Category: art

Doodle Galaxy (Doodle Time Part 2)

Posted on Posted in art, doodling, drawing, experimentation, illustration, layout, life, my work, pen drawings, process, Uncategorized, unconsciousTagged , , , , Leave a comment

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I didn’t really notice the kind of doodler I was until I compiled them altogether for these posts. Given that they tend to be entirely separate and individual occurrences, I don’t pay much attention to the technique or style at the time. So photocopying them from my notebook and creating digital copies was quite a sterile process for me, as it almost diluted the fluidity of such personal drawings. 

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For someone who is generally not too interested in natural forms, it is interesting to see how much these feed my depictions. Flower motifs are abundant in my drawings which is highly unusual when compared to my body of work, as I tend to avoid explicit feminine depictions like the plague!

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Yet for me there is something incredibly soothing in creating these organic forms. Water and leaves are also core components to the drawings, as is an almost excessive use of line which I exploit almost to the point of exhaustion. 

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It’s a soothing and somewhat addictive repetition. Molten forms and swirling shapes cluster the pages. Unlike a painting I don’t think you can ever overwork a doodle, as you can simply adjust your progression across the page if it goes wrong. In most cases however I know when a doodle is done, as I no longer have the urge to pursue and extend it. I just know that I have done all I can and all that I want to do and as long as I have that therapeutic longing satisfied, then that is all that matters. 

Doodle Time Part 1

Posted on Posted in art, doodling, drawing, my work, notebook, sketching, Uncategorized, unconsciousTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

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So I think it’s safe to say I have a slight tendency to doodle. I do it very unconsciously; it just kind of happens and before I know it half the pages in my notebook are filled up with drawings. I have this really annoying habit of doodling in random pages towards the back of my notebook, so as I near the end of it I still think I have loads of pages left, when in actual fact they’re all consumed by drawings.

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Because for me the doodles are a very visual and fluid thing, I’m not going to talk much about them. I don’t feel the need to as I’m not creating them with the intention of forming an analysis. I’m not really creating them for any particular reason either apart from filling time (and supplementing boredom). So I don’t want to dissect them too much as I feel that will take away from them for me.

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I do think however my time abroad has been a major influence to my doodling. My depictions are very Middle Eastern in terms of the pattern and shapes that are present. My time spent in Oman and India absorbing the culture, visiting souks and buying jewelry are all components that feed into these creations and it’s only now that I’m looking at the doodles on a screen and talking about them that I realise this. 

In Time

Posted on Posted in art, childhood, drawing, ink, life, my work, nostalgia, painting, reflection, time, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

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It’s always funny looking back at old artwork. This is because I look at it with all of the feelings and emotions I was applying at the time of its creation, yet I’m also looking at it with my more current artistic views. So there ends up being this two-way reading of a work. What I felt then and what I feel now. Which can either be quite paralleled, but more often then not is more of a “what the hell was I doing?!” kind of reaction. It’s sometimes quite amusing to see the difference in the two thought processes. One of the reasons I am so grateful that I’ve made art throughout my life, is that all my works are essentially a document and narrative to my growth and development. Or at least, to my development as an artistic practitioner. It is me expressing myself during a given time period and over the years my drawings have taken on all sorts of forms. These include Beatrix Potter-like creations of animals in clothes, fashion illustrations, running inky portraits, landscapes, sketched copies from the work of Egon Schiele and Michalengelo, life drawing, the list goes on. The above image is from my experimental phase with Indian and batik ink. I love the fluidity and seeping of colours, as I never know how a piece is going to turn out, which for me is incredibly exciting. This way of working led onto a whole bunch of ink-based experimentation and essentially changed the way I paint forever, as I still apply dripping and watered-down techniques today. Funny how one thing can lead to another and you never look back!

Muscular Awareness Part 1

Posted on Posted in art, body, experimentation, gym, lighting, my practice, my work, photographic studio, shadow, stretches, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , Leave a comment

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The other day my friend kindly gave me a hand in the photography studios to help me capture these images. If you have been reading my posts you will know by now that my artwork revolves around the human body. If you have never read a post this could not be more perfect an intro! More often than not my practice is about the implicit body; it relies on subtle hinting and allusions to the human form. So for once I wanted to deviate from that quite strongly and create a really direct link to the body.

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As a result, these images came into existence. I have been gyming for about five years now and I absolutely love it. It is my zone, my head space. For an hour I leave the outside world behind and focus purely on the relationship between mind and body. I focus on the pain I feel, the endurance I push myself through, the tiredness and aches when I finish an exercise. I think of gyming as a discipline and it’s one I keep up as often as I can. People often underestimate the importance of stretching and often do this hurriedly and hastily. That is not the case for me. Stretching is one of the most important components of my work outs, which is probably a result of my love for yoga. So I spend a lot of time on the mats, which more often than not are in front of a mirror. 

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Yes, the instant connotations of a mirror mean vanity, but for me that is not the case. All of these years stretching in front of a mirror has made me notice little dents and muscles in my body that normally no one pays attention to. Because I’m stretching myself into bizarre and unusual positions, the less prominent muscles start to emerge, which I have always found incredibly fascinating. Most interesting to me are the dents and muscles surrounding my shoulder blades; there is a surprising amount of detail in this area. Up until now I have merely observed these muscular formations. Every time I see them in the gym I think about how great it would be to study them more closely. To draw them in pencil and charcoal and exaggerate them Michelangelo style. Of course, I’m not going to bring a photographer into the gym with me to document them! Not only would that draw a lot of unwanted attention but I would also probably have to fill out a whole bunch of Risk Assessments and Ethics Forms. No thanks!

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So instead I thought I’d bring myself and my stretches into the studio; really highlight all these muscles through dramatic lighting. This was quite an adventurous experiment for me as it was a very explicit display of my relationship to the gym (it was also an hour of nonstop stretching for the camera – what a work out!) Yet it could not have come at a better time. Recently in uni I have been having tutorials that critique and discuss my work. They have taken a surprising turn for me as the feedback I have received is to further my exploration of the gym and this notion of head space. How funny that I thought these images were too explicit in their reference to the gym, yet that is what the tutors want to see more of? It’s my lucky day! 

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I quite like how the images I have posted here are essentially faceless; there’s a sense of ambiguity to them as a result. The lack of face also heightens the focus on the body. This is further highlighted by the stark black clothing (or lack of it!) against the whitened backdrop. Some incredible shadows have emerged too – perhaps I need to do some sketching of merely the shadowed areas. With this high contrast lighting, I finally get to emphasise all the little folds and creases that I have spent so long studying all this time in the gym. Artists talk about spending a certain amount of time with an artwork and sitting on it. If you think about it, I’ve been contemplating this specific work for years! So not only is it exciting to see it come to life as an artform, but it’s also a relief to finally realise and create it!

Amsterdam

Posted on Posted in amsterdam, art, travel, UncategorizedTagged , , Leave a comment

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So I obviously have not blogged in quite a while now. Both the madness of Christmas and writing my dissertation (which is now finished and submitted woo!) are to blame for my absence. As is the loss of my camera. I went to Amsterdam over the holidays and you would think that someone who’s been to such an amazing city would rush back and blog away! Well, I would have done, as so many exciting and incredible things happened there, but something very sad also happened. My camera got stolen. The strap round my shoulder was literally cut off whilst walking in a crowd and I was (and still am) very heartbroken. I went with my boyfriend and we were really trying to experiment and taking interesting shots of the city. We tried our best to avoid all the stereotypical touristy photographs, instead focusing on beautiful light and interesting angles. We were so inspired by the museums and galleries we were in so we got some really interesting shots! He took some gorgeous snaps. And I took a lot of photos for research purposes including ones of Anish Kapoor’s work!! YES, I have now see the work of Anish Kapoor. This is what happened in the gallery as I realised what I was looking at:

ME: “Is that…Jamie, I think that’s Anish Kapoor’s work”

ME: “Is it? I think it is…”

ME: “I’m pretty sure that’s Anish Kapoor’s work!”

ME: “Oh my God, Jamie, that IS Anish Kapoor’s work!”

ME: *countless excited squeals*

JAMIE: “Are you ok?”

It was a very exciting moment for me. I got to get up all close and really see the texture of Kapoor’s stuff. I’ve done so much reading and research into him that it actually felt like I was meeting a celebrity through his work! We felt this in a lot of cases as of course we did the Van Gogh Museum which had some Edvard Munch work too. Seeing their work really was something, it had this real sense of presence. Their reputation in the artworld really affected your reception of their work. But I will be looking into that more in a later blog post. 

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Apologies by the way for these very touristy photos. Luckily I had my old camera from when I was fourteen with me too, so on the last day I was just doing a point and shoot of everywhere to make up for the loss of my images. So that is kind of why I haven’t been blogging recently. I’ve almost gone into mourning at the loss of my camera. I know there are more important things in life and this is not the end of the world, but when the camera got stolen I not only lost the camera itself, but I lost the memories that were on it. I lost the spontaneous moments we’d captured together, I’d lost the research photography I’d done for my course, I lost a whole bunch of blog posts I was going to do and I lost a fair chunk of money…Not fun.

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These really are the most touristy images I could possibly upload to an art blog (the shame!) This building above was my absolute favourite though – I called it the ginger bread house. We walked past it loads and even when we weren’t planning to, I asked if we could walk this way just so I could see it again! Even though the camera got stolen the day before we left (slight dampener), we had the best time! We did so much as well. We bought a Museum Card which is a bit pricey but I would definitely recommend it if you plan on doing lots. It covers so many places that you save so much money by having it instead of buying individual tickets for places. 

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Amsterdam really is the most arty city. I have officially fallen in love! There were so many inspiring places to visit including The Photography Museum, FOAM (also photography and very powerful photography at that!), The Van Gogh Museum, The Stedelijk (the museum of Modern Art – I want to live in there it was that amazing!), The Rijksmusuem. We also did the Sex Museum, The Erotic Museum, the flower market, and a few other places. It truly was spectacular and a trip I will never forget! And I’ll just have to use the stolen camera as an excuse to go back!

Ken Currie

Posted on Posted in art, artists, ken currie, preview night, UncategorizedTagged , , , Leave a comment

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Last week I attended a talk followed by a preview of Ken Currie’s work in The University Gallery. Ken Currie is a Scottish artist who’s work predominantly focuses on the human body (yes I know I go on about the body in art a lot, deal with it!). For those of you who are not familiar with his work, prepare to be amazed. His work is haunting, it is eery, yet it is beautiful. It explores themes such as mortality, illness, death, politics, you name it, it’s all there! I have loved his work for years, so when I found out he was doing a talk, I got a bit excited. I lie. I got VERY excited! Not only did I get to hear one of my favourite artists talk about their work, I actually got to talk to him myself and ask all the questions I’ve ever had about his pieces in person! (Yes, I was maybe a little star struck!) I did have this slight fear of meeting him though. What if he didn’t live up to my expectations? What if he as a person affected the way I thought about his art in a negative way? I need not have worried. He was witty, incredibly Scottish and very interesting! 

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The work in this exhibition is very different from what I’ve seen of his previously. It’s more printer then painterly based which is not like Currie at all. It was however very interesting to see his painterly mindset translating across into the realm of print. The way he talked and spoke about his etchings and monotypes was a mindset I could relate to – normally printing is an alien world for me, but Currie made it accessible. As well as discussing everything he had learned in the Glasgow Print Studios, he also went into a lot of detail over who he had chosen to depict in his images. Political activists such as Rosa Luxemburg featured (see below). Currie has always had an interest in history which I think is another reason I am such a fan of his work (yes, you guessed it, I am a history nerd). When he spoke about who was in his portrait, he was also talking how he’d arrived at that particular image. It was purely through repetition. By producing print, after print, after print. Whether he chose the first or last one to display didn’t matter, what mattered was that he had pushed that one image to its absolute limit. When asked how he selected which print to display he said “I think they’re all surprises, that’s why they’re here” Again, a very attractive feature of his art. Pushing it to the point of exhaustion. I in a sense do this too, not to the extent Currie does, but I do drawings repeatedly, just to see what happens as they change every time. As Currie said you have “absolutely no idea what’s going to happen!” Which is the excitement of making art of course. 

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Another thing I find so intriguing about his work is the motif of death. A lot of people shy away from this and treat it as a taboo so it’s refreshing for an artist to address it so directly. Currie’s basically saying ‘shit, we’re all going to die’. Yet he’s also saying that this eventual event, the event of death, is what makes us live life the way we do. If we were here forever would we push ourselves the way we do? Would we enjoy ourselves and value everyday? As Currie did actually say, the inevitability of death “forces us to live in the present”. When I asked him what he was trying to convey through this focus and exploration of such a morbid motif, he said he supposed it was an appreciation of how “fleeting our lives are”. 

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The monochrome colour palette only adds to this sense of the macabre. It’s dark and it’s gritty. It’s haunting. But it evokes something in you. Even if it is just an incredible appreciation for his skills as an artist (seriously, the way he has manipulated ink – stunning!) When I visit an exhibition I want to feel something. I want to walk round and leave thinking about the work. Currie’s does not fail me. I felt uneasy, like every piece was watching me. But I also felt peaceful, because all the works were beautiful despite their dark connotations. And I suppose it’s that delicate balance of beautiful and ugly that make Currie’s work so incredible.

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Painting Digression

Posted on Posted in art, painting, techniquesTagged , , Leave a comment

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It’s strange when I think how I used to consider myself as an artist. I was adamant painting would always and forever be my one and truly love. How wrong I was…As much as I love painting, it really does have it’s limitations. Not in the sense that all painting is bad, it’s just sometimes not the right means for what you are trying to express. Sculpture often offers an expansion painting cannot. It offers the three-dimensional, the play with space and where you put it. Nowadays I like to bring sculptural elements into my paintings. I like to play between the two realms and have overlap and interplay such as in these paintings. Here I am using cling film as a barrier. I am arranging it across the canvas as a blockade whilst I lay down paint in the revealed areas. I then allow this to dry before I rearrange the cling film and repeat the process. I do this in layers and layers until I finally reach a point where I am happy. 

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It’s a good technique as it allows me to reflect on the piece; think about the colours, think about the shapes I want to create. It also allows me to work in my favourite painterly medium, inks. I absolutely love ink! It gets everywhere, it’s absorbent, it’s uncontrollable. When I use ink I feel like I am going on a journey with an unknown ending. Ink is perfect for layering up as well as you can choose how dense or faint it is. Layering and repetition are elements I can’t get away from. I like to exhaust a drawing by repeating it multiple times until it is dead and I am sick of it! Working on canvas is another favourite of mine as well as I have the stretchiness spring back at me whilst I’m working it and it absorbs my ink in an incredibly satisfactory way. Large scale is also best for me as I feel it gives me the breathing space to work that small scale cannot. Although I’ve taken a step back from all of this for now, I know that painting will be calling me back soon. 

Those Days

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I’m going to be using art as a metaphor here. And yes, it’s a metaphor for life. For the real world. For being scared and growing up. To me, the ultimate is doing what you love everyday. There is no point doing what you are doing if you are burdened by it. Of course, we all have those days where we wonder ‘what the hell is going on here?!’ What am I doing with all this crap in my studio?!’ Well, us art folk wonder that. Sometimes though you need those days. Yes, they are pretty shit and I drink even more tea then I normally do, but at the same time they act as a turning point. They really make you sit back and think about what it is you are trying to articulate in your work. Stale periods force you to step outside of yourself for once and I think that’s a really healthy thing. Sometimes you can get so carried away in the making of an artwork that the momentum sweeps you off your feet and leaves you to fall hard on your bum! 

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Falling flat on your ass is all part of the learning experience though. You fail at something, but you learn and something else comes from that. This kind of thing doesn’t apply just to making artwork, but to life and everyday. We have bad days, we have Mondays and we have good days. And it all balances out. Sometimes I have inspiration dry spells that last two weeks! Trying to get an idea out is life trying to squeeze water from a rock! It’s tough, but once you get over that milestone, you have the world at your feet! And once you are at that stage, the fun begins! A fun day for me getting messy in the studio. If I leave for the day with ink stains on my hands and charcoal smeared across my face I am happy. It will have been a good one. 

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A lot of the time I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have a plan. Things just happen. I experiment. Accidents occur. Paint tubes explode in my face and all over my clothes. I say this mostly in reference to art, but as with all my art, a lot of it translates into real life. Who knows where you are going to be in five years, ten years? Who cares? Do we really need to pinpoint every single thing? Personally, no. If I can apply an art metaphor again here, I would far rather mix two colours together and see what happens when I apply them to canvas!

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In The Name of Art

Posted on Posted in art, bagsTagged , Leave a comment

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I think my laptop has been hinting at me to blog about this piece for a while now. Every time I open my pictures folder it’s there. There are more images which I will eventually post, but this one is my favourite and for now I feel it’s enough. I’ve been putting it off until now as there’s an entire build up to this work which are important. Without those it can carry all the wrong connotations and be interpreted incorrectly. But then I thought, why do I need the build up? Shouldn’t a work be able to speak for itself? Isn’t the whole point of art the fact people will interpret different things in different ways? So I’m going to approach this from a completely new angle and ignore all my concepts behind it for now. Instead I’m just going to take about the comedy element. You should have seen how many looks I got doing this, people probably thought I was bonkers! Who wouldn’t?! I’m walking around in a framework covered in bags as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world! Yet weirdly I didn’t feel too ridiculous. Well, the sense of animosity the bags provided probably were to thank for that. I think though people can justify doing a lot of crazy things ‘in the name of art’ and suddenly the crazy part doesn’t seem so radical. It’s the same with getting naked. If it’s for a photoshoot, why not? If it’s on the street, you’ll be arrested. It’s funny the safety net that art provides in cases like these…

Reminiscing

Posted on Posted in art, first year, nostalgiaTagged , , Leave a comment

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I think a lot of the time the danger with art is over thinking it. There is all this pressure on you as an artist to be conceptual, to have ideas that feed and fuel your work, when sometimes all you want to do is sit down and paint. I think that’s why I like this piece. I was flicking through images on my laptop and came across this work from First Year. It’s nothing special, but it just cracks me up every time I look at it due to it’s connotations. I am religious about going into uni. I hate being ill. However, on this occasion I was so hungover I should probably have been smart and stayed home. Did I though? Of course not. Instead I came in wearing sunglasses, looking like I’d just rolled out of bed and carrying a very strong black coffee. What should have been a complete write off of a day ended up being quite a laugh. 

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I was definitely not my usual production self. Instead, I choose to nurse my hangover by lying on this large roll of paper and just tracing my body in different positions. It was very interesting actually as I didn’t just use a singular line, I used colourful scribbles. And it was surprisingly therapeutic. Not that there’s anything therapeutic about being as hungover as I was! But hey it was self-inflicted, so what can I say? I had a good night, just a killer headache in the morning!

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Needless to say, my studio pals found it hilarious. For someone who is normally up gyming at 7 in the morning, lying curled up on a roll of paper is the last thing they would have expected walking into my studio. I think that’s one of the best things about working in a studio environment, you never know what’s going to happen! One day someone’s studio might have nothing in it and you wander where the hell they are. The next day it might be like a Mary Poppins handbag of surprises and blow you half away! You just never know…I think in this instance, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But to me, it’s better to do something then nothing. Scribbling in these colours led to a whole new series of works (see https://themindofmilla.com/2015/10/12/first-year-work/) and that’s the thing, you just never know what’s going to happen.

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So why waste a day? Why sit and do nothing when you can get up and go? Why become a zombie in front of Netflix when you can walk along the Quayside, or go to the library and read a book, or go out with friends and have fantastic conversations? Do what excites you, be spontaneous, be stupid, do all the things you’ll regret and learn from when you’re older. And have fun while you’re at it!