Critical Evaluation. The bit where the ***'s are, I've had to take a bit out, for public viewing. I don't want ot get in trouble.
My idea began to flourish over the Summer Months as I was working 70+ hour weeks over 3 jobs, and not feeling very happy about it. My mind was lingering on dissatisfaction with my final works the previous academic year, a feeling like they were so nearly there but needed and extra nudge. Therefore, I decided what my work needed was a shock of professionalism.
I went about this on two ways; I completely changed my media- ditched paper and ink for household emulsions, metal gloss varnishes and 3mm MDF boards. Secondly, the figures and idea behind my own images. Being so frustrated, exhausted and frankly, soul destroyed, over the summer, I started thinking about how life is full of tiny cancers. (I feel the need to point out I am one of the happiest, most positive people you would ever meet, I am told I am too happy, so yeah, summer sucked). Things that are only around to fuck up your day- like at the end of a 16 hour working day in which you raised a pitiful £90, to return home to find two £70 parking tickets. Cancer. Having foolishly ******************************************** ******************************************************************** whole thing. Cancer. Being absolutely trapped somewhere you do not want to be because you cannot afford to be in the place you love, realising things you thought were true were bullshit all along. Cancer. Life is full of them; jam fucking packed to the rafters.
And this is when I took a huge leaf out of Claes Oldenburg’s book, more specifically “I am for an art...”
“I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top”
“I am for an art of punching and skinned knees and sat on bananas”
-don’t take it all so bloody seriously!! So I didn’t;
I decided to take these images of cancer cells and turn them into something I wanted to see- something that in my opinion is beautiful, bold, colourful and clean, intricate and interesting.
Like Gary Hume I enjoy using household emulsions on a flat surface, perfectly primed with bold colour choices such as in “Snowman” and “Begging for it”. I am in love with Hume’s reduced imagery and flat areas of seductive colour, and the sense of playfulness, all of which I have attempted to infiltrate my own work with.
With regards to the subject, Helen Chadwick and Ross Bleckner both tackle the idea of the body and disease. Chadwick’s work has this weighty bodilyness to it with use of circular forms and sensual materials such as chocolate and snow. Whereas Bleckner’s cerebral content of the AIDs epidemic in his cellular paintings convey an ugly beauty, like an ugly truth. I like that, but have preferred to inject a more literal Hume like colourfulness into my own work.
I don’t consider the work to be fully resolved- but then to what extent can a series of progressive paintings ever be? How can a rhetorical process ever be “Finished”? I’m at a midpoint still, but I do think that my aesthetic outcomes are successful- I like them, they convey a cellular bodilyness, they are powerful and bold in their use of colour and I consider the, to have a professional finish.
I therefore don’t consider this set of work to be over. I want to keep developing it, toying with the scale, colour, intricacy, material etc. Even though I’m happy with where it is now and how it appears now- I always am- until I find something I love more.
"I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary."
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