London 2013

I am a bit late on my promise to deliver weekly research on contemporary art practice, but I have been working hard. My research so far is on the wall of my studio, ranging from inspiration from my London trip, to artists found in art journals, to artists suggested  in my mid-year feedback. Firstly to say, London was fun! I had a really good time seeing a very good Australian friend and her entourage, together with another one of my friend's who now lives in London. I got picked on by the Aussies for having a quote 'fake posh Kylie Minogue accent and can I stop putting it on and speak in my real Australian voice now...?!'.  To which my friend responded, 'that is her real Australian voice'. Not sure what to think of that but needless to say I gave as good as I got. Regardless of the 'fake' accent I think my ability to hassle and make wisecracks to Aussies I had only just met did the trick in proving my authentic Australianness! (They were of course, for all their hassling, pretty nice Aussies to hang out with :)).

Okay, so enough of the Australian talk and to serious business... I made it to the Tate Modern with my Aussie friend and I think we were both huge fans of the eight-channel video installation in the Tanks I am not me, the horse is not mine by William Kentridge http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks/exhibition/william-kentridge-i-am-not-me-horse-not-mine. From the write-up in the Tanks, I understand this was a common saying among Russian peasants who were found stealing a horse (pretty clever don't you think). I also found just now a stop-motion animation of Kentridge's called Tide Table (video below) which is done in a very different way to the one in the Tate exhibition, but is really worth watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-c4N2njwg

I also went to the Natural History Museum, which apparently has an amazing blue whale you should see, but I completely forgot about it because I became ensconced in the bird section and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition www.wildlifephotographeroftheyear.com. The exhibition was truly wonderful and made me quite emotional because of the section on raising awareness of threatened species. I think that sometimes humans, including myself, really can be such lousy and self-centred creatures with respect to looking after what we have been given. But on the other hand, I know that humans can also be pretty caring and wonderful too. Anyway, in order that I didn't sit down and begin to cry at the bad state of the world, I escaped to the Victoria and Albert museum where I completely, absolutely and devotedly fell in love with the Medieval section (to be honest I have always been in love with things Medieval, but this just took it to a new level!). The Illuminated Book of Hours were by far my favourite (if only I could have turned their luscious pages instead of being stuck with one open page behind glass!), but there were also many other enchanting, sparkly, beautiful things in the section http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/medieval/. When I got back to College last week I found this website where you can scroll through some Book of Hours that are for sale http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/. Here is an open page of one of the books: 

Well that is more than enough from me I think. Exciting things on the horizon though in the next couple of weeks....

What kind of an artist do I want to be?

Following on from my mid-year review, it appears I need to think about what kind of an artist do I want to be? That is such a hard question. Is it something I should be asking at this early stage? Should I know when there is so much to explore? And yet, often people I meet ask me what kind of art do I do, or what do I paint - so I gather it is a very important question. However, I don't really want to do the same type of art for the rest of my life, I would like to grow and change styles or subjects. Tricky. Also room for improvement, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is getting up to date with current art practice. Going to London in a week's time should help with this, but if I say here, that I commit to start with trawling through museum websites as advised and promise to blog this weekly perhaps that will help. My flatmate once told me that if you promise to do something, you are more likely to do it, so okay, I promise to blog weekly on this. Here are my paintings from my mid-year review - some more successful than others it would appear! :) I really want to paint with tempera next semester so I promise that too, that I will experiment with that starting from day 1. Hope you are happy and well if you are reading this and that you have a fabulous New Year!

Craziness

I don't seem to have achieved an awful lot in the past few weeks. Flitting between ideas of 3D modelling (which when I see the intro scene on Game of Thrones it makes me want to give up there and then! see youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7L2PVdrb_8), print, drawing, taking photographs and short film of birds flying, I seem to have investigated to a goodly extent but actual output has been quite limited. We had a very short collagraph printing session last week, so I terrorised my A2 enviroboard with as many images I could in a crazy expression of the things I had found to date. I would have liked to have made it even crazier, but probably a good thing I didn't, as my tutor thought it was a bit overkill as it was (although today he saw the printed version and liked it much better I think!). Anyway, here is a copy of my whole sepia print, together with part of my brown/blue-black print. I have promised myself that over the next 4 weeks I am committed to painting and painting alone, together with writing my art essay which I must get to now and do some reading. Promises, promises I know! It always reminds me of the clock in Beauty and the Beast who when advising the Beast how to woo Belle, he says something along the lines of, "Flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep..."

Geese and a little bit of crows

So, well, has it been a month since I last posted? I have been quite absorbed in birds and am becoming a bit of a bird nerd. This is a good thing I guess. I went to a talk on goshawks held by the RSPB last week which was really informative, great photos and the speaker also had some funny stories to tell. He was also talking about the persecution of goshawks, which he got quite agitated about, so he had to switch to other topics every now and again to stop himself from getting angry. You know I have always associated the word persecution with religion and to have it applied to birds was quite unsettling. I was thinking, "how can birds be persecuted?" I know it sounds like a stupid thing to ask but for some reason I didn't get the concept. And then he started talking about shooting of goshawks so that game pheasants aren't hunted, about poisoning, about illegal taxidermy and felling of trees where nests are not checked for first. He made the point that because goshawks are not cute little birds (it sounds as though they eat anything, including other goshawks if dead) they are sometimes not held in high regard and perhaps not considered as worthy to be cared for/preserved. Needless to say I gushed a lot of this information at my crit on Monday. With the paintings of geese below I was thinking in some way about darkness and extinction, but I also just found sheer delight in the way their wings moved in different time to each other and how they clumped together in groups when they were flying. I used wood I had found in the off cuts bin in the wood workshop - someone had obviously been doing more creative things with wood than I would think of - and adjusted my compositions around that. I am not sure yet how I will take that idea further - if I cut into wood with a purpose will it just look artificial? Not sure. I also tried some screen printing of which most was unsuccessful, however I gleaned some ideas of how I can push it further going forward. So much more to say, but not enough room left to say it, except that I am doing 3D modelling in sepia ink next week at my botanical illustration course which I am very excited about!

Roll of honour

So, I have started back at uni this week. My tutor has been great so far, helpful and insightful and I like the studio I am in, so that is all good. We are currently doing a project on colour - how that will pan out I am not sure at this stage - but my initial thought was to have birds scavenging as my theme. I think this arose because I like to watch birds fly as I sit at my favourite spot at the Crags and look across at the city and the ocean. I am often envious of the freedom they have and think how fun it must be to eddy and swirl on the air currents (although on very windy days in Edinburgh I wonder if this a complete nightmare for them or whether it is like being on a roller coaster ride!). I thought of the other side last week though - the daily risk and danger of death by predators (humans included) and starvation. And today because there was a weather warning I was unable to go to the place I wanted to go to take photos of birds but went to the National Museum instead. I don't particularly like looking at stuffed animals, it makes me think of death and how these animals were once alive and the birds in particular - how they once felt the air beneath them and they felt keenly alive. I think it is good for educational purposes, but it also saddens me. Anyway, they had an extinctions role of honour from 1623 until 2010 and in the year I was born a bird became extinct - the Eiao monarch (Scientific name Pomaera fluxa). Some information on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says "This species was endemic to the island of Eiao, French Polynesia, but is now Extinct, probably thanks to introduced predators. It was last recorded in 1977, and in 1987 a search failed to find it". I keep seeing this image in my mind of this little bird searching and not being able to find a friend, a mate, that could understand it, alone, afraid. And then one day it dies too. How horrible to have that happen. And I feel that they are voiceless - people complain about the noise that birds make - but have we made them voiceless? I don't know. Tomorrow we have a screen printing induction so we need to have a black and white image to work with. I took these today and tried to make them as dark as I could.

24/7 Prayer Room

Well, I managed to paint my map of the world on the wall, albeit in a short time of about 5 hours. I was just pretty chuffed that I managed to get it done as I had a friend visiting from Australia and wasn't going to get another chance. Work has also been a bit too hectic of late, so I didn't manage to actually make it into the 24/7 prayer room for a 1 hour prayer slot. I would have really loved to have seen how the room finally came together and I think there was an idea of stringing the different countries together on my map, like a continuous prayer chain. Of course, my map had a little bit of artistic licence I confess, and being based on a couple of 16th century maps (Typus Orbis Universalis and Typus Orbis Terrarum) had some land masses in there that are not on the current map of the world. One of which being  Terra Australis Nondum Cognita which I kind of made into Antartica, as well as putting a current Australia in. Why not? Australia deserves double credits for being my homeland. I also painted the UK bright pink so it couldn't be missed! Interestingly enough, I was doing an inventory of a flat this week (after being locked out for an hour...surprise surprise) and in one of the bedrooms there was a world map paper shade for the light. The cleaner came in with a normal paper shade in his hand and said, "I was going to change it, but it's beautiful. Should I change it?" And I said, "Nope, I think it's beautiful too, I think you should leave it". And we both stood there for a few seconds gazing at the world map lit up by the light. Kind of a bonding moment, weird eh, but good. Oh well, speaking of work, I have to go do some, but here are some photos of my world map, together with some other walls that were being set up to help inspire people to think about God's heart for the nations. 

More map ideas...

So, there is currently a moth perched above me on the ceiling. This is the moth...

I wonder what  it is like to view the world upside down. Do you get a headache after a while? I guess the moth gave up on going crazy around the spotlights after a while. It is obviously a very chilled moth, but unfortunately for it, the window is now closed so there is no escape....muhahaha. No it will be okay, I'll be nice and let it out tomorrow :). Well, re art, I went to see Thingsplace at the Superclub yesterday with a friend. John Brown was one of my tutor's at ECA in my first year and doesn't have a web site, so it was good to finally get to see some of his work. Very good, it worked very well and very humorous while making a serious (I think) critique at the same time. I liked his "Strewn Crap" and "Loon" pieces especially. It was also good to see some of Gordon Brown's work there, Head of Painting ECA, which I also liked and thought it worked in really well with John's. Liam Walker, recently graduated ECA student, also had these great matchboxes there. I really admire artists who can paint things small and in fine, interesting detail, which Liam seems to be able to do (not that I have ever met him so hope it's not offensive to use a first names basis). No photos of the exhibition, but here is the postcard I picked up....

I've been sick most of the week, resulting in going to sleep early with bad headaches, so my maps have not progressed well! But finally seem to be on the mend after quaffing large quantities of oranges and citrus juice. I got my antique maps book which I like so far and have just been copying some things I found interesting. I really don't know how this is going to work out and honestly if they still need me - I may have got lost on the email list! Oh well, I plan to rock up on the door step come Monday so will see what happens :D. Oh, that reminds me of Game of Thrones. I absolutely love the start when they have the map and things popping up like clock work and the music that goes with it is amazing.