I envy and admire the artists that can act on the impulsion of creativity, to instantly be able to pick up a paint brush and create something beautiful from a thought. That journey from consciousness to canvas is a short one for many, but not for me. The processes involved in creating the work I do is a long and complicated road, but it is a road that I will always take for the result that it gives. Usually when I am coming up with an idea for a project or a specific painting , my contextual research plays a big part in creating the foundation that will build that idea.
In relation to my recent project, the 'It's Laughable' series, I wanted to continue with my fascination of photography and its place in society, specifically its place in my reality. With my mother being a photographer and my particular interest in the qualities that photography possesses as a documenting tool, as a creative tool, as a tool to archive memories, I wanted to explore these elements. But at the same time I had nurtured an interest in the concept of creating a narrative especially from my love of story-telling. From my book of fairy tales illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt that I've had since I was a kid to reading about the chaotically fantastical stories of Greek Mythology. Which was when it hit me... the most personal version of current society's visual story-telling was through the medium of social media. Each user creates their own story through the images they post. However, the narrative they present in the form of their Instagram page, is an exaggerated constructed version of their lives that is always having the best experiences that they consider worth telling. When someone says a picture is worth a thousand words, does that include all the words that people have chosen not to say and left to their audience to assume?
Amidst all this brainstorming, I found myself wanting to also make a statement with what I chose to paint, specifically with who I chose to paint and how. I love painting women and seeing paintings of women, but I am sick and tired of seeing paintings of women naked! I'm sick and tired of seeing women being used as political agendas. I'm sick and tired of seeing the art world using the sexual objectification of women as a selling point. That's not to say that a women cannot reclaim her nakedness or that a women can't paint another woman naked and still portray her strength and beauty. However, the female form has become the most rinsed motif in art history that I am no longer interested in any new reasoning for yet another naked female portrait. I wanted to use my work as a way of showing that there is a depth of beauty that comes from the identity of a woman that doesn't strip her down to her naked form, that there is a story in a woman just being. I wanted this work to depict women in a way many choose not to show them, as happy, unbothered, beautiful souls present in this world for themselves regardless of who is looking. I wanted each women to be a representation of their own identity from the simple things of facial expressions, their behavioural movements, the clothes they choose to wear etc.
With all this in mind, my contextual research began from looking at art history; the representation of women in art as well as the use of photography throughout the ages. Finding amazing pieces of feminist writing from female writers such as Simone Beauvoir. Taking inspiration from the work of artists that explore similar themes in unique ways such as Jana Brike, Margaret Bowland, Odile Richer, Michael de Brito, Harmonia Rosales, Jordan Casteel and Jeff Wall. Utilising films, documentaries, podcasts, and visiting galleries became the contextual foundation to the next process of my planning. Visualising a concept/ composition.
Ironically, I am not a sketcher, i don't draw just because I feel like it. I can honestly say I haven't doodled since high school when i would draw in my books and on the back of exam papers. But now I use drawing as a visualisation tool to map out concepts and composition ideas that i have in my head. I chose to do a panorama, a popular tool in photography in capturing horizontally elongated fields of view, but in the style of a triptych: three separate boards/paintings to create a larger art work. I came up with the idea of capturing a panorama of my room with myself and five other women interacting with each other, which I would stage into a constructed narrative. The narrative that I wanted to depict was that of a 'candid' composition containing laughter, conversation and a little bit of eating. I wanted it to have the atmosphere of a scene frozen in time among life long friends that the viewer has walked in on. It was very important to me that the women I choose to be a part of this project be women that I know personally, that I am either very close friends with and/or related to as the personal connection between myself and the models would not only add a familiarity but also create a community of comfort that would translate through the composition. I also believed that the environment of my room would be representative of a safe space for the women to be in to be themselves, creating a feminine bubble that is unaware of the outside world. The drawings allow me to create a plan for when i start experimenting with photography, so that I have a basic composition I can play around with.
With my mother being a photographer, I luckily have cameras at my disposal to experiment with as well as her creative advice to help bring the doodle to life. I spent 3 months tracking down models, arranging photoshoots, dealing with cancellations and experimenting with compositions before I was able to find the reference photos I was going to use. Even then there was a certain amount of editing that went into molding the reference photos into the 'perfect' composition.
From this point of course, the only left to do is begin creating. My preferred medium to work on are MDF panel boards that I make myself with a timber wood frame. Despite how heavy they are and how difficult they are to storage, the texture of the MDF surface makes up for it. It has a beautifully smooth surface especially once primed with two coats of gesso and sanded down to a perfect clean slate for a new painting. I have yet to find an easily archival medium to work on so for now MDF it is. Now, normally i would have drawn from the reference photos free hand through a process of grid work, enlargement and other mathematical processes to ensure I correctly enlarge the composition onto the board with the correct proportions. But I have become sick of the time it takes to do this. The amount of problems I faced when free handing was just too much to handle and not enough time to handle it in. Luckily, during my research, I had revisited the work of an artist I had been a long time admirer of by the name of Bryan Larsen. While researching his artistic practice and methods, I came across a blog post in which he describes his use of oil transferring his final composition sketches onto a larger panel. To be honest with you I had never been so excited. I spent the next couple of weeks carrying out my own version of the oil transfer by tracing the reference photos, scanning the tracings onto a USB stick, reworking the tracings in Photoshop with the help of technicians in print workshops on my university campus (Thank you Jasmine!!) and printing the tracings out in the size A0 to fit to my primed boards. The oil transfer itself was carried out but painting the back of the tracings with burnt sienna oil paint (making sure to wipe off the excess with a tissue) and taping it to the board to then trace over the line drawing with a red ballpoint pen. Thus effectively and amazingly transferring the perfect base drawing to begin my paintings.
The painting process itself is a very personal process for me. I have always felt that even though I am painting from a photo, my memories and knowledge of the person I am painting charges the hand that paints them, allowing the portrait to transcend the image. Which is why when someone asks me 'why do I bother painting from photos?', my answer to that is despite photography being a valid artistic tool, a camera can only capture so much in a single snapshot, as a painter every second that my paint-filled paintbrush connects with the board there is an energy source of memory, of connection, of my personal relationship with the identity that I'm painting driving the work into fruition. Once the work is completed, i look at the reference photos again as a separate image and it morphs into a snapshot of strangers that I don't recognise. The paintings completely replace the photos as the most accurate representation of the people I know and love.
Thank you for reading! I hope you got to know me better as an artist and hopefully I inspired you to create something!
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