Analysis – Assignment One

What were your first ideas in response to the brief?

I was instinctively drawn to the Nature’s Larder theme, to the point where I barely even considered the other options. I knew that I had access to a lot of items that could work with that idea and I didn’t want to make things too complicated to start off with. I also thought that there was lots of scope for taking it beyond a literal representation of the theme.

What was your first impression of the project?

My honest first impression was ‘on no, not drawing’ – I’m not the most confident of artists and haven’t drawn much beyond cartoonish things for my sons for a long time.

Which techniques did you explore through your selection, drawing and mark-making?

For the selection of materials I used a mixture of instinct, touch and sight, whilst bearing in mind the qualities I wanted to represent. For the drawing I used pencil, charcoal and a selection of drawing pens. I realise the selection was quite limited, but I wanted to use the things immediately available to me as a jumping-off point.

What do you feel are the strong points of your work and what are its weaker aspects?

I would like to think that my drawing is actually better than I initially thought, I’m actually quite pleased with the charcoal apple and pinecone study that I produced. I found it hard to relate the referenced artist’s work with my own and I don’t think those ideas come across very well. I do think the later pictures show some increase in freedom of expression which I believe is the point of this exercise.

What new skills have you gained?

I’m not sure that I’ve really gained any new skills at this stage. As I’ve studied art in the past, this project has felt more like a re-awakening of very dormant existing skills, such as the drawing and research.

How would you like to develop your work in future, based on this first project?

Based on this first project, I will definitely be working on improving my drawing skills – I think this will help me to understand the things I’m trying to represent and improve my confidence. Developing my confidence will also help me with freedom of expression and taking ideas beyond ‘correct’ representation. I also plan to use a greater range of techniques and materials in my work.

Research – Artists

Alison Carlier 1971

Alison graduated in 1993 with a BSc (Hons) in Occupational Therapy. She went on to gain BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2002 and an MA in Drawing in 2013. She also won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2014 with ‘Adjectives, lines and marks’. The piece is an extract from a reference book about Roman excavations in South London read aloud by the artist. It describes a “hard, red pot” Roman pot found in Southwark.

Alison is a sound artist. She uses pre-recorded or live spoken text which allows the listener to visualise their own ‘drawing’.

Speaking about ‘Lines, adjectives and marks’, Alison says “On reading the text aloud, I realised the piece worked similarly to prose. It exists in your head, rather than in a made or finished way. This open-endedness puts it in a similar place to some drawing conventions.”

Alison has an unconventional approach which challenges the convention of drawing.

www.alisoncarlier.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29228688

 

Research – Artists

Louise Bourgeois 1911-2010

Born in Paris, Louise studied mathematics at the Sorbonne before turning to art in 1932 after the death of her mother. Though she is probably best known for her sculpture, she was also a painter and printmaker. She never claimed to be a surrealist, but her work is highly symbolic and draws on themes of loneliness, conflict, frustration and vulnerability. She drew on her personal life and childhood for inspiration.

Within her drawings, she used repetitive lines and marks to emphasise her themes.

www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-borgeois-2351

http://www.moma.org/explore/collection/lb/index

 

Stage One – The Objects

The Objects

 

I decided that I would try to represent ‘harmony’, ‘abundance’ and ‘hidden treasure’ as overall concepts, choosing objects that also held some of the visual and tactile qualities on my list.

 

Resin necklace – light, warmth, chain, circle of life, sun, glossy

Faux rosehips – bright, smooth, hard, stores, seeds

Pine Cone – dull, muted, lumpy

Coconut purse – nuts, hidden treasure, glossy

Apple – smooth, nurture, goddess/mother nature

Fungi print scarf – muted, abundance

 

I took a series of photographs in different arrangements.

Not too keen on the arrangement here – too static, just a collection of objects.

These two pictures have better balance and give more of the idea of cycles and chains with the necklace and purse-cord.

This arrangement is much better – much more warmth and more dynamic.

Reflection

The final photograph represents my overall interpretation of ‘Nature’s Larder’. The colours combine to give a sense of harmony, with the natural items suggesting abundance and the arrangement suggesting the hidden/revealed treasure. The feel is quite autumnal, which wasn’t entirely deliberate, but autumn being the season of ‘mellow fruitfulness’, it’s worked well. I could re-work this by expanding the arrangement to represent all seasons, thus adding more emphasis to the concept of life cycles.

Stage 1 – Gathering Materials (Brainstorming)

Of the four themes the brief offered (Tropical Tourist, Style Lounge, Iced Landscape, Nature’s Larder), Nature’s Larder was the first that jumped out at me. This one seemed to ‘speak’ strongly, immediately throwing all sorts of themes and ideas my way. I decided to go with instinct on this one.

 The brief asked me to think of visual and tactile qualities, properties, materials and objects that my chosen theme brought to mind. It was surprisingly hard to think of purely visual qualities, which is interesting because sight is often the first way a human engages with the world around them. Anyway, I fared better with tactile qualities – my list included ‘smooth’, ‘fuzzy’, ‘hairy’, ‘juicy’ and ‘spiky’ to name a few. I’m drawn to textiles largely because of the tactile qualities, so this is probably why this list was longer.

 I moved on to types of foods – I was trying to think of things in their natural state ‘primary producers’ if you will, (going back to secondary school biology lessons here), and came up with various things. When I looked into it, it made me then think of what those producers need to survive, thus leading onto ‘survival of the fittest’ as a concept. I also came up with ‘food chain’, ‘life cycle’, ‘hidden treasure’, and animals laying down stores for winter.

 I didn’t have a specific concept in mind at this point, but I was thinking of an overall theme of cycles and trying to represent the links between living things, perhaps a little bit beyond the scope of this initial assignment.

 Let the gathering begin!