luciesresearchjournal

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Here is a magazine style booklet I have made of my work along with some of my creative writing. I really like the aesthetic of my work in this context, so I decided to create an experimental example and compile a combination of writing I had done in my journal. This is something that I would like to work on more in the future and perhaps create something that would be worth publishing. I think that my creative writing needs some more work but I am happy with my first attempt. I have named this booklet ‘La nuit porte conseil’ which is a French saying that means to sleep on something before making important decisions, but the direct translation is ‘the night brings advice’. I think this was quite fitting due to the themes in my writing of night time and bad decisions.

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Frame making

For my largest piece I decided to work in collaboration with a family friend, who has worked as a framer and is very passionate about professional presentation of artwork. I have him the measurements of my piece and he built the frame from scratch. We then discussed the colouring of the frame. In this photo the frame is still in process. The blue tinted inner frame will be coloured to a very dark grey / light black to blend into the edges of my work. I helped him choose the tones as I wanted a black frame but nothing or deep or dark to avoid taking away from the black in my drawing. We will then be placing Perspex on the top, I chose this because it is slightly less reflective than glass and won’t take away from the mattness of my work. 

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Anthromorph is a London based artist who works with sculpture and editing software. Anthromorph is a concept for an identity, describing themself as an evolved biological concept form that understands the body as something fluid and ever-changing. Influenced by the belief that identity is a human construct, they have created a series of one hundred and eleven AI portraits.

 This image stood out because of its many aspects from animal, to human, to insect and evokes a sense of intrigue as well as confusion. The human eye naturally tries to understand the form, with an antennae like shape coming from the head which could be used as a form of communication or to read signals. Wing like forms spread out from the head, like large ears that resemble butterflies with ripples of red and purple flowing through them. Eight teeth are amalgamated into the form’s chest area, creating an uncomfortable and strange feeling. This portrait is extremely striking and creates a strong mood of uncanny. The more the viewer observes, the more they can take from it, while understanding even less. Within the boundaries of human to animal, and natural to technological, this work is a very skilled and an unseen creation.

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Inferno: the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's divine comedy

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Drawing commission

I was asked to design a drawing for a dancer. She gave me full creative freedom since she really liked my art style. To make this drawing personal for her, I used an image of her doing a walkover. This flexible image was already a theme in my work so it was a perfect opportunity to make something personalised while staying true to my own interests and style. I then sold the drawing to her and posted it to her place. 

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Medieval paintings

This is a representation of false prophets, although I like to think that this could also be a depiction of social anxiety, and struggling to communicate correctly with issues such as stuttering and nervousness. This makes me feel like moments of miscommunication have always been common in human behaviour, and that misinterpretations of people’s words are a constant in our society. 

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Charles and I had planned to do a group mural project for our second year PDD. Because of covid this all got cancelled, so recently we decided to take this project into our own hands.

This was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed the collaboration. To begin we discussed how we could combine our art styles. Charles focuses on abstract art, and my art is mainly figurative. We decided to choose a restricted colour palet that suited us both and begin with an abstract looking piece by following both of our intuition with random brush marks and paint pouring. After a few stages of this, we took a break to let the paint dry a bit and discussed what kinds of shapes and forms we could see emerging from what we had created. We then began to paint figures and block out some more areas with shapes and grey/white spray paint. Finally we accentuated the main figures with black paint and agreed that we were done.

I think that this process was very effective, and I love that you can see both mine and charles’ art styles within the painting. It was also fun to try out a more expressive way of painting, and it was very freeing and fun. The only problem we encountered was a lack of time. Since we were in an underpass the light became very dim quickly in the afternoon, and because of this we rushed the process and didn’t let each layer dry properly. This resulted in the painting being a bit more messy than expected and meant that some of the colours seeped into eachother making it harder to make certain parts stand out.

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Experimenting with presentation for open studios

To help me decide how many of my A1 drawings to exhibit, I lay them all out in the studio to see how they interacted together. At the time I was thinking only hanging 5, but upon seeing them all together (as well as the process of elimination being quite difficult) I decided that they functioned best as an 8 drawing series. Seeing them all next to each other made me think of a comic strip and I really liked the feeling of this and the narrational effect of it. I also decided that I should place all the drawings with the most prominent moons on the top row, to give a feeling of a larger space and maybe a heaven and hell, or as above so below effect. 

My next task was the figure out how to attach them to the wall. I had already been thinking about magnets so I used one piece to experiment and see how many I would need to hold a drawing up. At the time my drawing was quite creased and wasn’t laying flat on the wall, I did not like that the edges would fold up slightly so I under up putting 12 screws and magnets. To hopefully avoid this problem in future, I then got all of my drawings and placed them between to boards and put weights on top. This would flatten the paper so for the exhibition I might be able to use less magnets. I also decided the spray paint the magnets black, to obstruct less of the drawing and be less visible. 

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Interim

This my photoshop version of an exhibition that I edited for my interim. I am including this because I decided to edit the walls to be grey. I think this was really effective and I plan on painting my walls this same grey for the open studios.

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Possession- 1981 film

Andrzej Żulawski

This film was very intriguing and cinematically very beautiful. The colour palet was very important in each scene which i loved. The woman in the film falls in love with a monster (a sea creature, similar to an octopus but usually covered in blood) although at first sight disgusting, it actually narrated a very beautiful perception of love, since the woman chooses this creature over two men who are madly in love with her. I think this unconventional horror story reflects on real life relationships and love, since it is never straight forward or uncomplicated and the strongest love tends to be the most inexplicable.

The use of doppelgängers in this film was also very unique and interesting, although slightly non sensical. I am always intrigued by mirrors and reflections of people and things and really enjoyed this extra layer of confusion added to the story.

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PPD

This is a Collaborative painting I did with Amber, my friend from camberwell painting course. We had previously tried painting together on a smaller scale and this was very fun and successful. 

Thé technique that we had developed together was to sit on either side of the painting and paint freely without thinking too much into what we were creating. Next we would swap places and start working into eachother’s shapes and brush marks. This was always a really interesting process and came out with unique things each time. We would also take breaks, further into the process and discuss what we felt was emerging and where we should go next.

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Beardsley - the climax (1893)

Beardsley focused his efforts on the decorative design elements of his characters’ clothes as they wandered in and out of vaguely perverse scenes. His lines, patterns, and designs found their origins in the porcelain vases, platters, etc. Making their way to Europe from China and Japan. Pattern is also important in my work, and comes through nicely with drawing and black and white scenes.

In this piece I am very interested by the bottom right corner, the white water like feature coming through from the dark background is a technique I have been inspired by and used in my work to create puddles and inverted shadows. I really like the way Beardsley used this to flow from the drips coming from the decapitated head into part of the ground and nature. 

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Berserk- Chapter 362 (the old gods)

Kentaro Miura (japanese manga artist)

In this chapter, the flashback includes one of the glimpses is of Skull Knight’s nemesis in the Godhand, Void. But, instead of the members of the Godhand readers are accustomed to seeing, we see four very different members. Inspiration for the Godhand was from the horror series Hellraiser. 

The name, Void, implies a lack, emptiness, nothingness. The most appropriate word in this case is nihil, as in nihilism. Upon reading this chapter I was shocked and excited because of the excitement in the story line, but also the imagery chosen because of how many similar forms and monsters there were to my own drawings. I had just finished my own drawing with the large swirl in the centre and decided to name it after the Void. Everything about Miura’s art inspires and shocks me, and his writing is something I have always loved to read and follow.

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La Nausée - Jean Paul Sartre

La Nausée m’a donner des sentiments forts et précédemment inexplicable. Sartre décrit une certaine façon de prendre des objets, quelque chose dont il a utilisé chaque jour, qui un jour commence à avoir une certaine façon ‘de se faire’ prendre. Un objet qui retient son attention dans un façon peu familier. Cet sentiment évolue et ce manifeste dans son essence, des visages connu devenu inconnu, transforment les bruits commun en bruits louche. C’est comme une décalage dans l’univers, et le perception. Cette parti du livre a eu une grande impacte sur moi. Sartre décrit bellement comme la nausée commencer de seulement des drôles de petit sentiments, et des expériences détaché.

Cet livre m’a fait pensé beaucoup de mes propres expériences avec ce qu’il décrit comme ‘la nausée’ , et ces impressions ont eu des influences sur mon travail, ces sentiments sont quelque chose qui est présent dans mon art.

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Grimm’s Fairytales

The Juniper tree tale by the Grimm Brother’s describes a story where a step mother chops off her step-son’s head and cooks him in a stew to be served to his father. This particularly dark tale stuck with me strongly. The moral of the story is very straight forwards when the step-son’s spirit in the form of a bird, gets his revenge by killing the step-mother. My favourite part of this story is the description of ´the evil one’ that takes over the step-mother’s mind and forces her to commit despicable acts. I found this very interesting because although there is no further description of who ‘the evil one’ is , it is made clear that it is the part of her psyche filled with jealousy and her long term grudge against the child she must care for that is not her own.

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Jim shaw - Donald and Melania Trump descending the escalator into the 9th circle of hell reserved for traitors frozen in a sea of ice (2020)

Apocalyptic landscape, dystopian, contrast of the modern looking escalator and the men and women in suits with the beastly winged demon at the back. Large similarity with Dante’s Inferno.

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Cecile Brown- Strolling actresses (2015)