I have just started a what I think will be an ongoing photography looking at the objects and rituals associated with my Buddhist beliefs.
This first image is of a temporary shrine. I had limited space and only a few devotional items to make the meditation shrine with. However, it helped me create a small area if tranquility where I could meditate. I have used photoshop to remove most of the colour only the petals of the dying flower retaining their vibrant colour - emphasising the transient nature of beauty and life.
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I recently visited the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield and was inspired to create the following prints.
Fascinated by her use of line and colour I wanted to explore this in my own practice. While Bridget Riley’s pieces look at optical illusions created with colour and line I was more interested in line and colour. To create these pieces I used acrylic paint and a gelatin plate, the lines were created with various combs purchased in a chemist. While I call these mono prints – I layered prints of different colours over each other to achieve the effect I wanted to achieve. The refugee crisis has been dominating the news headlines and I have created this sculpture in response to the desperation felt by the refugees and all involved in the crisis. I’ve developed the tape figures and created the sculpture using wire, plaster, and wax. Initially I used beeswax, but found that encaustic wax gave a better finish and allowed me to add acrylic paint.
The concept that many artists and academics today see the life drawing class as outmoded and irrelevant to the contemporary artist frustrates me and so I have decided that through my work I will investigate if sketches produced in the life drawing class can be used to produce contemporary art and if taking the poses out of the traditional environment alters people’s responses for example the sexualizing of a pose in the media. Taking one sketch for a life class I have experimented with graphic pens with different materials graphic pens, tracing paper, digitally altering the image, repeatedly scanning and layering the image. I have also been working on two soft sculptures in poses from the life-drawing classes. With these figures I wanted to capture the voluptuous qualities of the models flesh and to investigate if people’s response to these poses changed outside the context of the life class. I used tights as the skin as I wanted to use a material that was associated with the feminine form. These figures alongside the earlier drawing experiments will be the pieces I show at the Unit 17 exhibition.
I have been creating some screen prints based on the figure and this has re inspired me to continue to develop my landscape mono prints that I first created last year. This time I have experimented both with size and colour. The colours moving away from the darker blues, purples and reds of a wintery East Yorkshire coast and countryside, to a brighter spring/summer pallet. I have used sketches from the life drawing class to experiment with screen-printing. Inspired by Japanese prints I wanted to keep the prints simple but expressive. I experimented with different papers and backgrounds; also I have experimented with layering the images in an attempt to challenge how these simple line drawings are viewed.
My research into femininity has led me to looking at how simply altering the emphasis of a pose can alter the femininity within a male or female mode. This has sparked my interest in how realistic a sculptural rendering of the figure has to be in order to express emotion etc. Consequently, I have been experimenting with what creating figures from wire, tinfoil and masking tape. Stripped down these figures appear more elongated than they are, but do they convey different emotions or are they more a commentary on different body shapes.
My research into femininity continues and alongside this I have begun to experiment with different processes to decide which is the best method to convey what femininity looks like in contemporary society.
I have been experimenting with drawing with thread – for these initial experiments I have used vintage erotic photographs as my inspiration. Continuing my experiments with printing I have begun to experiment with lino printing. My first experiments were based around the femininity project I worked on last year, experimenting with faces and images based on photographs from magazines. I have experimented with inks, inktense blocks, and various different papers to create these prints.
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AuthorSue works in mixed media with a particular focus on acrylics, textiles, and photography. Archives
March 2017
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