I finished the forth painting today and so it’s a good opportunity to talk about the three paintings I did up until this point, summarizing the progress I’ve made thus far.
I the first one I was disoriented and confused due to the fact that was the start of the semester in addition to the overall knew and unknown experience of a master. I do not consider it as a complete art work both technically and thematically. The research I did about it was inconsiderable and out of focus. Generally I consider it an experiment that aimed to get me going for the next stage of my work.
As October passed I was starting to develop more thoroughly and purposefully what I want for that project to be. As I mentioned before I am trying to incorporate elements related to Scotland and particularly in Aberdeen into my work. My paintings in addition to the cardboard figures are nothing more than a pure expression of the thoughts and emotion evoked from my experiences during my staying in Aberdeen, mixed and blended with elements of my prior body of work.
In the second painting I used two elements I constantly observe in Aberdeen: homelessness and massive multi-apartment buildings. These elements are combined on canvas with insinuations about war, abandonment and refuge.
The third painting is inspired by an accident on an oil platform happened in northern sea called piper alpha. Technically and compositionally I think is more matured and I reach to a certain degree the balance between free, gestural brush strokes and wood cut print like drawing. I used as a reference a woodcut made by Kathe Kollwits titled “the mothers” for the figures. Interestingly enough when Jon came by he saw the oil platform drawing on canvas and some sketches I did from my visit in dunnotar castle and said that the oil platform shares many similarities with a castle as a structure. This metaphor stuck in my mind and probably can give a title to the painting.
The forth was an unexpected surprise for me for two reasons. Firstly the size of the canvas is too narrow in comparison to the sizes on which I worked in prior paintings. Secondly is my first attempt of drawing a composition that has only one figure on it. Multiple figures and events are absent, as well as difference on scale too. Initially I tried to create a figure by using references from wounded soldiers and religious iconography of saint George. Nevertheless as I was developing the painting I thought that if I am going to make a composition that has a single figure on it, is a good opportunity for making a self portrait, something that I have never done before, although it is a very common and repeated theme in art. Plus I felt like I have to place myself in the pictorial play I’m staging. So I sketched myself and tried to detach myself from the theme, (eventually as it turned out the figure is not an accurate self portrait, is a figure that happens to have some likeness with me. I also used as a guide an artist that my tutor introduced to me named Peter Howson. He is a Scottish artist that went to bosnia for drawing the civil war the in the 1990s. His figures are mythical, monumental and imposing, to the viewer. They speak about the terrors of war, and look like they have the scares from past traumas left on their souls depicted on their faces. I hope that my figures including this one express these bigger than life emotions and ideas, that they express the mere and plain truth about human suffering and living.