University Campus Suffolk

My work is finally up. Looking around the studio there is so much fantastic work- The Degree Show on Thursay night should be good!

Final works

Over the past nine months I have produced a lot of different work, so I think it’s important to write a post outlines what paintings I choose to exhibition and why I chose them etc.

My main aim when setting up my exhibition was to utilize the space I was given as best I could, I hang four paintings in total, two of which where purposely created based around the size of the space.

Untitled (29) takes up almost my entire left wall. With this piece my aim was to see how colours react together to form space and how the spatial effects created as well as the size of the canvas effect how the viewer reacts to the painting. Initially I wanted to cover the entire wall so that the spectators peripheral vision would be engulfed. However after looking at the space even If I did cover the wall for the viewers vision to be immersed entirely he or she would have to be standing unnaturally close.

One of the reasons why Vir Heroicus Sublimis is so encapsulating is because you view it from the same distance you would any other, It just so happens take up your entire field of vision. For that to be true with my painting I would have had to have painted on the left and right wall also thus turning it into a kind of installation. And in addition to that I would have taken up space reserved for other work. So I choose not to.

With Untitled I focused entirely on creating and depth and dimension through my use of colour and application. Painting layer upon Layer exploring how the illusion of space can be achieved exclusively through colour. This work in particular was influenced a lot by Chris Finley and how he constructs his paintings by using ellipses of paint that change in tonal value giving his works and incredible multi layer feel.

I have also decided to use one of the outer walls of my cube, to hang a painting. Untitled (7) is a very small painting being 9.9cm on it’s longest side. It has been hung directly in the centre of the outside wall of the cube space which is 2.5 metres long. The most interesting thing about this painting, or about the way it is positioned, is that it forces the viewer to be a lot close to it than they normally would be. Due to the layout of the studio the maximum distance one can stand away from the painting is about a metre. This creates a lot of empty space when viewing the painting.

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Set Up Ideas

I have thought a lot recently about how I want to exhibit my work. In an ideal world I would have free reign of the studio and put up work however and wherever I wanted- but for obvious reasons this isn’t the case.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how I think I’ll layout my work (no doubt it will change when it comes time to hang) and what I hope to achieve by doing so.

Originally I wanted to have the largest back wall of my space (which is roughly 3 meters across) completely empty except for one very small painting placed in the center. I have never seen this sort of thing in a gallery environment especially when the wall in question is segregated from the other spaces due to it forming part of a cube. I think this would have been very interesting to see how the space around it would have effected how one “sees’ the painting and therefore ones reaction to it.

The cube space that I have been afforded is a perfect platform to showcase individual work- either very large or very small. Due to the viewer being segregated from every other point of the studio.

I was also toying with the idea of covering the entire cube in paint, As if it were a giant canvas. In a kind of similar way to Katharina Grosse. Except our painterly nuances would be different and as far as I am aware she has never painted all four walls of a cube.

To me the most interesting prospect for doing this would be the attack on the viewers senses. There would be nowhere to look (except for directly up) where you wouldn’t see a myriad of bright vibrant colour. I’m not sure exactly what affect this would have but all things considered I would imagine it would be very overwhelming and slightly confuse the senses.

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Literal and Metaphorical use of Colour and Space Cont.

Picking up from the last post… I plan to now paint a piece that deals with space in a different way, and to do that my process has to be changed from, you guessed it, the literal to the metaphorical.

I started out by experimenting with different compositions and particular thing I wanted to introduce into my paintings.

Unlike my more literal paintings this painting can be more aesthetically varied since I am not looking to achieve and illusion of space upon a surface. This therefore meant experimenting. I started by drawing a few on paper and then in my sketchbook, and then took the ideas I found and put them on board.

I had absolutely no prerequisite in terms of what I wanted it to ‘look’ like, just that I wanted the painting to trigger some sort of questioning between our relationship between space (the entity in which everything exists) and colour (the thing that allows everything to be realised)

Since the two are interconnected I wanted to have some sort of link between the two on the canvas. As is clear from the images I experimented with a few extremely different ways of doings this.

Untitled (the very bottom image) is the one I have hung in the exhibition. I think the reason I decided to paint something like this, as opposed to any of the others, is because of the way the whole of the painting is interconnected. The grey rectangle cut out from the coloured stripes clashing with the background colour is one of the key points of they interact with one another.

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Literal and Metaphorical use of Colour and Space

About a month ago, or possibly longer, I went to a talk where two students from The Royal College of Art came in and spoke about their work. The thing that struck me the most about their work was how metaphorical they approached their practice. I can’t remember exactly what each of them did conceptually, but whatever it was, it was very far removed from how their work actually looked.

This got me thinking, maybe I should look at making work in a similar vein? Up until now I have been exploring colour and space in a quite direct and literal way. I have experimented with colours, groups of colours, application, size, shape, scale etc. All of which are a literal means to an end- creating the illusion of space within the painting

But what would happen if I addressed the issue in a more metaphorical sense?

What if I redefined what I meant by ‘Space’?

Dictionary definition(s) of space

A continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied.

The dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.

Position (two or more items) at a distance from one another.

Be or become euphoric or unaware of one’s surroundings, especially from taking drugs.

The dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.

The physical universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

The near-vacuum extending between the planets and stars, containing small amounts of gas and dust.

A mathematical concept generally regarded as a set of points having some specified structure.

What If I changed space to mean the ether in which the totality of everything we know and can perceive exists?

What is our relationship to space when looked at in this way?

How does colour fit into the equation, since they are both interdependent on each other?

These questions seem to raise more questions than they answer, I believe the best way to go about exploring them is to look to an artist who has attempted something similar.

Barnet Newman discusses his ideas of a contemporary sublime in his 1948 article- The Sublime is Now. He takes a relatively ‘old fashioned’ (out-dated might be a better word) concept and re- defined for a contemporary audience.

Newman writes “Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.” Newman believes in the actuality of the sublime not just the representation of it. We are no longer living in a time of legend or myth, where religion is the pinnacle of human understanding. He believes that the sublime therefore does not lie in a perfect awe inspiring representation of a religious or mythical scene. It lies in ourselves, in our own realities and the only way this can be made manifest is through the abstract.

Instead of the viewer being directed at another world by a painting or a narrative, the true sublime is in the here and now. It is in the relationship between the viewer and the painting and the realisation of one’s own being.

Newman doesn’t go into detail and try to explain every nuance of his theory in his painting. He is more subtle and instead uses a kind of ‘metaphorical abstract painterly language’ to articulate his ideas. Such as the size and shape of the canvas, the colour field, and zips.

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