Now you’ve reached the end of this project, schedule a feedback session with your personal tutor.
You will need to select a small number of works to discuss, as well as noting down a few questions to ask about your research and progress.
Submit your selected works and your questions via this assignment activity along with your feedback preference (video or written) and ensure you have communicated with your tutor to schedule a tutorial.
The Butterfly Book/Butterflux
Mixed media on canvas with hinged mount 50 x 40 cm x 5cm
Front cover
Inside
Opened Book
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The Butterfly Book was created to be a hybrid object, a turning or folding of the picture plane.
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Elements within it are partly inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's Butterflies and partly by the delicate and sensual white textural surfaces created by Robert Ryman.
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Frank Auerbach's words had an impact on my process "Painting for me is a set of connections, a set of sensations of conflicting movements and experiences, which somehow, one hopes, has congealed or cohered or risen out of the battle into being an image that stands up for itself", Frank Auerbach.
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I want to leave a timeless mark on the world and make things out of paint. Layer on layer, slowly building a universally understood language.
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The intricate scale patterns of Klimt's paintings are employed with hybridity (the scale patterns cut out in 3D, a mix of pattern and paper), which communicates universally understood patterns and surfaces.
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I thought of the object aspect and how the textures sit back and forth and dance over the surface like a butterfly's movement.
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The line, colour, and tone further define the texture on the surface.
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I used theatricality to reveal and open the new picture plane as Hieronymus Bosch did with his triptychs.
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The concept of how I present and curate my work and what and how I make it are foremost in my mind.
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I renamed the book 'Butterflux' and, with the inspiration of the Fluxus artists. Can or should it be made into a music box or game?
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The language of painting is difficult to learn. Will I ever be fluent, and whom am I aiming to converse with?
Figure 1 -Vincent Van Gogh
- Butterflies Oil on canvas
Figure 2 -Robert Ryman -
Untitled Oil on unstretched linen 1961.
Figure 3 -Gustav Klimt
Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1901.
Video of the book opening and closing.
Side view to showcase the textures.
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The book unveils the structure and materiality of the contents inside (Concealed and revealed).
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The tactility and texture are important to me, I know that now.
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The timeless quality of my mark, my process and my struggle with the materials I use are, why I want to be an artist.
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The way I look and touch the spaces, and the ways that the materials present themselves in the world are important to me.
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The physical spontaneous and joyous process of smoothing, smearing and sculpting the paint over the surfaces, enhances and defines the patterns and structures within the picture plane.
Questions
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Are these hybrid patterns what I seek to inspire me further?
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Does my butterfly book have a presence?
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Is it an object with a moving picture plane?
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It is textured, with joints (visible).
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Wet media has dried and caused the textured surface.
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The door may need extra support depending on if it is placed on a wall or opened up in a corner say.
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Could extra pages be placed inside to convey a narrative?
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The piece is quite feminine and delicate is that what I wanted to convey?
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The colours are quite serene and calm, is that what I wanted?
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I like the concept of the book, maybe I haven't achieved quite what I am looking for yet. Butterflux may be the prototype for something to develop, rather like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon.
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The scales and ornamental patterns of Klimt's work intrigued me.
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The movement and all overness keep viewers' eyes moving around the painting.
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Is it Art Nouveau that calls me or patterns in Art?
I used to be scissors.
Mixed media on a 50 x 40 cm copper support.
Reflection.
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I tried to create a rhythm over the surface with paint. I had Ryman in mind with his process of dancing the textures over the surface. Mine is of a more varied and layered composition.
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The thin metal copper plate support is heavy with surface texture.
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These textures have underlying pops of copper glints (erasure by sanding) creating harmony across the surface.
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In a picture, with a dancing rhythmic picture plane, unclear shapes are cut off intentionally by the picture edge to promote tension.
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Copper glints peep through the picture plane from erasure by sanding, intriguing the viewer.
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The objects are painted (the scissors) and the object ( the copper/metal support) is usually made into scissors.
Put a cork in it.
Mixed media on cork tiles 2 x 30 x 30cm and 30 x 40 cm
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The used cork tiles/boards are layered into objects by repeated touch.
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Sensory looking is fabricated by the thick crackled texture applications with impasto, structure gel and even congealed paint.
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I considered the shapes within, both organic and geometric and how they would 'sit' together and create harmony and balance in the picture frame. The geometric lines within the external shapes demanded the canvases be hung diagonally in the space around them.
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Squeezed, dried, spread poured paint and metal leaf all combine in a wave of organic line flowing over and down the entire picture plane. Put a cork in it to stop the flow as the title suggests.
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Digitally framing the works with borders is itself a hybridity with a mixture of the physical and digital. These colours can be quickly exchanged to suit the context or situatedness required.
Close Up images of the textured surfaces
Questions
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When will I paint something I am proud of?
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Although the paintings I created fit the coursework, they don't make my heart sing.
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I want to paint in a language that hasn't been invented yet, but I need to learn to speak it first.
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Does my unique view of the globe, from my career and continued travels, allow me to see the world's cultures and history differently still, I mean, not just from a Western perspective? Is this what situatedness refers to the interconnectedness of meaning, my sociocultural, historical, and/or geographical contexts?
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I want to convey experience and memory of place merged with material qualities.
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I want to use the opposing forces of materiality to convey tactility in my work, for example- thin and thick paint, soft and hard surface tension, and marriage of geometric and organic lines. Do I need to get inspiration? Do I need to find that particular area that I desire to recreate? Is Art Noveau a starting point?
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Within my artistic approach, do I still have a psychogeographic response to place/displacement in both natural and imagined spaces?
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Does the power of place, design, motif and symbol in the real world and in my imagination/memory hold the key to my painting process?
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How do I sense, interpret and understand those qualities through the materials and how do I use them? Is it just a case of experimenting and taking risks until I find that sure something?
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Which of my work is worth pursuing? How do I decide?
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References
Fig 1- Gogh, V. (no date) Butterflies [Oil on canvas]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Butterflies_(Van_Gogh_series)&oldid=1122776389.
Fig 2 - Ryman, R. (c.1962) Untitled [Background Music] [oil on stretched linen canvas, 69¼ × 69¼ in (175.9 × 175.9 cm);]. Available at: https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2018/may/29/the-man-who-turned-robert-ryman-onto-jazz/ (Accessed: 3 February 2023).
Fig 3- Klimt, G. (10901) Judith and the Head of Holofernes [Oil on canvas, gold and silver leaf]. Available at: https://www.gustav-klimt.com/Judith-and-the-Head-of-Holofernes.jsp (Accessed: 11 February 2023).