Studio practice

 Painting series    

To better visually articulate my thoughts for this theme I decided to create a series of 4 paintings. These paintings originated as just the one with the tassel bike, as an extra activity that went well so I just kept going until I’ve ended up with a series of four. I would display the four paintings in a grid formation like the photo at the bottom. 

These paintings and especially the backgrounds have a color theme of yellow, blue and many shades of pink, colors I associate with the memory of childhood. When creating these paintings the composition was a very important thing for me, I knew I didn’t want my main image to be central to the canvas, I wanted my composition to mirror this sense of conflict I was creating between the imagery and style.  I created the backgrounds for 3 of these pieces in a very soul filling way, being messy with the paint and letting it drip and flow, working back in with soft pencil crayons scribbling is blank spaces. The background of the unicorn painting differs slightly to the rest as that painting actually came first and was the result of a video/performance piece, the colors of the canvas and the imagery I chose felt prominent to the painting series so I combined them by adding in the neon pink line. 

When choosing subjects to paint i had a think about what kind of things made me feel nostalgic about childhood, upon pondering i came up with a small pink tassel bike i really wanted as a child. I asked two friends what things made them feel sadly nostalgic and was given the ideas of melting ice cream and balloons. I paired this childish imagery with smaller more mature imagery that has a violent post pop aesthetic to it to create a juxtaposition to each piece, this can be seen through the use of the lips, dripping heart, cherry's, matches, sewing needles, tears and and the lighter. I tied all 4 paintings together with this neon pink line, influenced by bar signs and street art. With these paintings I've leaned into a more messy, fluid painting style to give movement and life to my paintings but paired that with naturalism in the main aspects of  the imagery to keep the quality in the paintings. With these paintings i feel like I've created a synthetic world, a nostalgic dystopian of  pink brutalism and false memory, a safe yet violent place. These paintings have been influenced highly through music i was listening too, films, poetry and feminist ideas. 

I am very pleased with how these paintings have turned out and believe I've successfully represented my ideas for this theme. However, as I've created some of these paintings in the studio and some at home, I've used different paints with some using a lower quality poster paint instead of acrylic, too me this is obvious in the paintings and next time i would be more organized with bringing my paints so not to repeat this.