made me feel so uncomfortable. I liked the duality of one mask allowing my mouth freedom and the other my eyes, as I could not do both at the same time.
I see them as painted collages, as there is a faint image of spiderman’s symbol where my eye should be – spiderman being my own symbol for fear. Below are some photos of my painting in progress.
I didn’t like the rectangular eyes section looking so realistically painted as it didn’t add any other dynamic to the painting, and the running of the paint was too graphic and brash for my liking, so I simplified it and made it look comicy.
I much prefer it like this. Still unsettling but in a less obvious way.
I wanted the left eye to look wrong somehow, so I took inspiration from Peter Blake’s ‘Tarzan, Jane, Boy and Cheetah’ (1966-75) for obvious reasons (wonky eye on man).
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