For this exercise I have been asked to use a collection of found images, select a theme and create one or two small works using brightly coloured collage images and shapes alongside drawn and painted elements, finally to make sure the whole sheet is covered.
Just completed Creating a Narrative exercise I naturally wanted to continue with this theme, as I have mentioned before I find working with images difficult and seem to stop me in my tracks before I approach the work. However saying that I researched Rauschenberg’s ‘transfer method’ which excited me and being able to push my previous ideas further was also something I was looking forward to. These two ideas gave me a starting point to this exercise and therefore made it more interesting. The exercise did not ask for a clear outcome, it is difficult to know what the expectation was, I created a number of pieces I felt were pushing the boundaries and moving forward from the previous exercise.
I have just had a go at transferring images according to techniques of Rauschenberg, I didn’t know how this would fit into my work or my theme of memories and ageing, like abstract expressionist John Hoyland, I wanted to loose myself in the work, not over think and make decisions whilst progressing through the work itself.
Working with my theme, ageing, memories, loss I transferred an image of a face to work over the top of, as soon as this image transferred to the paper this gave me structure and further ideas, looking through magazines to find images to work with, that in my eyes linked to my theme. An interesting photograph of watches in a weave form, instilling the idea of passing time, hands clutching at the face to cover, protect and shield from the time. To complete this image I worked with chalk, charcoal and inks to instil the colours of age, yellowing images and worn papers. Considering I prefer to work with colour and that is specifically what the exercise asked for it is strange I couldn’t resist using black and white!
Visually embedding the idea of growing old, time moving forward and change, placing together a strip of images of twins, ageing together, their faces masked by my finger print in gesso. The tree was originally an image I transferred which did not work as I hoped, I retained the tree by painting it instead, using a palette of warm pinks and reds I pulled the colours from the top image and added age to them my dulling the red. Texture added with a sponge to highlight the images, soften the edges without hiding them too much. The text was taken from a newspaper, using a pen rather than the cutting as this was large and overpowering.
A little more blatant with the text here ‘Death pathway’ mixed with more experimental mark making and translucent laying. Again the figure with her back to the viewer, hiding the face, adding in the flowers here which were used in the narrative exercise, the flowers are fixed in a calendar displaying the months, linking them back to time. Scraping, sponging and using crumpled, painted tissue to print on top of the images using gesso and yellow ochre to tie the images together and create more layers.
Consciously keeping the images busy like the work of Guttuso and Bolli proved difficult, this may be due to the theme I have chose and the colours and images that link with this. Like Guttuso and Bolli I was unconcerned with depth, perception and any sense of depicting an object in a real form. I wanted to use mixed media to convey a theme in a busy and expressive way.
Throughout these pieces I noted that transferring images changed each time, this would depend on the quality of the paper and the image. I moved on to create images using apps and computer technology, which I learnt would be more suited to the next exercise and so moved on.
LF House of Art 