These are a collection of artists that I have been drawn to over the course of summer. Unintentionally, there are themes that can be seen in this collection of artists and artworks:
Content of the paintings
- People and the positioning of bodies is a key theme.
- Tender interactions between people OR tender paintings of single people.
Atmosphere, mood, emotion contained in the paintings
- Colour – muted tones, colourful tones, cool palette, warm palette, how the colour of the body interacts with the rest of the composition e.g. furniture/room/abstract background.
- Feelings of care, intimacy, physicality, openness and internalisation.
I think the reason the themes deal with intimacy is because of my personal experiences currently and over the past few months. Experiencing the end of a relationship meant the way I interact with other people on a daily basis changed – from living intimately with someone, to having that suddenly not there. Perhaps I have been drawn to these paintings as a form of therapy for myself (referencing my last post)?
Regardless of this however, I am drawn to these paintings and want to experiment with these ideas of personal intimacy in my own work. Painting will form the starting point for this idea since the language of painting is one I am familiar with but never for a concept quite so personal to me, so it should be new. I think sculpture would be an interesting material to work with for this theme at some point as well – it could let me explore the shapes and composition of bodies with a more hands on approach.
What now?
Currently I have intentions but no technique for achieving those intentions. So I need to start experimenting and studying technique, and make that the focus of my attention for now.
I am going to choose one (or maybe two?) artist(s) to look at in more detail and also go to a life drawing class. This will give me some material to work from and start painting with. And what is my intention? To start developing a technique that allows me to capture a feeling of tenderness, internal/external emotion, physicality. For now with just one person in the portrait, I want to start simple!
I like the idea of painting from sketches, where previously I have worked from life only or from photographs. Perhaps I could research painting from sketches as well.
Georgina Harris 