Year 12 Bella C Art as Alternate Phase 3
IA3 PROJECT – INQUIRY PHASE 3 ART AS ALTERNATE Inquiry question: How can divorce in a personal context be represented through an alternate viewpoint to express different perspectives? Context/s: personal, contempory Media: Watercolour, ink, lino printing, impasto gel, acrylic paint, posca pen on canvas
CONTENTS • Focus - Inquiry phase 1 • Annotated illustration of IA2 resolved work • Artist’s statement • Resolved work • Resolved work – details • Resolved work – annotated details • Supporting evidence • References
INQUIRY PHASE 1
• My inquiry phase 1 focused on the theme of ‘til death do us part’, this is reflected through my previous body of work which focused on the different cycles of marriage; this included life-long love, death and divorce. My primary focus artists were George. F. Watts and Meagan Meli, who both explore the concepts of love and death, through different symbols within their personal style. These artists influenced my IA1 research and experiments.
ANNOTATED RESOLVED WORK FROM IA2
Developing: The personal context of my inquiry has been influenced by my experiences living in a household in which the parents are separated. My headpieces take symbols from my own life, like the idea of being trapped in a cage, as well as symbols from cultures that I am interested in to represent different positive and negative attitudes surrounding divorce. My focus on personal experience as well as cultural context is communicated by different colours, materials and representations manipulated. Researching: My main influence was Dawn Grant, who takes her culture and transforms it into meaningful headpieces and wearable art, this represents a cultural context, as headpieces are present in many cultures wedding ceremonies. I also enjoyed Mariko Mori’s work, she focuses on her how Japanese culture and transforms her experiences into symbolic artworks; I used this idea to adapt real life images and motifs into my resolved works. These artists allow me to explore both contemporary and formal contexts. For example, I found photos of Sikh people and temples in order to mirror these onto my fourth headpiece Reflecting: My visual language in each artwork was made to show attitudes towards divorce in each culture. The first headpiece, The Japanese Embrace, uses the symbol of a frog, which is seen in divorce ceremonies as a representation of change after the divorce. Another key symbol is in The Islamic Denial, where red roses are seen on the top of the artwork, these roses are a symbol for both marriage and funerals in this culture. Finally, the two hands on the front of The Jewish Acceptance, are Priestly Blessing Hands, and is used when they recite blessings on Jewish people. These different symbols and motifs further encourage exploration of cultural contexts. The use of motifs across all five headpieces symbolise my focus on divorce and how different cultures resonate with this concept.
ARTISTS STATEMENT
Family’s Sorrow Canvas, watercolour, ink, lino printing, impasto gel, acrylic paint, posca pen 185 cm x 91 cm The focus for body of work is personal connection to divorce. This has affected my life, from early childhood to now, and impacts how I perceive the world. I aim to communicate personal context through my resolved body of work. I have chosen to create a large multi-media artwork on canvas. Julie Fragar has inspired my work through manipulation of philosophy of personal emotions and experiences. Another inspiration was Pablo Picasso, who has a strong focus on self and portraits, he reflects his view of himself into his artwork. I have used motifs through contempory contexts using a range of different media; such as ink, lino, acrylic paint and paint pen. Using visual conventions such as texture, emphasis, and movement I have created new meaning investigating alternate viewpoints about divorce, through my work, Family’s Sorrow. 135 words
RESOLVED COLLECTION OF WORK Family’s Sorrow Watercolour, ink, lino printing, impasto gel, acrylic paint, paint pen on canvas 185 cm x 91 cm
DETAILS OF THE RESOLVED ARTWORK Family’s Sorrow Watercolour, ink, lino printing, impasto gel, acrylic paint, paint pen on canvas 185 cm x 91 cm
ANNOTATED DETAILS OF THE RESOLVED ARTWORK Developing: •
Building on top of IA2, I have substituted a cultural context for a personal context
•
I have interrelated themes of divorce and personal connection from IA2 into IA3. the symbols of a figure and a cage is connected throughout the two bodies of work to represent my emotions to the topic. Also including three portraits of myself from childhood, this is a statement to reflect on the progression of experiences during my parents' divorce.
•
The complexities between the two bodies of work are interrelated through different underlying symbols and motifs throughout the work. This allows me to connect to the audience through communicating my association to divorce and therefore allowing them to see my alternate viewpoint in order to consider how they perceive divorce in relation to their emotions and perspectives on the topic.
Researching: •
Symbols and motifs were researched prior to generating the final body of work. The decision to create a monochrome blue background was used as the colour is representative of bravery and dedication, qualities I have developed over the course of my parent’s separation. It also constructs depth of understanding. As well as a connection to the idea of “feeling blue”, which indicates sadness. The monochrome greyscale portraits compliment the blue as it keeps the subtle cool tones tied in with each other and allows the audience to reflect on the melodramatic tone of the overall body of work
•
I researched artists with alternate viewpoints, such a Julie Fragar, which lead me to the decision to create a multimedia artwork, using many different techniques and materials. Using these is a reflection of ‘self’ and shows the many different emotions and aspects in a divorce.
•
Julie Fragar uses different materials, such as polymer clay, this material allows the audience to see all fingerprints and brush marks in the work, which allows them to see her artistic thought process, while also representing the impurities in her work, and how not everything is perfect.
Reflecting: •
My personal connection is demonstrated through elements and principles of art. The contrast of colours and variation of techniques represents different feelings I have experienced over the years, living as a child of a divorced household.
•
Each element has a different meaning, from the colour in the background representing sadness, to the prints exploring vulnerability and acceptance, to the childhood portraits symbolizing childhood experiences. This body of work exemplifies what divorce means to me in a personal context, while incorporating different elements of art to generate an alternate viewpoint.
•
I have used the large scale of the work as another indicator for meaning. As the canvas being worked on is so large, it shows how much large of an impact divorce has had on my life in the past 10 years. It allows me to add different attributes to the work to show the complexity of the journey and feelings this topic makes me experience
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE The first stage in IA3 was to create a brainstorm reflecting on my work from IA2 and how I can manipulate it in a different way in order to present my personal connections with the topic, in comparison to a cultural context. The image to the left shows my thought process allowing me to turn my previous ideas into a more alternate context and how I will be able to apply this to things that are important to me. In the image to the right, I am exploring the meanings of different symbols that could be included in my final body of work. I have explored the idea of including a figure in my work to represent feelings of being caged, which were derived from the personal hat in IA2. I have also begun to explore the idea of having monochrome blue in the work. This colour represents different things to different people, but is mainly associated with feelings of sadness – this can be further researched.These two different brainstorms
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE Pablo Picasso: Picasso is famous for his abstract artworks over the course of his career, as he progressed with his art skills it is noticed he became more abstract over time. I viewed his series of self-portraits which show reflections of self over the years. This allowed me to view how he viewed and represented himself in his artworks. I took this inspiration to my body of work to allow myself to transfer feeling of self from inside to my canvas. This is like Picasso, as his audience is then able to feel how he views himself in a person context. Julie Fragar: Julie Fragar looks into human psychology, experiences and emotions. I wanted to reflect this in my work as I am looking closely to my personal experiences and how they have made me feel. Both Julie and I recognize that these emotions shape the way that we perceive and live our lives. As well as this Julie manipulates different materials in order to represent meaning. For example the bronze material represents weighted feelings. I have used multimedia techniques to represent an alternate viewpoint.
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE Cage: representing the idea of being caged. The experience of having divorced parents gives me a trapped feeling. Observing other families with happily married parents makes me feel like an outsider and that I am observing them from an alternate point of view. Hands and rings: the bottom hand represents me, while the other reflects my parents. This shows the feeling that I am drifting from my family, this is the affect that the divorce has had on my emotional connection to the rest of my family. The rings are what my mother and father’s rings were prior to their divorce. Girl curled up: represents the feeling of being closed off and insecure. Her stance is very closed off and isn’t allowing for anyone to penetrate her mind. Girl sitting: different stage of emotion in my parent’s divorce, acceptance. Her position is as if she’s meditating. This represents the idea that I have learned to grow and accept the divorce as an important part in the story of my life.
I associate the colour blue, with the term “feeling blue” which indicates sadness or depression. Divorce in my mind represents the struggles that a family goes through and the journey of mixed emotions throughout. These are the first experiments that were completed prior to starting my body of work The first is a watercolour study on the figure that was included in the 3rd headpiece of my IA2 body of work, which was my personal connection to divorce as well. I also used the colour blue in this work, as I was just beginning to explore the idea of “feeling blue” and creating a monochrome work. The first experiment to the right is a lino print of the figure, however the figure is in a cage, like she was in the IA2 headpiece, representing the feeling of being caged. The second experiment to the right is a mixture of the two experiments, using a new print with the same figure, while using watercolour as the background These experiments allowed me to explore a different technique that could be implemented into my final body of work.
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
Ink on paper, 30cm x 42 cm
Watercolour on paper, 30cm x 42 cm
Lino print and acrylic on paper, 25cm x35 cm
This first artwork was an experimental piece, created using ink and water. I had never used this material; therefore, I began to take an alternate viewpoint on the materials I was considering including in my final body of work. This artwork allowed me to use monochrome blue, green and purple shades, with freedom of expression to allow me to capture the mood that the inks allowed me to communicate through the page. Reflecting on this artwork I decided to include ink onto my final body of work, as it allowed me to manipulate the ink to create many different shapes and effects, such as spotting, splattering, covering an abundance of area and creating lines and circles. The middle artwork was my second experimental piece, as I progressed with experimenting with different materials I was contemplating including in my final body of work. After experimenting with the paints and the inclusion of water to generate a watered down and blended effect I decided to implement this technique into my artwork too. Although the techniques used in this experiment and the final are drastically different, this artwork allowed me to explore the material and identify how I could manipulate it in order to carry though with the emotional and reflective tone of the artwork. The final experiment on the right is a depiction of my experimentation with the lino prints I had generated over the coarse of the unit. There are five different prints, these include: hands with rings, girl sitting, girl meditating, cage and tree of life. Each has a different meaning in the journey that I am presenting about my parents’ divorce. In this experiment I also used posca pens, this allowed me to exemplify the details on the prints, I also chose to do this in my final to ensure the outline was obvious and visible. This experiment allowed me to see what the prints would look like in the final artwork.
REFERENCES
• Brown, A., Hine, J., Peachy, A., Siedel, J., Shead, L., & Towers, D. (2019). Creative Inquiry: Visual Art for QLD (1st ed., pp. 301-315). London: Cambridge University Press. • McCully, M. (2021, May 31). Pablo Picasso. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pablo-Picasso • Pablo Picasso | MoMA. (2021). Retrieved 26 July 2021, from https://www.moma.org/artists/4609 • Smith, K. (2019). Colour Symbolism and Meaning of Blue. Retrieved 15 June 2021, from https://www.sensationalcolor.com/meaning-of-blue/