Final Pieces the making #1

Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse

Claude Monet (1840-1926) 

was one of the leaders of the French movement called Impressionism, which actually got its name after one of Monet’s paintings“Impression: Sunrise”. In 1860s he started to paint outdoors, instead of working in a studio, which enabled him to capture the atmosphere and the mood of a location, observing the changes of light and colour.

The Rouen Cathedral series is not the only project in which Monet painted the same subject many times observing the changes in colour and light, but it is one that he is most known for.Between 1892-1894, Monet had been working on multiple paintings of the cathedral, trying to capture the changes in colour and light at different times of the day and under varying weather conditions. The series consists of over thirty canvases, from which the artist chose twenty that he considered the bestand exhibited them in 1895 at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris.

Monet admitted that in his work, he had little interest in the subject matter – he rather focused on the fleeting atmosphere of the place, trying to capture a moment in time.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

During his lifetime, Van Gogh only managed to sell one of his paintings. 

In his art, he tried to portray the inner spirituality of the subject, rather than just its outer appearance. He developed a distinctive style with the use of thick, curved brushstrokes and colour. 

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) 

 Is often regarded as the greatest colourist of the twentieth century. He was one of the leaders of Fauvism (Fauve meaning wild beast). Fauvists often used pure, unmixed colours in their work, creating very unnatural looking, but extremely colourful art. They often painted landscapes or nudes, trying to get rid of depressing subject matter in their pictures. 

 

 

Studies

Colour experiments

In these studies I continued to make portraits, trying to focus on experimenting with different colour combinations and schemes, as well as using a more limited colour palette.

oil and dry pastel on textured board (mainly red + blue)

I used the forehead eye like in one of the previous sketches, so that it would cover up the normal eyes - this represents the mind, or the "inner eye".

 

 dry pastel and charcoal on textured board (mainly blue + yellow)

oil and dry pastel on board (mainly blue, orange and yellow)

 

 

 oil pastel and charcoal on two boards

First sketches

Looking at Bryan Charnley and Bryan Lewis Saunders, I decided to try out the self-portrait theme. After doing a few smaller sketches, I tried out a variety of media.

 white chalk on paper

oil pastel on paper

 

 charcoal and oil pastel on paper

 masking tape

 pen and watercolour on styrofoam

 watercolour on styrofoam

Wassily Kandinsky, Bryan Charnley, Bryan Lewis Saunders

I started my artist research with a few artists whose art I thought could really relate to my theme.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

A Russian born painter, teacher and theorist.  He spent many years studying the properties of colour. In his later work, he abandoned the use of subject matter completely, only loosely relating it to the outside world. He believed that art should have direct impact on the viewer's soul and not be restricted by the materialistic world.

Often basing his compositions on music, he tried to use colours in such a way as if they were instruments, basically trying to show what music would look like if it was made up of colours instead of sounds. For example, he would associate red (a very confident, glowing colour) with a tuba or a deep cello. A cooler colour, such as blue (which was Kandinsky’s favourite colour, representing peacefulness and spirituality) would be the flutes, cellos and organs. Black and white represented different types of pauses and silences.

 Bryan Charnley (1949-1991)

Growing up in London, Bryan Charnley suffered many nervous breakdowns during his life, that later made it impossible for him to to complete an Art course. He was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia around 1969. 

His later paintings mainly address his inner life, dreams and mental states. In his Self Portrait Series he experimented with painting under varying doses of medication. He committed suicide in July 1991.

 

 

Artist's note:

" I feel like a target for peoples cruel remarks. Especially negroes.  What is going on?  I had sweet talked a girl to  suicide because I had no tongue, no real tongue, and could only flatter. This is very much involved with why I am ill.  The nail in the mouth expresses this. The people around me cannot understand how I was so stupid and cannot forgive me.  I can only say that I cannot socialise at all because of my weakness verbally and this is been, produced a tragedy. Thus I am a target. The nails in my eyes express that I cannot see whereas other people seem to have extra sensory perception and I am blind in this  respect.  Love hurts. I keep well way now from women on the advice of my psychiatrist.  On two Depixol tablets plus two tablets of anti-depressants, Tryptisol."

Bryan Lewis Saunders (1969)

Born in Washington, Saunders is a performance artist, videographer and performance poet known for his disturbing spoken word rants, tragic art performances and stand-up tragedy. (CLICK)

Artist's statement: 

 "After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of self.  So I devised another experiment where everyday I took a different drug and drew myself under the influence.  Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage.  I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me."

10mg Ambien

 

 15mg Buspar (snorted)

 1 sm Glass of "real" Absinth

http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/

http://www.bryancharnley.info/1portriat.asp

 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/wassily-kandinsky-1382

Final Major Project

For my final project I decided to look at the subject of Imagination and the Human Mind. I want to explore different ways in which our imagination can alter reality.
To start off, I created a mind map of some of the things related to this subject that I might look at:

- dreams
- fears (e.g. fear of darkness)
- fairy tales, stories, books
- schizophrenia
- interpretation
- artists: Wassily Kandinsky, Bryan Charnley, Bryan Lewis Saunders, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse
- abstract art
- colour
- form
- state of mind
- desires
- ambitions