Assignment 4 Feedback

My initial response to my feedback for assignment 4 was ‘this is so hard’! Once again my best work is in my sketchbook and it isn’t being translated into finished pieces. Some of this better work I have identified (such as the cityscape) however some I am surprised at. For instance the doorway painting.  I didn’t think the sketches were any better (or worse). To me they are just that, sketches that I have used to try to resolve a specific issue of composition or colour. Having done this, I set out with the aim of constructing with paint – which  I felt I had achieved in parts, such with the pot plant. I would agree that the final piece looses the expressiveness of the quick brushwork of the sketches. And perhaps there-in lies the problem. My final pieces take more time and in the process of doing so I become careful of my lines and thus become to concerned with ‘reality’ of shapes. In consequence the whole painting gets overworked.  In my head I would really like to work in a much more gestural way but I am really struggling to get that out in final pieces. This has been a recurring theme throughout this module and I don’t feel I am progressing much although there is a glimmer of hope as the ‘Trees on a hill’ worked as did ‘Walking the Dog’.

I am noticing that the best pieces that I do, whether sketchbook work or final pieces, are things that I don’t spend a lot of time on. As soon as I start painting over a few days  I lose the expressiveness that I am trying to achieve. I think that this frustration goes a long way to explain the observation that I am perhaps at the point where it is easier to try new things rather than commit to a set of personal objectives. My personal objectives are very much based around acquiring a more gestural approach and that hasn’t really happened yet outside of a sketchbook. I also agree with the statement that I need to engage more with artists regarding informing my own work and I can see how the above two concepts are related!!

So what are my personal objectives? Who is Anna Pike? What kid of artist does she want to be?

In order to answer these questions here is a list of things about painting and artists that I identify with and would like to work on as development:

• I love the drama produced by dramatic, gestural brushwork and would like to be more drawing-like in my painting.
• I like being messy on canvas (in the same way that I like using charcoal on paper) and like the idea of wet on wet but need to control the muddiness.
• There is something about the physicality of paint during the process of painting that I am drawn too rather than the final painting itself. This is hard to put into words!
• I love the idea of colour but I am actually drawn to using a more somber palette.
• I work best when I work quickly.
• I have to be completely engaged with, and have a connection to, the subject of the painting otherwise for me it becomes an academic (!) exercise. [This is particularly hard when following a set of exercises.]
• My three favourite artists (paintings) are Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Picasso
• My three favourite artists (drawings) Jenny Saville, David Bomberg, Frank Auerbach

I need to find a way to move these points forward into my final assignment.

 

 

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