University campus Suffolk

Still experimenting, I tried another style completely. Here I tried only painting the foxes face, as I feel it is representative in itself.

I did not paint this fox being vulnerable, I wanted this fox to be strong looking , and beautiful and elegant. A true British fox, symbolic of traditional Britain.

I did this using pencils and charcoals on canvas, I then went over with brown and red pencils. I actually created two of these paintintgs, I liked my first pencil drawing alot, and couldnt help myself but try and jazz it up making a bold colourful piece aswell. However, i feel this perhaps was actually a mistake and was not very effective.

i then painted another fox, a completely different style, just experimenting. I chose to keep the vulnerable fox position, however I wanted to keep it much more simplistic, I chose bright bold colours. black and white and red to represent the blood of the fox .

I think this piece is highly effective, strong and provokes ideas of life and death of the fox.

I left the fox with no face , as to leave it with no identity, I could have painted the fox, and showed the sadness ro the blankness of a dead fox, i feel I could have showed the pain, however I feel it is more effective to let the viewer do this themselves and give their own emotion to the fox.

After lloking at all this, Ive found myself coming round in almost a complete circle with my beliefs and finding my art leaning more and more towards not using any animal materials at all.

I began painting without materials.

My paintings of the fox I felt are different representations of the British symbolic fox.

My first piece< I did not like at all, I did not ike the use of colours nor the style of painting I had used. I did however like how I had painted the fox lying down, I felt it made it look vulnerable and provoked thoughts of fox hunting and death,which reminded me of when Damien Hirst said that “all art links to death,it has to,everything is about life and death”.

These thoughts of death and life and the life of the fox I feel may become very important within my work, and I feel I can provoke these thoughts without using animal materials, however I do feel I could make my art more effective by using them.

I have found this project very “stop, start”, but I am still very interested in the subject , however feel I have struggled with what I wanted to say. And so I thought….

Is it neccessary to use “animal materials ” in order to make your point within art?

Through my dissertation I had explored this , looking at artists that use animal materials and cause pain and suffering to animals in order to shock, and I also looked at artists that used animals as their subject but have no caused any pain or suffering.

After looking at these artists and their work, I felt I could come to a sort of conclusion that in my opinion, i do feel that using animal materials within art to express ones thoughts is highly effective, however it is not neccessary, and I do not believe that causing pain and suffering to animals is acceptable for the sake of art.

Animals are killed for food amongst other reasons and they d leave bi products such as skin and fur that we do not eat, I do blieve these SHOULD be used , so that the death of an animal is for a reason, or rather is for no reason and we shoudlnt waste those bi products.

As I have focused on the fox, this brings me to fox hunting as socially we do not eat fox, so surely I contradict myself by being all for the killing of an animal when we do not use its products, although foxes are killed in Britain as a cull, to save other species.

I shall not go into the huge debate of fox hunting in this country.

Other countries do eat fox and are killed for religious reasons as well as sport and tradition and culling, I do believe their products should still be used, even if for the sake of art.

Once an animal is dead it is dead.

This is where I focus my work, and whether I wish to use those materials within it or not. or if i can create my work without those materials and still express myself in an effective way .

I have framed a real fox face ( mask) as a starting point… I do think it is quite effective and looks striking , however I think perhaps as its behind glass, it would make no difference if this was a fake fox face, i could perhaps tell the viewer that it is real when its not.

If I am to keep the real fox face maybe I should not have it behind glass, but so the viewer can touch and feel that it is infact real, and that may shock and be more effective?

I liked these photgraphs as they were but I felt that they had not tackled the issues I had focused my dissertation on, the use of animal materials within contemporary art. Also the photographs were just of a fox hunt, they didnt mean anything, until i thought about the idea of the red. symbolic of blood, I linked that with animal materials, and thought i could use blood as a paint within the pieces. animal blood however , does stain, but does not give an eye catching effect, also on a gloss photographs the blood does not take to them.

This brought me back to my dissertation.. do animal materials have to be used to make the point ? or is the idea alone enough? i deceided to use red paint as my blood instead. I htought if i gained the right tone of red to make it believeable that it was blood, perhaps i could say it is real blood, would this make it shock art , even if actually it isnt?