Context Of Practice - sketchbook

Development on ‘simplifying’ art archives – back to paint.

These are some images I made using a grid stencil – still looking at the theme of Instagram galleries I picked people’s account at random & drew out the line work. Using a pre-set grid gives them some more formality. I wanted to focus on the colours and aesthetics so I chose prominent colours and dabbed them them on roughly with a sponge using the stencil to keep them confined to the squared frames. I think it gives a nice contrast – like a controlled little burst of energy. Speaking broadly that’s sort of the idea with image sharing social media, it’s a snapshot or a window into another world, that’s the sort of thing I was trying to convey.

I find it interesting looking at the different kind of ‘aesthetics’ people make for themselves online – whether it’s just the one filter they always use or a particular set of colours or angles the photos are taken at. It’s like another form of self expression really, like they clothes someone might wear or how they have their hair. Maybe that’s one definition of self curation.

Now I’m starting to play with the idea of having the images move out of the frame – I want to try and achieve a sense of depth or maybe even 3-D ?

The second image is one I edited digitally in photoshop. Digital manipulation seems appropriate considering the themes I’m looking at. One of the arguments raised about digital art, or screen based art is that it is so 2 dimensional – I want to try and blur those lines a little and explore that theme.