Landscape images made as research for my 'Journey' project.

landscape....
Naturally we have an instinct to stare at a beautiful landscape, fixed before us, stationary,
appearing motionless.
But nothing is actually still.
The earth moves. Plants grow. minuscule creatures roam. Rain falls.
Skies form, float and transform with colour and contrast.
Water moves, dances and escapes our view, Gradually pushing forward to the next place.
Light comes and goes. brightens, darkens. Changing every second.
Movement fills the scene. Sometimes obvious, sometimes almost invisible. But always there.
Landscape becomes constant movement.

I made these images to show the life or movement in seemingly stationary landscapes. The abstract quality, painterly effect and depth of shade, tone and colour makes them come alive and the blur stretches every element and shape to its extreme. Buildings merge with skies, plants become a part of the road and water becomes just a colour and pattern dispersed by the process involved.

Vist from Stuart Cumberland

Stuart Cumberland presented us with a selection of his paintings and photographs along with an insightful, eye opening and sometimes bizarre talk about his life and his works. ("Firemen become firemen because as children they like to piss on things")
A Self confessed solitary artist with a love of bums, human bodily fluid and psychoanalysing, his paintings are simple, uncomplicated abstracts full of the before mentioned bums, tits and other body parts. You wouldn't realise this though without being informed as each canvas only seems to hold a set of different forms and shapes, colours and patterns.
He chooses to use dull cheap paints in a bid to make the paintings non-impressive - Take them as you find them. He does this to invoke a feeling of us not knowing what they are, what they mean or why he painted them and he paints in a way that says 'why be bothered what they are, just look at them'.

'cmyk 300.3' stuart cumberland

Once informed of the build up of his images we can start to see these things in each piece. The above painting, produced with cheap emotionless colours, (faded red, straight black and layered white) has bum holes (pointed out by the artist during his talk) and what I guess might be suggestions of bums, tits, hands and 4 or 5 heads. 

Flashes of Keith Haring and Lichtenstein can be seen in these stencilled and painted images and the centre square is left stripped back or removed to take the layered painting back to its simplest form, almost blank, deconstructing or maybe breaking down the image. This idea came across a lot from the artist. He explained in a way that made me feel his work is all about the effort involved and the relief when he completes a work, although when asked how he knows a work is complete he stated "Er..I don't really, they just sort of look done". 

Cumberland came across with the attitude of 'If you don't like it, don't look at it'. 

'cmy 300 240m' stuart cumberland

The paintings struggle to fit together on one canvas. Shapes battle for the space or try to escape each other and they look to me like a mash up of several paintings chucked onto the canvas. 

They have great strength as abstract, unexplained forms but fail to convey any message or narrative but I don't think he's trying to do this anyway, he just paints them. 

 "I love the messiness of my studio where I can splash and splosh paint everywhere with no worries, almost like the wet rooms older people have in their houses" an idea that definitely spills over into his work. This attitude continues through the artists whole life highlighted by several facts - Kicked out by his wife for going to Rome, house sitting friends houses because he couldn't be bothered to find his own place, sleeping in his studio due to having nowhere to live and when asked by a major gallery to produce a series of paintings on a certain theme for them to sell he said "Fuck off, I'll paint what I like". Thus losing a major show and a big pay day which he admitted was a 'major mistake in his life'. 

The artist talked about the influence of freud's Fort/Da theory where a child threw a toy away from himself then pulled it back, delighted he could get back what he'd lost. Cumberland explained this as a sort of 'loss and return' idea manifesting itself onto some of his canvas', Removing some of the paint from the centres of each image, returning the canvas back to its original state. 

Cumberland became an artist simply because he didn't want a real 9-5 job and admits thinking painting is now a lost art and a posh luxury to be enjoyed by the rich. 

"Painting is dead" he states but I remember reading somewhere the same was said after the Cistene chapel had been finished. 

Maybe its just his paintings that are dead?

The artworks? from his Rome trip left me wondering what was going on in his head. Travelling Rome and its villages for 6 months, he drank water at the thousands of free water fountains and let the water work its way through his body, leaving no trace of him ever being there. 

Nice work if you can get it, But where is the art? There is no record of the event jus a few poorly taken snap shots of the fountains.

Even if he won't admit it I think Cumberland's paintings are as deep and complex as the artist himself, full of contradiction, confusion, attitude, problems and questions. The finished pieces are a reaction to the process of applying the paint, light on emotion but heavy on humour. 

"The stencilled, painted surface signifies a wet, dripping painted line, rather than actually being one"

'Painted circle painting' stuart cumberland

CPS...What is a studio?

To me a studio is somewhere to create your work, store your tools and kit, spend time thinking about your work, eat, sleep and have a space to get on with what you want to achieve. It needs to be a second home, or for some their actual home.
This space needs to suit the style and size you work in and must be a place you feel comfortable in or the work you produce will be highly affected. A sculpture artist may need a much bigger space than a web designer, it all depends on what you intend to produce: the bigger the work, the bigger the space.
Light plays a big part in the choice of a studio space. Lots of natural light is needed but must be controlled. A harsh burst of sunshine straight onto the canvas can dramatically change your final work. Ideally the windows should face the opposite way that the sun shines giving an evenly distributed covering of good light.

We've been told our spaces at DMU need to be used to produce work and not just used as a mini gallery to hang work up that we've produced in our classes and I agree with this fully. Our spaces shouldn't be social hangouts or somewhere to relax between lessons but should be USED to make our art works. I don't mean it should be deadly silent or church-like but a level of respect is needed as it belongs to us all. Each area IS going to get messy but it should be a controlled mess. A lot can be learned in these areas from the people around us. We see new work on the walls every day and this can have a great effect when it comes to inspiration and ideas. Its always good to see what everyone else is doing.

I've visited a few studio belonging to various artists but my favourite was owned by print artist Sue milton who had a small barn converted into a fantastic studio. The place was full of natural objects she'd collected on walks in the area she lived in, skulls, leaves, twigs, grasses etc, and every inch of ceiling had something suspended from it. In the centre she had an antique printing press that was her pride and joy and at the far end stood a glorious wood burning stove, used to heat the large comfy settees. The place was perfect.
Another studio I visited was a little private place in Blakeney, Norfolk. it belonged to a very old artist who painted the seascape and the beaches. it was a total contrast to the print studio. The artist lived amongst his work with bis bed and chair virtually buried under paints and piles of old canvas'. His sink was full of cutlery mixed with huge brushes and pots of different colours. All of the walls were covered in paintings on wood, canvas, paper sketches and all manner of beach finds. What surprised me was the fact that he sold his work in the village for really good prices, almost London prices but he just couldn't move out of the space. I think he thought he'd lose his skills if he left.

The price of hiring spaces in different parts of the country can be massively different. London prices (100 sqm £230 pcm) are almost triple what you would pay in leicester (2.5x2.5 sqm £35 pcm) and anything near the beach or sea is always going to be at the high end of the scale.

The real benefit of working in a group situation is the chance to meet people doing things you can relate to or maybe collaborate with but the downside can be the noise and commotion that comes with it.

Drawing project...The Journey.

Kibworth is a village steeped in history.
Each street, building and field has its own story running through the centuries.
Slowly the town is becoming modernised. Old buildings, cottages and farm houses are losing their originality and being modernised by new owners.
The church and grounds are full of ancient tombs and graves, crumbling away into the earth and being smothered by overgrowing shrubs and trees.
I've lived here for two years now and this is a chance for me to learn about my new surroundings.
My 'Journey' is a stroll around the town, a walk through the present and the past, and an investigation into the history of Kibworth.

This project will hopefully advance my drawing skills and photography skills with each image I produce. My drawing sometimes lacks depth and look a bit flat and this is something I need to concentrate on but I intend to develop this project both through my drawing lessons and in my own time as a personal project. I want to experiment with different styles of drawing including sketches, detailed drawings, abstracts, using charcoal, paint, washes etc until I find a style I really like and can progress further. 

kibworth history is really interesting and something I'd like to document whilst I live here. I want to try and show what's happening here in the present but capture the old mood and feeling that surrounds the village. A strength of mine is my photographs which will play a big part in this project and I intend to produce a series of portraits of older residents and how/where they live. 

The lady who owns the house with the clock tower turned 100 last week 

(possible first target?).

CPS London trip artist.

Yehudit Sasportis

at Frieze London Oct 2013

Yehudit Sasportas from Israel displayed two pieces at the frieze festival this year. 

The images are the artists own depiction of a bog in a forest in Germany. 

Drawn with ink onto fine art paper she uses deep, dark areas and strong depth to make the images disappear into the distance. Large clear expanses of grey and white give the impression of muddy snowfall and what really stands out is the way she expresses textures on the surface through scrubbing the ink onto the paper and letting it run or drip down from the top. 

The monotone images are very dramatic and the size she paints at works well in the way you feel like you are looking out of a window or straight at the abstract landscape in front of you. 

She uses lines, scribbles and dissipating circles of ink to draw us into the scene and tries to impress on us the size and spread of the bog.

I think she makes the works as a recording of these places as they start to disappear and shows us not just the landscape as it appears in front of her but also how the place makes her feel. She does this in a way that makes the images look dirty and grimey and cold which reflects the fact they were produced during long wet winters. 

Sasportas takes a dying landscape and through her own memories and images offers us very striking abstract paintings that are both dramatic and beautiful to look at. 

In my charcoal works I'm trying to find a new way of translating a landscape onto the paper in a new unique way and these images are so close to what I'd like to do. The messy but controlled look really appeals to me and I intend to research her works more in the future. 

Love it...Hate it... at Frieze London

LOVE IT.

This print by Thomas Ruff was just stunning. Digitally printed in the brightest colours available and with all detail lost in a blur that hurt your eyes to concentrate on, it drew people to it from across the gallery space. The picture is made by massively distorting Manga cartoon images to an extreme that they become an abstract form, totally different from what they originally were, making a brand new image altogether. The way Ruff transforms a static image and turns it into an almost moving 3D blur works for me. The mix up of colours, forms and shapes, and the progression of depth through the image grabs and holds your attention as your eyes try to decipher whats going on. But even with all the confusion they still have a very pleasing and controlled overall composition and balance. My landscape abstract paintings have a lot in common with Ruff's works. I produce them with the intention of being unrecognisable as landscapes, but more as stand alone pieces of art with no reference to what they actually are. 

HATE IT.

Please tell me these umbrellas turn into something really special when they are unfolded. No? Well that cements my thoughts that they are just useless both as art and as umbrellas. I could nip down the beach and get the real thing for a tenner. 

They just don't work as art for me. they look exactly like the real ones but, unlike the works of Jeff koons who's large scale blow up toys are so impressive to look at in their quality and build, really don't have anything special to offer. I just don't get it, Why not just put a bunch of real brollies there?

I have an idea that these could well be the most expensive beach brollies in the world. Whats next? Bucket and spade? No thanks. 

Lens based presentation october 2013

Keith Carter 

65 year old Texan based Keith Carter produces monotone photographic images in a surreal dream like style. His use of harshly contrasting dark and light areas and difference in focus and depth of field give the images a feel of being stills from a movie. Through this technique we get the opportunity to add our own story or narrative to what's going on. 

Carter spent a long time hunting out towns in America with strange names including 'Paradise' and 'Earth'. He visited each town and took just one photograph with no preconceived idea as to what he was going to capture. These images are intriguing to look at and are a document of the lives and happenings in small American towns. The figures are frozen in time, suspended in the surroundings they occupy and Carter uses his technical skill to portray American life as it happens. The images could be from any era though as they have such a timeless feel showing us how these towns haven't changed over the decades. 

Each of Carter's images contains a certain amount of strangeness. Simple subjects are printed in such a way that they have a dark, edgy, haunted look with a hint of creepiness. The pictures serve to remind us of times gone by in our lives, memories recalled from small details in the back of our minds. childhood adventures or even nightmares. Reminding us of friends we had as kids who disappear as time goes by but are always there, somewhere in our thoughts. Carter achieves this so well in his pictures which strongly feature children and the way they play or interact with each other. 

 

I tried to reproduce an image in carter's style as part of our lens based projects. I stayed away from photoshop and breathed onto the lens before shooting, creating the blurred edge, then tweaked the colours to get a sepia tone. I got Amelia to look away from the camera as I wanted to ask the questions 'What's she looking at, Whats happening over there?' I used the little playhouse in the background as a substitute for the wooden houses the American families occupy in Carters images. 

I'm pleased with what I achieved in the image. The only possible change might have been to print it in black and white and give it some real darkness?