family

MA U3: Exploring oil and incorporating photographs

| elizarawlings

Following on from my Unit 2 feedback, I wanted to explore more ways of using oil. Also, from some photography work, I wanted to incorporate more photos into my work. So I started a new piece of work without knowing what I was going to do.

METHOD

I made some black and white inkjet prints of various photos, some old family photos from Hong Kong and some recent Bristol streetscapes that I took with a medium format camera. Since it was around Chinese New Year time, I put in an image of a traditional Chinese Lion used for festive lion dance. I wanted to make that a dominant feature of the composition for the new year.

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I used dispersion liquid to transfer the images onto a primed canvas:

Prints being stuck down using dispersion liquid

Printed images transferred onto the canvas. Due to the inkjet printer image, there was a pink / magenta tint to the transferred images.

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The canvas was covered in a thinned down acrylic wash:

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Charcoal was used to mark out the composition with the Lion being prominent.

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Some iconic buildings from my childhood Hong Kong were added to the background.

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The lion head was painted in oil. But I was not happy with it, it looked too ‘cute’.

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Since this was an experiment in oil, I started to wipe off parts of the image to create different effects.

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A pile of mandarin oranges were added as a traditional Chinese custom during New Year. I wanted to add typical Chinese New Year food to the composition in response to my decision after the Cheongsam series to do some Chinese food painting on a ‘normal’ 2D canvas:

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I experimented with using looser brushstrokes and some thinned oil for the oranges:

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I was still very unhappy with the lion and decided to replace it with a complete family dinner with symbolic dishes for Chinese New Year.

Charcoal marks for New Year food dishes

Thinned oil paint was used to mark out the shapes of the various dishes. Then more details were added to the fish first:

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Close up of fish (stuffed dace fish)

Other dishes were added:

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The prawns’ details were finished with Chinese ink and a peach blossom branch was added (also in Chinese ink) as it was traditional to have this plant at every home in Chinese New Year.

Finished painting – Chinese New Year dinner:

Mixed media on canvas. Size 102×75 cm

Menu:

Centre – stuffed dace fish. Symbol for having surplus meaning never falling short (of money). The word ‘fish’ sounds like surplus.

Top right – stew of shiitake mushrooms, dried oysters, pork belly and spring onions in fermented bean sauce. A traditional new year dish, a large pot is usually made and eaten over several days. ‘Dried oyster’ sounds like ‘good things’ meaning good things will happen.

Bottom right – prawns. Symbol for happiness. ‘Prawn’ sounds like laughter.

Bottom left – mountain of mandarin oranges with a red money packet (lai see), the phrase sounds like ‘gold mountain’ meaning good fortune.

Top left – peach blossoms, the blossoms opening signifies good luck and good fortune.

REFLECTIONS

I am glad I didn’t continue with the lion. It was not how I wanted as it was too detailed and cute. I was happier when the Chinese dinner idea started to develop. I was mindful that I wanted to experiment with Qi Baishi’s idea of painting between likeness and unlikeness. I was hoping the thinner paint and looser brushstrokes would give me more scope to express the unlikeness. I think I made some progress compared to the Family Dinners on the Cheongsam canvases, but there’s still some way to go.

I experimented with incorporating photographs but I think in the end they didn’t really add anything as most of the images were covered up. Perhaps even thinner oil would have left the photo images still partially visible.

I have never managed to combine oil and Chinese ink satisfactorily, I think using the combination on the prawns worked out well. I believe the thinned down oil helped the combination to work so worth bearing this in mind.

LEARNING

Try experimenting with even thinner oil paint and other techniques to apply paint.

Think more about what I want the photos to do (e.g. how much to be revealed) if incorporating photo images, then dilute the paint accordingly to achieve the effect. The experiment here was not fully thought through as I was just playing, but it provided good insight into how easily it was to fully obscure the photos.

Overall the painting was looser and less organised compared to Cheongsam Family Dinners, but I need to be more courageous about achieving unlikeness. Add more of myself to it and think about what feelings and intentions I have – not intentions regarding the composition, but what I’m trying to say.

NEXT STEPS

Experiment more with oil and different applications.

Think more about how I want to use photo images.

Work on the unlikeness. Really go for it.

MA U3: Cheongsam series – Family dinner #2

| elizarawlings

After making Family Dinner #1 (image below), I proceeded to make #2 with the learning.

Family Dinner #1

METHOD

I was overall satisfied with how the new Cheongsam pattern worked out. But I felt the measurements needed to be more generous if I were to wear the canvas because of the stiffness of the material. If it were too tight then it would be difficult to put on. Hence I modified the pattern to make it wider.

Pattern ready for cutting

I also learnt from the last dress painting that it was difficult to paint the back of the dress if the dress was fully sewn up and placed on the canvas – it was impossible to access the back while the oil on the front was drying for weeks.

Therefore I experimented in this case with not sewing up the sides and draping the dress with the back part of the canvas hanging off the back of the easel. The plan is to paint the front then turn the board to paint the back.

Back of the dress draped over the board

This family dinner has a main dish of ‘flower crab cooked in a clay pot’. So learning from my Chinese painting class – I studied the anatomy first and did a few ink drawings of crabs:

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Then I chose the colour of the background based on another Chinese dinner service. It’s the same pattern of the yellow one I used on Family Dinner #1, but of a turquoise colour:

I experimented with different level of tinting to get the right colour and not too dark:

The composition was developed on my sketchbook then marked out using black willow charcoal on the canvas:

Composition drawings

Then I decided that I would sew up the sides of the dress because I felt it would be too difficult to turn the canvas inside-out to sew once it has been painted with oil. So I reverted back to the process I used previously after much consideration. I also used Velcro much more extensively along the complete opening of the right chest and side instead of using a zip or buttons because it would be hard to sew a zip or hand-sew fasteners due to the thick canvas. Hot glue was used to fix the Velcro in addition to the Velcro tape adhesive to ensure it was firmly in place.

Sides of the dress were sewn up

I started with the ‘pan fried sliced luncheon meat’. I once did a tinting paint chart of the different red oil paints I had. It was very useful to choose the colour of luncheon meat from the chart. I chose the shade according to my childhood memory – the colour of artificially-pink meat is difficult to forget!

Then I proceeded to loosely paint and mark out the rest of the composition.

Adding chicken and green beans
Adding clay pot flower crab and Campbell’s

Then more detail painting of the luncheon meat with some yellow edges for the oil used for pan frying:

Adding details to the whole salt baked chicken:

Around this time I received my Unit 2 feedback from my tutor with comments that made me reflect on how I apply the oil paint. So I experimented with some looser strokes on the crab shell.

The painting was finished by completing the Campbell’s alphabet soup and adding pattern details from the dinner service around the dishes. Pink satin fastening frogs were added as finishing touch.

Finished work – Family Dinner #2:

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REFLECTIONS

I really enjoyed making this painting. Food is such a key part of Chinese and Hong Kong culture that appreciating food is deep in my DNA. The more I paint these dinners, the more I realise that it’s not just the eating that I enjoy, but the painting of food as well. Working from memory has been great, thinking back to all the meals where these dishes were eating – at home as well as at restaurants.

Some of the unhappy experiences from our family dinners that I talked about in the reflections for Family Dinner #1 did not enter my consciousness for some reason. I realised that some of those experiences were dish dependent. Perhaps the dishes depicted here were ‘safe’ dishes without chances to go wrong. Dinner #1 featured a steamed fish – that was always challenging…

Part way through making this painting I received my Unit 2 feedback and it has been very thought-provoking. It made me immediately reevaluate how I applied oil painting – perhaps I have been too ‘one-dimensional’. Always applying the same (fairly thick) way. I tried a looser approach on the crab shell and was happy with the outcome. I have been thinking about that constantly and I need to experiment much more. How to use paint in a way to depict my distant and fading memory?

The Unit 2 feedback also made me think more deeply about why I am painting on Cheongsam dresses. Why dresses? Why Cheongsam and is the time well-spent in making dress-canvases? There is a lot to think about and reflect on from the Unit 2 feedback and I will write a dedicated blog for that.

I was going to make another cheongsam dress painting after this one, but I think I will make this decision after fully reflecting on my Unit 2 feedback.

LEARNING

– Be more flexible and creative in using oil. Try different thick- and thinness to create impact, to tell the story.

– Doing something just because I enjoy it is not enough a reason to do it. Need to consider more deeply about why – I believe I do this and reflect already but perhaps need to go deeper to examine my reasons.

– In terms of the Cheongsam making process, the increased use of Velcro as fasteners was a success and should be used in future dresses. Using hot glue to fix the Velcro was also a good idea.

– Overall, the pattern development has gone well and I believe I have a well tested and suitable method of producing a Cheongsam painting canvas.

NEXT STEPS

– Experiment with thinning oil and layering.

– Explore ways to depict fading memory without being overly detailed.

– Complete and capture my reflections from Unit 2 feedback. Write a dedicated blog for that and determine next steps to develop my practice. What to do if not Cheongsam paintings?

– Finish the back of the Cheongsam when the front is dried.

MA U2: Working from a dream – Mending tights

| elizarawlings

While I was on holiday in Scotland during summer 2024, I had a dream one night about making a piece of art work with pieces of laddered (torn) stockings or tights. The ladders were ‘repaired’ using nail varnish. Then each piece was framed individually in an ornate thick gold frame. It was such an unusual dream that as soon as I woke up, I captured the dream in my sketchbook in case I forgot the details as I often struggle to remember my dreams.

Mending stockings or tights with nail varnish was a technique that I learnt from my mother when I was little. If I laddered my school tights then she would mend it with her nail varnish. If the tear was small or in an area under my dress then it was fine to repair in this way without having to buy new tights all the time. Otherwise it would have been costly with an active child. In hindsight, it was ridiculous to make small children (girls) wear tights as school uniform, it was most impractical!

When I returned home after the holiday, I decided to realise my dream to make some art by mending a stocking.

METHOD

The first challenge was that tights and stockings nowadays are usually made of ladder-resistant materials which means they don’t ladder!! I had to dig out some old socks in order to find materials that would ladder. After laddering the material, a piece of white card was rolled up and inserted into the sock.

Some tissue was placed behind the ladder then red nail polish was applied at various points to stop further laddering.

This process was repeated with a second piece to create two pieces in total:

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The two pieces were placed on a large piece of white card, in different arrangements, to experiment with composition:

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REFLECTIONS

It was such a strange dream that I could not think of what would have triggered such a memory during a holiday in Scotland. Throughout the planning and making process, I thought about all the things that we learn from our parents. My mother didn’t actively teach me to mend my tights, I just watched her and that technique was cemented in my subconscious.

During the last year when I have been making Chinese Cheongsam dresses as painting canvases, I have been thinking a lot about watching my mother dressmaking when I was little and how much I learnt from her without being conscious of it.

Thinking more about it – a week before I had the dream, I was looking at some old family photographs shown to me by a family member. Many of the photos of my parents that I had not seen for years. Perhaps seeing those images somehow unlocked the memory of mending my school tights. The act of mending tights is uniquely personal and it only happens between mother and daughter because boys do not wear school tights and it’s unlikely that fathers have nail varnish to hand. Also, a mended pair of tights hidden under a dress is a secret between mother and daughter, or between women when such techniques are passed from one to another. Those moments are precious.

It is usually at this point of reflection that I start to feel sad because I left home so young (14) and I must have missed out on so much learning from my mother, or just time with her to enjoy that unique bond, sharing secrets that only we knew about and that united us from the world. As always in life, we don’t appreciate how precious those moments are until much later.

I decided to stop after making two pieces and didn’t realise the whole dream of making multiple pieces into an installation. I may come back to it at a later stage. For now, I feel that this experiment has served its purpose in testing out the process and triggering reflections that will keep me thinking for some time. Overall, I am happy with how this quick experiment went and pleased with some of the images I produced.

LEARNING

I usually make work after lots of thinking and planning. This piece of work came from ‘left field’ (a dream) and the making was quick and experimental. I enjoyed the diversion from my main project and to get some results so quickly was enjoyable. A large painting often takes so long that having some quick work in between can help to feed my need for results as well as interrupt the agony of painting. I recently heard an artist on TV saying that painting has the word ‘pain’ in it – too true!

Also, I have become increasingly aware of the importance of my thinking during making. Before I start making work, I think a lot about how to make it. But during making, the work takes my mind to many places that I have either long forgotten about or didn’t know existed. Hence I am becoming aware of the quality thinking time that ‘happens’ when I am making art. In a recent discussion during one of our MA online sessions, we talked about process vs product. That was very helpful as I feel excited about my discovery of how important the process is for me, much more important than the product. In fact, I am usually not so bothered about the product as it is secondary to the process for me. Perhaps for me, the purpose of the product is merely to provide a process.

NEXT STEPS

– Continue to enjoy the thinking and reflecting time during my making process.

– Do not feel guilty about taking diversions from my main projects; quick diversions like this one has provided invaluable insight from my subconscious. I should value it.

MA U2: Cheongsam Series – Food as metaphor for cultural identity – Overall reflections for ‘banana’ and ‘egg’

| elizarawlings

This blog details my overall reflections for the Cheongsam Series – Food as metaphor for cultural identity. I made two paintings on this topic and they are captured in the two blogs below:

https://eliza-rawlings.com/2024/08/08/ma-y2-u2-cheongsam-series-food-as-metaphors-for-cultural-identity-youre-a-banana/

https://eliza-rawlings.com/2024/08/08/ma-u2-cheongsam-series-food-as-metaphors-for-cultural-identity-no-im-an-egg/

The finished paintings are intended to be displayed as a pair because they respond to each other.

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REFLECTIONS

It has taken me some time to write this blog as I am not sure where to start. My reflections on the making process, composition and technical learning are captured within the individual painting blogs. This blog is meant for reflecting more deeply on what making these paintings has meant for me. I shall capture my thoughts as they come into my mind as a form of free writing.

The dressmaking part:

– Throughout the making of the Cheongsam dresses, I thought a lot about watching my mother dressmaking when I was a child. The way she designed the clothes, for herself and for her children; measuring us, making her patterns on waxy paper, chalking the cloth aided by her special yellow wooden rulers and cutting the fabric with the long sharp scissors. Then sewing using her manual Singer sewing machine with a leather belt that turned the wheel as she pedalled. I remember having fitting sessions with part-finished garments and then she would do the final finishing off. Every button was chosen with care. It’s not until I made these canvas dresses for my paintings that I realised how very clever she was. Although dressmaking is not difficult, making it well requires talents and skills just like any craft. She made evening gowns, tailored jackets and trousers! Those are very difficult items!

– One could ask, so what? Many people made and still make clothes. What’s the big deal? I reflected much about her life while making my canvas dresses because the process of dressmaking is largely unchanged therefore I could clearly visualise my mother going through all the steps that I am now replicating decades later. My mother married at 17 years old and became a mother at 19. Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s was a very patriarchal society and she as a Chinese woman was confined to her role – wife, mother, cook, cleaner, homemaker etc.. However, it is clear on reflection that she had ambitions that were not fulfilled by her role ‘assigned’ by society. There were few avenues for a woman of her time to express herself and she chose to do it through her dressmaking. She later went onto Chinese painting and became an accomplished artist with many students. Two weeks ago I was shown the various awards that she was given as an artist by cultural institutions in Hong Kong and China – I hope to explore more about her journey as a painter at a later stage.

– As my father’s career advanced in the Colonial Hong Kong Government, my mother would accompany him to official white-tie dinner balls (British style). She would always design and make her own evening dresses. She was the only woman who made her own dresses at those events. She always sought to be different and I believe in those days, her dress design and making was where she found a channel of expression as well as solace. It gave her an escape from the shackles of societal expectations of a traditional Chinese woman.

– I left home when I was a young teenager to boarding school in England and never lived with my parents since. Sadly they both passed before I really had the time or inclination to get to know them properly. So in a way I’m reflecting on her as a stranger with fragmented information from my patchy memory. Despite that, how did I end up picking up art in later life and in a strange way walking her path? I don’t think I have the answers yet but my own artistic journey has given me insight into what she was seeking as a person, as herself.

The painting part:

– It took me a while to decide what to paint. I like using metaphors in my work and when I stumbled across an image of Warhol’s banana, it gave me the idea to paint something in pop art theme as a contrast to the traditional Chinese dress canvas – I like making work that has an undertone of incongruity because that is afterall the metaphor for myself. Furthermore, a banana was the perfect subject as a cultural metaphor – yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

– I researched the use of the word ‘banana’ to describe a westernised East Asian person and I was delighted to find many insightful and humourous articles that resonated with me. The highlight was finding the film clip from the Hollywood movie Crazy Rich Asians talking about the protagonist being a banana – it was for me an endorsement of the phrase and bringing it into contemporary popular culture.

– As I got older and started to take time to look into my heritage, I felt that ‘banana’ alone was an insufficient metaphor for me. Growing up as a child in Hong Kong, a British influenced Chinese society, it was (and still is) so culturally rich that my core is deeply rooted in that heritage. Hence when I read an article about an egg with the yellow core as a cultural metaphor, I was hooked by the idea and felt it was a good response to the ‘banana’ metaphor.

– As I was painting both dresses, I was keen to adhere to the pop art theme painted on the Chinese dress canvas to capture the incongruity, or perhaps the fusion of the different cultures that I seek to represent in my work. At the end, I felt I have largely achieved what I intended despite much time spent on getting the right ‘green’ for the banana dress.

– The most poignant moment came when I was mixing and remixing to search for the correct shade of yellow and white colours to use for the eggs and bananas. I kept asking myself – ‘Is the white ‘white’ enough?’ or ‘Is the yellow too ‘yellow’?’ The constant search for the right shade of colour to use was a good metaphor for my attempt to fit in especially in my early years as a youngster in a new culture. Like many young people in a new environment, one was always working out how to behave, how to dress, how to do the makeup, what jewellery to wear etc. in order to fit in and be an insider. Or not to be treated as an outsider. It was a mutation process over time.

– The making of the two paintings here has turned out to be a better metaphor for my cultural transmutation journey than I ever expected.

LEARNING

I believe this blog concludes the ‘Cheongsam – food as metaphor’ series of work. I want to continue to make more Cheongsam paintings including looking for a more efficient way to make the dress canvas – it is time consuming but I want to continue with the idea so I need to find better ways of making the canvas.

I will continue to use the Cheongsam canvases to explore my identity which is a fundamental part of my practice. I feel using a Cheongsam canvas is a turning point in my practice, the idea came to me just as I was struggling to find a way forward to bring my ideas together. These two paintings are just the beginning of something, not sure exactly what yet, but I feel it’s a beginning.

Since much effort goes into making these canvases, I want to revisit the first Cheongsam painting that I made with the ‘Blue Willow pattern’ to see if I could make more of it so as not to waste the piece because I was not that satisfied with the outcome at the time.

NEXT STEPS

Revisit the Blue Willow pattern painting dress to give it more meaning.

Explore more efficient ways to make the Cheongsam dress canvas.

Make more work!

MA U2: Cheongsam Series #3 – wearable painting

| elizarawlings

Following on from Cheongsam Series #2, the plan was to create a wearable painting in the form of a Cheongsam. I have little experience in dressmaking but I remember watching my mother make dresses when I was young. She was a very talented dressmaker and I used to enjoy watching her work. I vaguely remember my grandmother being a dressmaker, too, so I guess my mother must have been inspired by her mother. I also learnt sewing at school so I have some knowledge of the process. I started to research how to make a Cheongsam.

I researched different sewing patterns online looking for one that’s not too complicated and I managed to find one. The reviews of the pattern suggested it was easy to make and I ordered one.

METHOD

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The pattern seemed straightforward and simple which was a great way for me to learn to make a Cheongsam. I measured myself and chose a size on the pattern.

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The fabric I used was a light weight calico cotton canvas material. I felt the light weight yet tough texture of the fabric was suitable for a wearable painting.

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Pieces of canvas material was cut according to the pattern.

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My 40 year old sewing machine which has not been used for many years refused to work due to years of neglect. So I had to hand sew the dress.

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The canvas dress was put onto a dress maker’s mannequin for finishing.

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I was overly generous in my fabric cutting so the dress felt very large. The sewing pattern had provision for darts for a tighter fit. So I marked those out and sewn darts onto the front and back.

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To decide on a primer for the canvas dress, both gesso and diluted white acrylic paint were painted onto fabric samples as experiments.

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Once dried, acrylic paint was applied to both surfaces to see which would perform better. The gesso was preferred because it provided a smoother surface.

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Since the fabric was light weight, the mannequin was wrapped in clingfilm for protection from the painting process.

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White gesso with acrylic blue tint were diluted as primer.

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The canvas dress was primed on both sides. The tint worked well and I could use that as the background for the painting.

The final finishing step was to add the frogs (tradition fabric buttons or fasteners).

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REFLECTIONS

I am pleased with the fact that I managed to make a canvas dress using a bought sewing pattern. This experience has given me confidence to take on other sewing or textile projects which will provide an addition dimension to my practice which I feel excited about. For now, I have made a 3D canvas in the shape of a Cheongsam and primed it. Although the painting was not yet finished, I wanted to pause and reflect on the progress so far and take time to consider what to paint on the dress.

The Cheongsam series started as a result of me finding my mother’s old Cheongsams in my loft, which triggered intrigue and inspiration for me to make work on the Cheongsam subject. I know little about the Cheongsam and I am starting to research about its history especially its evolution and how the style changed over time partly due to influences from the West. E.g. the Cheongsam started off as a loose fitting garment, however, as European designers such as Christian Dior marketed more figure-hugging dresses that were pinched at the waist, the Cheongsam started to evolve as Chinese women wanted to emulate European fashion. From around mid-20th century, the Cheongsam started to evolve as a result of the two cultures coming together and the new figure-hugging silhouette emerged which lasted till today. To this end, I believe the modern Cheongsam is a form of a Third Space phenomenon which fits in well with my overall research topic based on Homi K Bhabha’s book, The Location of Culture. My knowledge on the Cheongsam is very limited and I will be borrowing several books on the subject from CSM library. I look forward to finding out more to inform my Cheongsam series of work.

Having established that the modern Cheongsam is potentially a Third Space phenomenon, I would like to use the 3D canvas dress made here for a painting to show something about the Third Space, perhaps another Third Space phenomenon. I am considering making a series of Cheongsam canvases, each painted with a Third Space phenomenon and all as wearable paintings. I want to make them wearable so that they are metaphors for the uniform that transcultural people wear and the roles that they play as they navigate the different cultures in their environment. This work can help to inform my transcultural identity and heritage research.

LEARNING

I have learnt various techniques while making the dress and the experience will be useful as I go onto making other garments to feed into my practice.

I need to learn more about the history of the Cheongsam because it intrigues me and is an interesting part of the Hong Kong heritage that will help inform my art practice. Especially with my late mother being a skilful dressmaker and I remember clearly the dress that I found being in her wardrobe for many years. My older sister remembers visiting the tailor’s shop with my mother to order the dress. In fact, she has recently found the history of the shop for me – it still exists in Hong Kong.

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NEXT STEPS

Decide what to paint on the canvas and do the painting.

Research about Cheongsam to build on the series of work.

Make, just make and make some more.