Personal Artwork
This is a painting that was part of my A-Level coursework, based on the subject of ‘Dreams’. In this piece, the colours represented particular emotions; reflecting the emotion of the figure reenacting a distressing situation. The numbers represent fears, from a fear questionnaire that I had people fill out anonymously, earlier on in the duration of the course. It is a surrealist painting, in which I explored: the use of colour and how that can depict certain feelings and emotions. Immediately, when receiving my anonymous written piece, I felt myself leaning towards thoughts of what I achieved in this painting. Although this was very interesting to study and learn, knowing what I can do, I now want to explore what I am unable to do.
Using this painting as a sound board, I aim to go against this style, in order to challenge myself, by exploring areas that are out of my comfort zone.
Mind Map
After reading and reflecting on my anonymous written piece, I made a mind map to echo my thoughts on paper. At first, it was a challenge for me to know where I wanted to steer my thoughts towards creating a painting. The written piece is a narrative, but also very expressive – as it is about Multiple Personality Disorder. With the writing being so direct, but at the same time very broad and open for interpretation, I was finding it very difficult to visualise where I was going with this – thus why I made a mind map.
The mind map includes my initial thoughts. These thoughts broadly introduced: a basis of understanding of the text, themes within the text, which words/phrases in particular stood out to me, what I was envisaging from the text and artist influences from my gallery visits in week 6.
Summing up my mind map, I see that I am – at this moment – inclining towards an abstract expressionist style piece of artwork.
Research
Through making a mind map, this then lead me to make further research on my painting. So, to conduct my research, I firstly wanted to get an understanding of what ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’ actually is, before beginning any work.
Opening with this question, I soon came to find out that ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’ doesn’t actually exist and that the illness is existentially known as ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder.’
Keeping mind my initial aim of ‘challenging myself, by exploring areas that are out of my comfort zone’ and also, being inspired by the abstract expressionist works of art. I have decided to create an abstract expressionist style painting; but rather than colour portraying an emotion, I am going to use 3 different abstract expressionist techniques – influenced by 3 separate abstract expressionist artists – to illustrate the 3 different identities of Hailey, Sarah and Nadine – based on the imaginary text.
Beginning the Painting
During this process, my aim was to build up a variety of colour, to involve a strong palette as the base layer of the painting. I used this beginning process as an experimental one, developing ways to work against ways that I’m used to – supporting my initial intentions.
Next, I begun to focus on each layer, specifically on the style of the three different artists, in order to keep a contrast broadly over the painting as a whole.
When finishing, I wanted to view, in detail, my favourite parts of the painting. One thing I learnt when I was getting into the swing of painting – half way through my painting process – was not to forgot the importance of the quality of my painting, taking into consideration the small details of brush stokes, use of colour and viscosity of paint in certain areas, which are elements that ultimately tie together a painting.
This is my painting set in its space within the exhibition, amongst other abstract paintings. I chose to place my painting in this place, as I felt the colours within each of these paintings predominantly complimented each other well – particularly with the colours from the cityscape painting by Natalie Sired.
What would I have done differently?
Personally, I would have liked to have put more thought into the composition of my painting, deciding where to place each abstract expressionist technique. This is because I feel as though I overworked the top right corner of the piece. On the other hand, even though it is not necessarily aesthetically pleasing to me, the business of the top right corner does, in fact, support one of my initial intentions of aiming to ‘create a new style of abstract expressionist painting – over working it to portray this mind struggle I would imagine a person with D.I.D to have.’
Olivia Omilana Art Blog :) 