Construction

So, what do I say, as I type with a sliced open finger resulting from one of my pieces falling off the wall yesterday - that I need some major improvement as far as my professional practice goes! It's true, but trying to square up 13 pieces into one large piece is easier said than done. This time our project was headlined, "Around the block". So me being me, I was inspired by the dirtier parts of Edinburgh. For some reason, the space under scaffolding intrigued me - goodness knows what people thought as I huddled underneath the scaffolding, hoodie on drawing madly. The first week I did a large painting of the scaffolding, but to be honest, I didn’t have enough information and it just didn't work. While I learnt a lot from it, I thought next time around it would be better to do smaller pieces to make up a large piece. I went out again the next week, felt the need to draw some people, so asked a couple of construction guys if they were okay if I sketched them and the scaffolding for a couple of hours. They were fine with it, I think, but I am sure they felt a bit uncomfortable after a while. Who doesn't, when you're trying to work and someone is looking intently at you! :) 

Inspired by Jenny Martin, a local Edinburgh artist, who had a print exhibition at Leith School of Art recently and who likes using fluorescent colour in her work, I painted the ground of the boards in fluorescent yellow and orange (representative of the bright yellow of the construction workers jackets and the orange of the traffic cones). I think this especially freaked out my tutors who thought, I am sure, "Kirralee, not again!" as I have a tendency to pitch my work at the very bright end of the spectrum. I was told by a fellow student yesterday that the colours (when it was purely 13 bright fluorescent boards) were painful to look at, but after all, I am from Australia and the sun is very bright out there, so I honestly think it has influenced my tonal views! :) Anyway, here are a few images, from sketchbook to my final piece, which is currently showing at our first year exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art. 

Museum animals

As usual my blog has not been updated in months. After going to amazing galleries in places such as Italy and Spain and even seeing the work of fellow students, I am generally a bit hesitate to put what I've been doing online. I am nowhere near to where I would like to be at, but I've been thinking the past few weeks that a baby has to learn to roll over before it can crawl and generally crawl before it can walk, and then the running comes. I think I am still in the rolling over or crawl stage! :)

I have been at Edinburgh College of Art for a few weeks now and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Our first project was on the theme of a collection (menagerie) and so we started our research at the newly opened animal section of the National Museum of Scotland. I think that the new section is very good; however, I think the idea that we stuff animals and then put them behind glass cages is a little strange. Do we feel safer viewing them when they are dead so they can't hurt us? Or is it just easier for children to view and learn about wild animals that way because otherwise they would have to travel to another country? Anyway, what struck me was the jumble of animals they had grouped together. For example a cat facing me with a rabbit in its mouth, but directly behind the cat the backside of a rhinoceros. Or an otter hanging on the wall facing a proud eagle. Perhaps not entirely deep or creative, but this idea of the jumble and the strangeness was what I based my paintings on. In truth, I haven't done many paintings, although I want to do many more. I chose to do the paintings for my first project in acrylic paint. I was interested in the idea of distorting the animals in order to give strangeness to them, but this didn't work for me, particularly in the case of the deer. Anyway, I will share the good with the bad as it is still my journey (cliché I know). I can only learn from my mistakes and also my successes! :)


Drawing of the Quagga and friends



Piece No. 1

Piece No. 2

Globular masses

At the moment I'm reading a book called Sculpture since 1945 by Andrew Causey. Excellent so far if you ever get the chance to read it. Inspired by Otto Piene's Fire Flower Power and my school's Lunar and Solar theme, I was trying to capture this afternoon some aspects of his flower power machine and the light that it created on the walls. I think I am quite, what's the word, intrigued/absorbed/enamoured by these globular masses that we call the sun and moon. The roundness of them, the weightiness of them. I need to start my summer project soon and it would be good in some way if I could find an object near my house that I could somehow base a spherical sculpture on. Not that that's the right way to go about it perhaps. Hoping to see the Spain Goya to Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery tomorrow. I've found it interesting that Picasso was a bit of a sculptor. I hadn't realised that before, only really being aware of his cubist paintings.

Last day term 2

And so ended term 2. Looking back over my blog, I think that these are a definite improvement on last term. I think I'm starting to get the drift of flesh tones and how colour is traced through a work to move a person's eye in and through the work. If only my camera could capture the images a bit better, or should I be truthful and say that if only my hands could be steady, I could stop the blur! Off to Oz tomorrow. Unpacked and pretty much unprepared, but by some miracle hopefully all will sort itself out by the time the plane is ready to leave. Looking forward to seeing my wonderful family and Oz friends, together with lots of opportunities to get my visual diary happening once more. Adios Scottish amigos, or should that be au revoir?