Assignment 5: Personal Project: Artist’s Statement

Personal Project: Using Complementary Colours to Produce an Emotionally Expressive, Mixed Media, Self Portrait

In the reference sketch, I have a pronounced furrowed brow. In this project I wished to express my tendency towards hypervigilance, using a more explorative and experimental approach to mark making.

I wanted to achieve the same level of expressiveness that Picasso has in Facing Death (1971). I decided to make this project an experimental mixed media piece. I produced a series of collagraph prints – this process, a new technique for me, allowed for several copies to be made, whilst the life of the greyboard/mountboard plate placed a mind-focusing limit.

I tried producing an A1 print in my studio using separate plates of A5 greyboard. I produced two prints from these before abandoning them as too fiddly. I then transferred the image onto a sheet of A1 mountboard and created one relief print plate. I produced 5 prints in total, 2 purple, 3 blue.

I took one of the weaker prints in blue and drew directly onto it using wax crayon and pastel. Deciding this felt good, I then took the best purple print and applied yellow pastel and orange wax crayon. The image had an intensity to it which, somewhat contrarily, I felt the need to soften. Using photocopies of doodled daisies from my sketchbook, I cut and pasted these onto the print. I am unsure whether this addition softens the image, or serves to intensify it further by contrasting with the tense facial expression. Either effect is interesting.

My partner commented that there was a slightly animalistic quality to the mouth. When I sought further feedback, from a fellow artist, they enthused that it put them in mind of Byzantine Art and liked it so much that they offered to buy it. (Needing the cash, I accepted!)

The second piece, based on a weaker print, required a slightly different approach. I revisited the earlier test print in yellow. I wanted to have this peeking through from underneath, so as to have the nervous hypervigilant inner me, in yellow, peering out from within the slightly fierce animalistic outer safety shell in purple. I cut out areas of the weaker purple print. I had the idea of laying what remained of the purple print onto a sheet of white mountboard, spotted with blue and yellow ink, with the yellow between them. Once dry, I partially concealed the decorated mountboard with the yellow print so that a ghost of a face showed through from underneath. The blue spectacles were harvested from one of the other prints.

I chose to add a choker in the form of a garland of tiny flowers around my neck, as though constricting my airway, thus rendering me speechless.

The addition of coloured paper collage enhanced the complementary colour scheme. Green highlighter pen contrasted well with the purple, reflecting conflict between the inner me and my outward persona.

I am satisfied that it is finished. Whether I have achieved what I set out to do is another matter. It is certainly experimental – likely far more so than I would have dared, prior to starting this course. I feel that the contrasting colours hint at an icy and alert state, which merits this piece’s title. Colour associations being partly subjective, there will likely be a gap between what I wish to convey and that which a viewer infers. However, I feel that the outcome is one of an interesting textured and layered image, and from the process of creating it I have learned much about my ability to push boundaries and persevere. My mixed feelings about selling the first attempt were gradually assuaged by the growing realisation that the second attempt is a more effective outcome than its predecessor.

References:

Picasso. P. (1972) Facing Death. [Crayon on paper] [online image] Available from: https://www.pablopicasso.org/images/paintings/picasso-self-portrait.jpg [Accessed 4th July 2020]

Walker.M (2020) Self Portrait from Sketchbook [Pastel on Paper]

Walker.M. (2020) Hypervigilance #1. [A1 mixed media on cartridge paper]

Walker.M (2020) Hypervigilance #2 [mixed media on A1 cartridge paper]