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Final 10 images exploring painting sculpture drawing and photography

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Project Statement

As an artist I enjoy exploring new techniques and ideas, for this project which I have titled form and folds I explore the representation of women and the feeling of being watched. This began after an exploration into the work of female sculptors, Camille Claudel and Mary Buchanan whose work was not only less represented and taken much less seriously than their male counterparts but also in my opinion much more sensitive and thoughtful. I sought to explore their work primarily in sculpture at first but in recreating the poses using my own body it evolved into a series of drawings and then paintings that represented not just their work and my body but also greater concepts such as redirecting the representation of women to women artists and the idealisation of women rather than the reality. I wanted to convey the full gambit of my own femininity and identity as perceived by others.

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looking at making a little zine of all my work for this project

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Some more work i did on this painting I wanted it to still look sort of unfinished with all the focus being on the gaze and the face my eyes are closed i'm presenting myself yet protecting its a powerful pose and it took time to get the little smirk right but I think it worked out well, I'm unsure when to stop it might be easy to keep going forever but I've reached a happy place with it at the moment

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The (nearly) finished paintings from the recording along with all the references that I printed out, I've gone for quite a realistic painting style here to the other piece but the background still shows through as well as the charcoal which i gone over, This separates them from the background while they are still a part of it, models on display lined up like ornaments, the feeling of being watched in our most private moments the intense paranoia is something i've had a lot of experience of in the past during low points in my life, also the feeling of your body not being your own as much as it is by the person observing it. John Berger wrote in his book ways of seeing that women have two versions of themselves one that is themselves and another who watches their other self observing them. Here I have five versions of myself but i'm not watching myself i watching you watching me.

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Untitled 1996 and untitled 2012 by Cecily Brown, when looking at lending some abstract and figure together Cecily Brown is another obvious inspiration, mainly she does large messy paintings thickly coated with faces and figures melting into the background, but I also really like this little orang piece with the rabbits its obviously very different to what she usually does and is famous for but it's just as striking to me and both are inspirations

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Although the recording of painting the background failed this one did manage to make it through, I did a little more work on it off camera, just to fill in some details. I wanted this to be very similar to the first in that the background is still mostly visible but to include more poses, prior to painting I created a few mock-ups of what I wanted it to look like, also pinning up sheets of the various poses that I had chosen and rearranging them to see if I liked a different layout better.

The file was too large to be on tumblr directly so I have instead uploaded it to youtube as an unlisted video only accessible from this link: https://youtu.be/cfkTSICD72k

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created a gif of my sketches in preparation of painting the big piece they aren't all the right way around but that's fine by me. I wish I had access to a better camera

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Sketches done in pen, looking at line mostly, these were the first sketches I did but I'm not uploading everything in order. I'm trying to exaggerate things and trying to work quickly doing what feels right and not what is particularly accurate. That's why ive gone in with pen instead of pencil you cant erase it, I did try on the bottom the the left as messed up the arm made it far too long but ultimately it's better to just move on and try again.

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preliminary sketches I made before undertaking my final piece to figure out the layout and which elements from the development stage to take forward, i have already decided by this point which images I felt worked best and that I liked a balanced composition over a more chaotic one and I really liked having the centre figure looking back

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Jenny Saville has been an inspiration for years now, I love her graphic distorted bodies and fleshy forms, she is hugely successful selling her work for millions one of the very few women to break through into the big bucks in her lifetime.

her work is captivating and engaging to a wide audience, they see themselves reflected in it her cold accusatory stares and the rich and juicy way in which she paints the flesh. Very different to the way I like to paint using gestural strokes, texture and abnormal colours

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I selected one pose in particular that I felt reflected a lot of things that I was trying to embody, a confrontational gaze from me to the viewer, the overall pose of the body and hand inspired by Camille's work and a sense of vulnerability. I didn't want all the work I had done on the background to be covered up so I tried to keep the painting and sketching loose, I first sketched it out in charcoal and then went over it with oil paint, I have a varnish for finishing and sealing everything together.

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After painting the first I decided to create a second smaller piece using my cut offs and having acquired more gesso, using the very same techniques as the first, unfortunately the recording failed, the app is a little unreliable at times so I usually take a test recording first but this time my phone overheated and app crashed, I wish I had more professional equipment sometimes like a good camera to take time-lapse and photography and my own laptop that I could download programs onto but I'm nothing if not adaptable!

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"i could feel you" 2014 by tracey emin, I learned about Emin's figure drawing after watching a documentary called what do artists do all day, I was very familiar with her earlier work as most students at this point would be, but did not include drawings of any kind, these paintings I believe are made in a similar way to what is shown in the documentary, drawn from small edwardian nude photographs.

Part one is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZBkxqNJC9g&ab_channel=ArtDocumentariesArtDocumentaries

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a timelapse i created using the app Time Spirit on my mobile phone which is on a tripod ring light but i opted not use the light and just use my overhead lighting. I really wanted to document the creation of this larger canvas from start to finish, I had already applied gesso to the rest of it, I had ran out and so had I cut off a section, it was a very fun process and like other impressionists i wanted it to be almost a print of my body, i used mainly my hands to spread the paint and ink around as well as cloth for scrubbing and a spray bottle of water, I also used a piece of acrylic to scrape in large gestural motions, echoing a lot of the techniques I had been using during my sketching and development stage. I consider this to be a final piece, perhaps not the only one but when making I am mindful of not really doing anything too different from what I have already been practising, the kinks are all worked out now it's just time to get busy. One of the final steps you see is me going over the majority of the piece with water soluble crayons this creates an interesting texture of layering which I have used before such as the piece used for backdrop, I wanted to bring in some of those same elements but this is not a continuation of this work even though it is figures on an abstract background it is completely different in style, concept and motivation. I want to show how much I have developed as an artist to include contemporary issues and not just visually pleasing art that I enjoy making. Don't get me wrong though I had great fun making the entire project.

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exploring line, tone and silhouette the backgrounds were made by spreading paint, spraying it down and pressing the paper together giving it a rub down and the peeling it apart, some of the paper ripped but that's fine as I have canvas i'm planning to use anyway for the future finals. I keep going back to finals and mentioning them even though i know that's not really the point of this subject but I feel like all of this inquisition has to culminate in something, a display of what I have learned and that uses the techniques and imagery that has really captivated me.

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Another small sculpture made with air dry clay exploring folds, I wanted to try something really smooth like a person folding in on themselves enveloped by their folds.