I had a tutorial with an Academic Support tutor from CSM and we discussed painting. I talked about one of my favourite transcultural artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby. I talked about how in awe I felt when I saw her large diptych at Tate Modern last year. The tutor suggested that I made a painting to respond to the work.

Akunyili Crosby’s work at Tate:

METHOD

I printed out Akunyili Crosby’s work to give me inspiration. A board canvas was chosen.

A thin acrylic wash of mixed colours was applied to cover the canvas.

A line from a Chinese Tang Dynasty poem was chosen and written onto the canvas in Chinese ink to add some extra images onto the background. The line translates as – in life, when times are good, really celebrate.

Then very thin layers of oil paint were applied loosely with brushes. The canvas was kept vertically for the paint to run down.

A piece of textured rag was used to experiment with creating patterns:

Work in progress, playing:

Playing some more:

Close up images to show the ragging effect. The oil was so thin that the background images were still coming through:

But what to paint?

I decided to paint the ‘lone sofa’ photograph that I took when I went on a photography walk-about in Bristol. That was my favourite photo of the trip.

The canvas was put into portrait orientation.

Charcoal was used to layout the composition, choosing what to keep and what to leave out from the photo image.

Close-up of areas of the finished painting:

Finished painting:

REFLECTIONS

The oil experiments were not as useful as I had wanted – the outcomes were pretty much as expected and I can’t say I made much new discovery. So I need to do more research on this rather than just play.

The Chinese characters in the background were mostly hidden in the end. Again I could have used thinner oil. Or in this case, I feel it’s fine to obscure the background and use the Chinese characters as abstract patterns rather than to convey specific meaning.

The sofa scene – I mentioned in the last blog that I wasn’t feeling colourful so I opted for muted grey tones. That feels appropriate for this scene especially given the original photo was monochrome. I enjoyed the painting process which I tend to do most of the time. It was useful to focus on what to take out from the image composition, trying the less is more approach.

The piece of folded torn foam mattress on the floor was quite successful and also the pile of rubble. I think what was going through my mind was a dystopian scene and I wanted to create a dystopian effect to reflect my despair about the rapid change in world order, not sure if I really got that effect.

Although I started with wanting to do a response to Akunyili Crosby’s work. The outcome was quite far from that original intention. I think it’s because I made this painting over several weeks and my state of mind changed over that period and what I started off wanting to do didn’t seem relevant in the end. So I am comfortable with the change in direction.

LEARNING

To get more out of my exploration of oil, I need to do some research work, either online (YouTube) or books to gain new knowledge so I can take my experimentation to the next level.

It was only when I reflected afterwards that I was going for a dystopian theme. Perhaps if I had thought of that at the start then I could have created more of a dystopian atmosphere. I can research more about dystopian art. But how does that fit in with my transcultural practice? Should I go off on this tangent right now to risk having an incoherent body of work?

NEXT STEPS

Do research on oil painting techniques to learn new ways to use oil.

Do research on dystopian artists to see if that’s the vibe that I want to reflect my state of mind right now.