Peter Blake -Painting Style

A few years ago I saw this painting in the Tate Britain:

Peter Blake ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ 1983

This highly stimulating visualisation of this well known poem has been stained in my memory ever since. I loved the flatness of the images, which look all cut and pasted together from different sources. I was also fascinated with the fact that this artist was clearly a very capable painter, yet chose to simplify some areas and make them 2D and cartoony anyway.

Throughout this year I have been studying his paintings/prints of people. I have been referencing him since I was painting Spiderman earlier on this year, and perhaps without his inspiration I would not have moved on to make my portraits which I consider to be very successful.

Through trying to copy Blake’s style I have actually found my own. I have chosen not to distort my portraits as much as he did because I felt that would take away from my original idea/concept. However, certain subtle techniques have certainly edged their way into my own style, for example: adding a glint of white to a person’s lips or eyes makes them look a lot more human. A lot more natural. Here are some examples of Blake doing this:

Ebony Tarzan 1972 Peter Blake born 1932 Presented by Rose and Chris Prater through the Institute of Contemporary Prints 1975 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P04048

He has certainly remained one of my biggest influences throughout this year and I have learned a lot from scrutinizing his paintings whilst trying to gauge his painting style. It has been a frustrating process trying to show his influence in my work, to make it clear for others to see, but now at the end of the year I realise it doesn’t matter, as he was the reason I decided to make portraits of my own anyway.

5 key points – 10/05/16

Documentation:

1.) Ceramic Faces and Claustrophobia

2.) Face Painting

3.) Felt Masks

4.) Latest Paintings – Technique

5.) Degree Show Layout

Contextualisation:

1.) Francis Bacon – Self Portraits

2.) Peter Blake – Painting Style

3.) Cindy Sherman – Self Portrait

4.) Billy Kheel – Felt Hustler

5.) Grayson Perry Tapestries

Felt Masks

As opposed to the previous masks I made in stitch, my new masks which are made of felt have a lot more impact in terms of colour, composition and subject matter. I was able to get right to the point.

This idea came from the artist Billy Kheel, whom I discovered through social media (which is quickly becoming the most affective way for artists to recieve recognition and branch out to niche groups of people who otherwise would never have heard of them.) Kheel is prolific and makes highly detailed felt pictures, including things like a basketball player’s tattoo in them. Although this method is not always as quick as one would expect – for there are a lot of layers to be considered and cutting out and general placement of the felt to be thought about before stitching/gluing them on – it certainly has a fuller turnout than anything I made with stitchwork.

I had ideas bursting from this method right away and by this point I had already decided to make my work about fears and hypochondria, so I made each mask and painting as a representation of a different fear of mine.

First felt mask – ‘Sleep Apnea’

First I made the gaping mouth mask (above) to show the swelling of the throat of someone who suffers with sleep apnea, and how scary it can be to suddenly come awake because one has stopped breathing. I then made the same picture on my face with facepaint, photographed it, and then painted it.

Here are the rest of my felt masks ready for exhibiting, in order of completion:

Second mask – ‘Cardiophobia’

Third mask – ‘Germophobia’

Fourth mask – ‘Claustrophobia’

Francis Bacon – Self Portraits

Although I have always been mesmerized by Bacon’s painting style and warped representations of reality, I have never intended to reference him as an inspirational artist because it seemed too obvious, as his work is so widely known among artists and admired by painters. Despite my own admiration for Bacon’s work I thought I should be looking a bit deeper, that is until I began making my own self portraits and realised everything I wanted to convey correlated with Bacon’s work; both the aesthetic and mental components of it.

A while ago I saw one of Bacon’s self portraits in the Cardiff National Museum, not looking for his work particularly. However, I felt I had to photograph this piece because of it’s composition, the way the flesh seems to squirm, the abstracted form and the colour relationships, all piled into what Bacon considered appropriate for a self portrait, representing the heavy emotions he carried throughtout his life.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) ‘Study for self-portrait’ 1963, Oil on canvas

Self taken photograph.

Almost subconsciously I chose to incorporate a lot of his signature images into my own work, such as the boxed off, claustrophobic ‘square’ format (below, for example), the use of flat, obscure backgrounds, and the less commonly used diptych layout (second to the more popular ‘triptych’).

Francis Bacon ‘Pope 1 = Study After Velazquez Pope Innocent X’ 1951, Oil on canvas

The figure is lightly bordered off by a chalky white line, despite it’s light application it carries so much meaning and changes the feeling of the painting completely.

The right section of my first painting shows how the facepaint was being wiped away, and it somehow looks as though my skin is being wiped away with it, or being moved around grotesquely. I applied the paint quite loosely here, ending up with a more ‘painterly’ style. There is movement in there that can be seen in Bacon’s portraits, but perhaps in a more subtle way. There is also a similar sadness in there, whilst Bacon’s work is known for being emotionally charged, he somewhat concealed the sadness and isolation in his paintings with angry, revolting imagery that immediately comes off as frightening.

Francis Bacon, ‘Study for a self-portrait – Triptych’ 1985-86) Oil on canvas.

Having a troubled upbringing  whilst finding his identity and his obvious homosexuality (something his father resentedand despised, creating a negative relationship between himsef and his son) his work was already plagued with negativity. However, following the suicide of his lover George Dyer in 1971 (during that time Bacon was also dealing with the deaths of other close friends and his childhood Nanny) he was shaken from the experience and his work was ultimately taken over by it. Death and time passing became Bacon’s somber new theme, which is the basis of the triptych above, evidently lonely and bleak.

I have acknowleged my work is similarly personal and unfortunate to Bacon’s. Titled ‘Hypochondria’ my work represents the sadness of phobias and the control they have over people, using my own phobias to do this. Phobias create unhealthy habits of avoidance, repetative negative thinking, illogical feelings of fear and isolation, because one believes these feelings cannot be helped. Having dealt with various kinds of experiences like this myself, I thought the most raw and honest way to conduct this would be to base it on my own fears. So Bacon’s self portraits in particular are what have inspired me the most for the way he held importance on his own identity as well as his sitters. 

Latest Paintings – Technique

Through making all these different paintings I have somewhat developed my own style and have learned how to apply the different skills I have acquired over my three years of uni in useful ways. For example:

In my first painting I knew I wanted to make one side dark and one side light, simply to see what affect it would have on the overall feeling of the two portraits. Inspired by the idea I picked up in Poland back in November, I wanted to make multiple paintings in one, so one canvas but two paintings, with a shameless line down the middle. I saw this in many old religious paintings of scenes from the Bible, so the line created a kind of ‘story board’ look. Below are a couple of chapels I visited which contained these sorts of paintings, unfortunately I have lost a great deal of photographs through technical difficulties and can not show as many as I would like:

I loved the seriousness of the paintings but also the roughness of the dividing line between them, which began my journey with these large paintings of mine.

The left side is much softer, particularly in the hair, whilst the right side is a lot more dry and scratchy looking, showing discomfort. The left side is much more eerie than the right, which is ironic because it is the lighter side. Although the portrait on the right is dark and has a ghostly tint to the flesh, it looks more vulnerable and innocent than it does spooky.

I kept this in mind for my last painting:

This time I think I managed to achieve a scary dark painting, with the one on the right looking still and innocent. I wanted the mouth face painting to immerge out of the darkness, so I painted everything on top of a very dark background. To create a sense of depth or the person being in a room I painting a poster that was present in the background so that I wasn’t simply floating in space. I thought it was necessary as the portrait on the left had a plain background, which I chose because I wanted the object to look as thought it was seated in a pose waiting to be painted. This looks purposeful and therefore a little bit less scary than the left painting, which looks like it is been hiding in the dark and the viewer has walked in to find it there staring back at them.

My least favorite painting:

Although this painting has its good bits (i’m quite proud of the nose and mouth, for example) I just felt I had to move on from it because I started to waste time fretting over it. I believe I was less mindful whilst painting this one, most likely because I was so excited to do it I didn’t take the time to plan it out first. I didn’t pay enough attention to the lighting or stance, which are important elements of a painting that can easily go overlooked.

Whilst painting this image onto myself I literally felt repulsed at the idea of having ‘germs’ on my face, which is why I was so excited to paint it. I had a strange connection with this painting and wanted it to be central in my show, but I couldn’t help feeling dissapointed with it because it didn’t turn out as affective as i’d hoped and became frustrated with the idea of it being central to my entire degree show. I have since let this go, but I know if I had paid more attention to the lighting in particular, I would have felt more satisfied with this painting.

Grayson Perry – The vanity of small differences

In December 2015 I went to see Grayson Perry’s tapestry exhibition in the Victoria Art gallery in Bath. This collection of tapestries were made in Flanders Tapestries, Wielsbeke, Belgium (2012). His work there included subjects such as modern day living, family, relationships, identity, status, wealth, consumerism and death.

All of these subjects related quite closely with what I want to convey through my own work, being about identity and the fragility of being a human being. I was also greatly inspired by the intricacy of the woven images, and how Perry recreated logos and slogans we are so often exposed to in our modern consumerist society by using such a traditional, classical process.

Textiles have made up half the majority of my 3rd year work, and seeing Perry’s exhibition and reading about each individual peace made me realise I could create my own strange world through this medium, I didn’t always have to paint.

Unfortunately photographs were not allowed in the space, so here are some photos from the exhibition’s book which I bought at the show:

‘The Agony in the Carpark’ (above) shows the character we are following as a young boy being embarrassed by his step father who is a club singer. It is a reference to Giovanni Bellini’s ‘The Agony in the Garden’ (1465) which I really like because it holds the same dry humour and subtlety I hope to achieve in my work. Perry is somewhat comparing these two very different pictures in a way that emphasises the silliness of modern day living.

This image above was my favorite tapestry (out of 6), it shows our main character as an adult with his own family and a comfortable home. It contains so many images of general items we all come to own in our own lives and each object is slightly oversized and ridiculous. It made me uncomfortable to look at because it is almost like looking at your own life. This image inspired me the most and therefore drove me to make work in this medium.

 

 

 

Degree Show Layout

 

I decided to exhibit 4 felt masks and 3 paintings inspired by these masks in the degree show. Here are the paintings with their matching masks in the order I intend to present them:

Spiderman mask – Claustrophobia

Meningitus cells under Microscope – Germophobia

Gaping Mouth – Sleep Apnea

Heart – Cardiophobia (fear of heart disease)

I have 3 walls and I think this will be a good amount of room to distribute my work in a way that doesn’t look too crowded, but also spacious enough to each be appreciated separately. One thing I am still unsure about (scarily close to the deadline) is wether I will title them individually so they make a bit more sense. I shall have to wait until they are up on the wall to see if they would benefit from having titles at all.

Formative Assessment – 29/02/16

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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

4.) Spider Mask Painting

5.) Sewn Masks

Masks – Old and New

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.

Cindy Sherman – Self Portrait

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…