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Here I was focusing on movement in the face. I accentuated this with a random slurry of colour. The photo’s have a space age, alien feel to them. There is an almost primitive feel to this as well.

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Final Evaluation

I began my Final Major Project experimenting with colourful rings on ceramic wheels. This inspired an interest in movement and how we can document random movement with art. From this shower of ideas, I started to search for artists who worked with similar ideas. Upon coming across artists like Heather Hansen and Jackson Pollock, I ultimately decided to solely focus on our individual movements.

While working through my project, I don't feel like my narrative had a sociopolitical stream running through although I did look at colours used with Marcey Hawk. Specifically colours representing anxiety and shame in a society that prohibits female breasts, although only in small detail.

I looked at Jackson Pollock due to his pioneering technique of drip painting. This is because I felt this was very relative to my projects developing narrative on motion. In reflection to Pollock's work, I created my own drip paintings (and eventually for my final piece). Firstly, I made drip paintings with Dulux gloss paint on long pieces of wall paper. I considered this experiment to be a combination of Pollock and Heather Hansen's 'Emptied Gestures'.

These artists definitely shaped my finalized art style when it came to my final drafts and experiments, as opposed to other artists I approached such as Yayoi Kusama and Giacomo Balla. The main thing I took in while researching this diverse range of artists was that each artist was influenced by multiple art movements at a time. This taught me to open my mind more when it came to absorbing visual stimuli.

Within my practical work, the main difficulty I faced was translating my perspective of movement into physical art. I overcame this with more self reflection in what I visually see in motion. Translating this onto paper through various mediums, creating individual strokes.

Upon looking at my blog, there are self reflective notes that I made on the go that showcase my development in concept and design. This was useful because I was able to go back and take in things I had previously learned and also to do things in different ways in order to achieve more varied results.  I feel that this has improved my maneuvering as an artist and opened more experimental pathways for me to work with.

During my FMP, the main practices I worked with was painting and mark-making. I created loads of test pieces with paint, wood and body parts and explored a range of alternative mark making. This refined practice overtime prepared me to put my practice to light. In result, I created a final piece I am happy with. It is limited but not all at the same time. Not perfect but still visually enticing.

The main audience I wanted to reach to was everyone on a general basis, but specifically other people my age. The reasoning for this being that I wanted teenagers my age to question their surroundings and realize that everything they do, down to the last physical sense, will never exist again and you can never create that exact movement/moment.

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Marcey Hawk art;

Image one: Nipple Stipple  Image two: Devious Image three: Unleashed Marcey Hawk’s work is comparable to Jackson Pollocks work with the stroke work. Both artists use a careless fluster of movement from their working limbs/breasts. I love this concept as I have mentioned I love the individual and infinite results of a thoughtless movement recorded in art. It is interesting to see a breasts expression compared to Pollock’s generic drip painting. The first image is called Nipple Stipple and is a very repetitive nipple print painting documenting Hawk’s breast tip. Through different colours, she expressed different feelings and emotion such as anxiety with the pale and dark forest greens. The anxiety of nudity, in a society that has made a taboo of such a natural thing. I have experimented with this nipple ‘brushing’ within my sketchbook. Creating ‘nipple prints’ and nipple strokes/smears.

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Self reflective notes

Looking at artists such as Heather Hansen and Jackson Pollock has made me observe the movement of us humans. Movement in the sense of how every move we make, be it the swing of a limb or the infinite amount of finger movements we make, it will never move in the exact same way again, surrounded by the same particles of energy or environment etc. To document these movements in art (such as in Pollock and Hansen’s work) is a very cool idea for me and is something I now plan to explore further. Looking at the pieces I have made previously with mark making only inspires me to experiment with more mark making.  With my next pieces, I plan to add more dimension and create a texture based aspect to it that you can feel. I want to paint with extra thickness so that when it dries you can touch the piece and feel the contents of the image. I also plan to experiment with stones and leaves etc

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Marcey Hawk

Marcey Hawk is an American artist who creates paintings using nothing but her breasts. She describes it as “intimate,erotic, explorative and unique with a hint of whimsy. Chaotic yet contained abstraction.” [Saatchi Art. 2017. Marcey Hawk | Saatchi Art. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.saatchiart.com/boobiepainter. [Accessed 18 May 2017].] A very accurate description from the artist themselves. What initially intrigued me was the use of breast as this is a sort of whimsical approach to abstract painting. However, looking deeper there is an actual sincerity in the experimentation. 

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Giacomo Balla - “Dynamism Of A Dog” I decided to look at motion/movement in art through a different perspective in order to see other ways it is presented and perceived by alternative artists. Looking at Balla’s painting, motion is presented in repeated imagery, blended in with the black colour of the dog. The kinesis in the image relies on multiplication,blurs, echoes This is an interesting contrast to the previous chaos of Pollock where movement was everything but obsolete in a realism sense.                                          

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Heather Hansen is a visual artist based in New Orleans, USA. ‘Emptied Gestures’ is a kinetic art piece created with Hansel’s own body movement. I love this piece because it documents the human body’s movement and is limited to the furthest radius possible the human body produce. Hansel combines this practice with her own dance moves, which I suppose also makes this project performance art. The results are stunning, recording very gracious and free flowing therapeutic kinetic rhythms. The first thing Hansel’s work reminded me of was snow/sand angels. A kinesis very similar to this work. You can see the areas that have had the most movement on through to density of the blackness. This is married with a beautiful wispy and almost smokey effect. 

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Here is a small project me and and some college friends created. Upon analysing Pollock’s work, I decided to create my own representation with my class mates and the results were very interesting. We created this using vinyl matt paints but applying it with out hands and feet. In the first image, we have my piece. Judging from the piece, you can see my movement is very frantic, confrontational and almost rushed. There is moderate calculation in the paint movement but the rest of it was random limb movements. The colours were selected at random which I think had an effective result, creating more visual chaos. The second image is a piece done by Aby Davies. This is interesting because when you compare her movements to mine, you can see that hers are more gracious and almost feminine with more calculation.  The third piece is by Megan Hookins and this one is far more minimalistic, however I enjoy this effect. Perhaps these paintings reflect our personalities and approaches to random situations? Another artist I see comparisons with is Heather Hansen, another artist who I have looked at. She explores motion with her body, very similar to how we have executed our pieces.

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Here are three pieces created by Jackson Pollock that speak to me on a deeper level. The main reason Pollock’s work attracted me in the first place is because all of his technique is based off of kinetic energy which is very much relevant to my project’s narrative. During Pollock’s formation as a fine artist, he was producing semi-abstract works with obvious influence from European expressionism, Cubism with artists such as Pablo Picasso and even Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera. It wasn’t until 1936 when Mexican muralist David Siqueirous introduced Pollock to liquid paint which in turn developed Pollock’s pioneering style of ‘drip painting’. A style of painting that was subversive and almost shocking to the art world at at time. For example, in the first image we have Pollock’s piece “Autumn Rhythm” which showcases the warm and rich tones of Autumn but also retains a charred and slightly scorched post-summer colour scheme. What accentuates these colours is how they are used by Pollock. Upon viewing the piece, we see Pollock has initiated the piece with an almost honey-neutral beige, typifying the autumnal theme. Upon this bed we can see aggressive licks and slaps of white, almost symbolizing the last remnants of the sun during autumn, desperately trying to brave through the rest of the bedlam. Upon these marks we have moody, ominous and almost violent lashings of black, vaguely representing the decaying state of nature within autumn. To me, Autumn Rhythm represents the clashing of hot and cold, the clash between the dying light of summer and the menacing approach of winter. A representation of the clashing factors all fitted into one large abstract piece. In the second piece we have “Convergence”. What interested me about this piece initially (aside from the visual aspect) was the name and how it was relative to the context of the piece. Considering the meaning ‘to converge’ is defined by things meeting at a point, it poses questions such as ‘what exactly is it in the image that is meeting certain points?”. Could it possibly be that there were actually originally lines underneath the top layer of paint that met at specific points? Is the whole piece just an ambiguous statement? Another interesting element is the thickness and fullness of the paintwork/strokes as compared to Autumn Rhythm. I feel that in Autumn Rhythm, the strokes of paint were more calculated and gracious as compared to the utter chaos of Convergence. You can see big splodges of white coupled with random spittings of red, yellow and blue. Another interesting thing about the use of colour is the abrupt introduction of the primary colours over the fairly monotone black and beige. I believe that this piece is an act of rebellion against typical art constructs, especially for the time of creation.

Lastly, we have “Number One” which is a more light-hearted interpretation of Pollock’s drip painting style. When I say light-hearted, of course the image is still very zany and eccentric, but the use of less harsher colours dampens the usually strong effect of Pollock’s work. To me, ‘Number One’ signifies the start of a collection of similar type drip paintings. I don’t feel that this piece has a specific theme or narrative although I still get all different vibes from the piece. For example, the use of colour creates an anxious medley, coupled with frail but persistent white wisps, only accentuating the previous uses of colour. Now, when you compare Pollock’s work to Yayoi Kusama’s work, you can notice obvious differences but with further speculation, subliminal similarities. For example, both of the artist’s style are almost polar to each other however one similarity is the movement and rhythm of both of their work. Pollock’s style is more abrasive and edgy whereas Kusama’s is much more calculated and precise. What almost marries them together is how you can get lost in both of their art visually in the same way but for different reasons.  I plan to create some Pollock influenced pieces but with my own body as I would like to focus on direct movement to paper.

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Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who lives with daily hallucinations and uses art as a means to express and deal with her difficulties, calling it ‘mind therapy’. Considering I am looking at movement, Kusama’s work interested me initially because to me, her work is just a kinesis of the disturbed mind. The ‘disturbed’ aspect is very apparent as Kusama puts you into a 4D experience of her visuals, with a whole load of abstract. To me, this brash presentation is a way of Kusama forcing her audience to be overwhelmed with illogical movements of the mind. For example, see above “Dots Obsession” subjectively deals with Kusama’s initial hallucinations as a juvenile. You are confronted with a room filled with bizarre inflatable sculptures draped in Kusama’s famous ‘dots’. This is a coupled with mirrored walls to give the illusion that the experiences are permanent. This ‘mental kinsesis’ is relative to my interests for my work as movement is as constant as Kusama’s hallucinations. Not only this but her work seems to have a flowing movement of it’s own, consistent among her other works.