Finished Painting “Influence”

So, I finally finished this painting! Softer than my others I think and with hair as promised.  It’s amazing the change in this from the preparatory sketches & experimental painting techniques I tried.  Harsher colours and palette knife application that I thought I’d have a go at delivered a haggered looking portrait…not what I was after, so this is built up from softer tones, thinly applied in layers…..good for practising one’s patience when using oils but definately worth it.  Next time, I may even use skin tones….no promises, mind.

Current Work in Progress….

   Thought I’d keep you updated on what I’ve been doing this morning….I’ve started a new painting.

This time it is actually someone real, my daughter, rather than my usual ‘nobody in particular’ faces, and yes my friends, she has HAIR.  In previous paintings I have deliberatley not given my figures any hair because it gives too many clues as to gender and time, but for this one, and maybe others, I am happy with the introduction of hair.

This is just the first stage of the painting and it has a long way to go yet….better get on with it!

 

 

 

Garage to Photography Studio….1st Shoot!

So, after turfing out half the crap in our garage and spending days cleaning, clearing and painting with only MASSIVE spiders that make me gip for friends, I have finally done my first shoot.  When I say cleared the garage, in truth I cleared one end of it and behind the scenes I was still banging my legs on bikes and nestling the tripod legs between boxes of old toys and discarded detritus, but hey, I managed…… kind of.

Luckily for me, Mr Artmotive knows a thing or two about photography, so he was able to give me the much needed guidance on ‘F stops’ and lighting tips etc and demonstrated a level patience with me usually reserved for petulant toddlers – unfortunately I get that way when I really want to understand/control what I’m doing but don’t actually have the knowledge or experience to do so…..it’s not my best characteristic, but well…ain’t none of us perfect!

I borrowed some studio lights and set up with all the diffusers and umberellas, bouncing light all over the place I was. Proper.  All I needed was a black polo neck sweater and black jeans and I could have passed for a professional….well, in my head anyway!

The results, well I am quite pleased…..not sure they look like professional photos but they are a good representation of the work, I think.  My only other thought would have been to get a roll down back-drop but then I don’t think I would have enough space in the garage to light it properly…particularly from the sides.

                           

    So, here they are….Whaddaya think? Has anyone else used their garage like this? I’m open for any tips…..

If you like the work then follow this link to see more! www.dianegriffin.co.uk

My latest sculpture update…

So, this is what I’m working on at the moment…it’ll be a tall sculpture –     along a similar theme to ‘Farm of the Four Winds’ which you can check out on my website if you like. www.dianegriffin.co.uk

These ceramic parts will be layered with felt stacks to make a spine-       like form.

The top piece is in the kiln and firing right now!! (below) – the 1st of a   couple of firings.

Next to do is go and see my stone mason for the base.

New Speak:British Art Now. Saatchi Gallery, London

This exhibition, which is on until the end of April, is the second part of the whole exhibition..unfortunately I missed the first part.  Spread over the  gallery, there is a varied mixture of painting, sculpture, photography and installation work from current practicing artists, although, weirdly, considering the title of the exhibition, the artists are not all British.*shrug*

I started at the beginning, gallery 1……hmmm, got to be honest, the work in there didn’t grab me.  The space was shared by Ansel Krut’s paintings and sculptures by Juliana Cerquiera Leite.  The colours and painting quality in Krut’s work I did like, but what he paints are faces made from pans & sausages, fried eggs, and balloons. Are they for children? Ideas for a rainy day maybe?…Some are even sillier, like the portrait of Napoleon represented as toilet paper with plasticine turds. I didn’t even realise it was supposed to be loo roll & shit until I read it in the book, they looked like baked bean tins and ‘don’t know’ to me. Another painting,  Arse Flowers In Bloom,  looks like a doodle that a 14yr old boy might make in the margin of his school book.  It is a painting of flowers with ridiculous cartoon arses at the center of each flower.  Childish-but not in a naive charming painting kind of a way, just childish.  This gallery was filled with the nasty, acrid smell of latex which Juliana Cerquiera Leite’s work was responsible for.  Again, I didn’t like these…..maybe for her the journey in achieving these huge ugly sculptures is fascinating, but the end results? -Nah!

Brujo by Dan Perfect

What I did like were the large paintings by Dan Perfect (either that is a ‘stage’ name or he has very cool parents!).  They have a fantastic balance of colour and texture.  These are busy, striking canvases that get more interesting the more you look at them.  Up close you can see loads of different layers, media and textures. Every inch of Perfect’s paintings is interesting in its own right but altogether…stunning. I want one, in fact I want this one.

I  enjoyed the work of Robert Fry. I love the colours and the space around the figures that contains the free gestural marks.

Also worth a mention are the little paintings on wood by Henrijs Preiss, they have an aged feel to them and reminded me of perhaps old backgammon/games boards. Unusual and beautifully done.

The photography in this exhibition is great.  Idris Khan has some huge  photographic re-workings of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s stuctures. Sorry about the terrible photo with me in the reflection-how embarrassing *reddens*. Anyway, in the flesh these are great…impressive scale, and with the layers of semi opaque edges and lines you get a blurred finish that look a bit like they could be charcoal drawings or that these massive structures are moving somehow. The only thing was that not only was I reflecting in the glass frame but so was everybody else so it was a bit difficult to study without interruption. Anne Hardy’s staged interior photographs are wonderful too.

Richard Wilson’s 20:50 1987 is a permanent feature at the gallery and very cool.  The gallery space is filled with used sump oil which you view from a balcony. The oil creates a smooth glass-like surface that reflects the ceiling, walls & pillars etc  in its rich blackness. You can only really tell that it’s oil when you blow across the surface and watch the ripples.  Well, that and the quite pungent smell of used sump oil.

Much of the sculpture in this exhibition I found disappointing…for  example…

Steve Bishop has a taxidermied goat merging with/mounting, (you decide) a concrete Christian Dior shaped perfume bottle. Now, I like goats, and I like perfume bottles as much as the next gal, but Bishop captures nothing of the appeal of perfume bottles by rendering it in concrete and the goat’s involvement….?…I’m struggling, and I don’t know, feeling a little bit insulted. I mean, come on.

Anyway, those were my best and worst, but there is loads more besides what I have mentioned. Truly something for everyone I think. Well worth a visit then a pricey lunch on the Kings Road to round it off. I didn’t get my pricey lunch as I ran out of time and had to hoof down a sandwich while route marching up to the V&A, but in my head….that’s what I would have done.

Rating : A jug of Sangria ……because all the staff seem to be Spanish/Italian and it’s full of variety, like the exhibition!    -iSalud!

www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Modern British Sculpture -Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition

I went to see this exhibition on a Saturday, and was pleased to see how busy it was…not just arty types and students either, but families, yes, with children taking an interest. Didn’t know that could still be achieved! As you know, my children will merely tolerate a quick shufty around a gallery and only reluctantly admit that they might have seen one thing that could have been only slightly interesting. Anyway, I feel sure that after the bribed (must have been) exemplary behaviour, that the up beat and interested attitudes of these youngsters descended into my more familiar family dynamic of bickering and moaning. Maybe not, but it makes me feel better to think that that was the way it panned out.

This exhibition shows work by  key sculptors that influenced and shaped British Sculpture to what we have now. Each room having a completely different feel to the one previous. Some great works to be seen here. Jacob Epstein’s Adam, a fantastic work carved from a single piece of alabaster, is full of energy , weight and strength.  This piece really dominated the space and I was pleased that there wasn’t much else in that room.  Alfred Gilbert’s Jubilee Monument to Queen Victoria is amazing, but I did feel that Phillip King’s Genghis Khan was a bit lost at Queen Vic’s feet. Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and Anthony Caro are all quite rightly given their due space.  Although I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece of Caro’s work that I have liked or felt moved by.  To me his pieces look like unresolved sketches or maquettes that have been enlarged for not really any good reason.  Sorry, that’s just how I see it.  Actually, while I’m at it, there is a room in the exhibition which has vitrines of ceramic tea bowls – don’t know whether it was the sudden museum like display or the fact that they were domestic tea bowls admittedly by important craft figures, but they felt very out of place.  That said, it represents the time, between the wars when potters and artists showed in the same galleries and shared friendships as well as ideas……definately good to show this, I’m just not sure it fully came together in this room.

Damien Hirst’s abandoned barbecue sealed in a box with flies feeding on rotting meat etc offers some drama through repulsion which weirdly I quite enjoy. A Boyle Family piece, Stacked by Tony Cragg, Jeff Koons’ ‘Ball’ vitrine all great to see and for me after this it was the beginning of the end.  The final 2 rooms left me very cold and a bit let down, and honestly a bit worried that all that great sculpture in previous rooms culminated in what followed to be thin soulless works with not much substance or presence.  The  room with newspaper articles about the exhibition itself and various other sculpture related articles just looked like the curators had simply got tired  given up and gone home. Just peculiar.

What must be said though is who WASN’T represented there…Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, Andy Goldsworthy, Eduardo Paolozzi are just a few who could have truly bought some weight particularly to the last few rooms of more modern sculptures.  Why weren’t they included? I think from reading the papers,  that is the question that haunts this otherwise great exhibition.

It is on until 7th April 2011 and I strongly recommend a visit -then come back and tell me what you think.

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Rating : Another glass or 2 of that full bodied red, with some chilli crisps.

How to get a head in clay – BBC4

Although this programme was on for the first time in Oct 2010 (ish), I only just saw it repeated the other night and you can still catch it on i-player.

It is an hour long programme about the sculpted head through history as well as how it is still a great source of inspiration for artists today.  There is a wonderful interview with Sir Anthony Caro and his wife Sheila, where they both talk about the heads he sculpted of Sheila (circa 1955).  Mr. Caro talks of how actual representation is not  necessarily that  important in a  portrait and I would agree with him.  His portraits of Sheila, certainly don’t represent her kindly , nor could they be skeletally correct, but you  can clearly see her there in the work – he captures the essence of her look rather than mapping out every exact detail.

Maggie Hambling talks us through the sarcophagus style sculpture she created in memory of Oscar Wilde -A Conversation With  Oscar Wilde.  It is so much more enlightening to have the actual artists talk about the work they have created rather than other artists or critics to give a view on ‘perhaps’ what was meant. Anyway, Maggie is a proper character and a true inspiration.

Other works looked at include ‘Mask II’ by Ron Mueck. I’ve yet to see this man’s work in the flesh and am desperate to do so, so if anyone knows where he is next showing in the UK then please let me know. Ron Mueck makes awesome ‘hyper-real’ heads and bodies that are often larger than life physically as well as visually.  Also discussed is “Self’ by Marc Quinn, which is on display at National Portrait Gallery, London. It is a cast of the artists head made from 10 pints of his own frozen blood. I have seen this piece and is is quite moving. Due to the vitrine it is hard to see it clearly without reflections and refractions which I think add to the piece, also, the lighting seems to give the blood a glow/shimmer. It is quite gory as well as being quite beautiful and peaceful, a bit like a death mask, these are also discussed on the programme.

The main thread of this programme follows actor David Thewlis to 3 very different sculptors with the intention of getting each to do a portrait of him and to see the 3 different artist approaches and outcomes. David Thewlis was a pretty good subject/presesnter, asking questions etc to find out what each artist is thinking and trying to acheive. First up, Martin Jennings. A representational portrait artist who talks openly about his approaches to his subjects, his thought processes and we get to see him developing the portrait at various stages of the process.  The outcome was a quality likeness of David Thewlis.  Next we had Raphael Maklouf, the man who sculpted the image of the Queen that is used on our coinage.  Maklouf explained that his work would portray Thewlis as more regal as they were to put the end result on a coin.  We got to see Maklouf working on the portrait and talking about his work as he went along.  The final coin/portrait was actually quite fun.  It depicted Thewlis more as a Roman Emporer character than an actual likeness but it was Thewlis none the less. Finally, David Thewlis goes to the last sculptor – Tom Price, who creates small scale heads with extraordinary detail.  Incredibly life-like pieces that draw you in and are more powerful perhaps because of their scale, but that’s another whole topic.  Price however, did not show us any methods of sculpting or any work in progress.  He did explain that he wasn’t a traditional portrait artist and that his pieces were not worked from real subjects, more made up faces evoking real emotions.  I have no problem with this. The result though, was the  portait of a black man who bears no resemblance in any form to the actor!  Mr Thewlis (caucasian) was not laughing alone when the piece was revealed..I was chuckling away with him -only difference was that he had to gather himself quite quickly and respond to the artist.  All I can think is that Mr Price struggled with this commission, it all went disastrously wrong (let’s face it, it happens) and he just pulled out something he’d done earlier & said ‘That’s you that is’.

Overall, a really enjoyable programme. I recommend you head straight to i-player for a look-see. http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/vjmqh/

Programme rating :  a bottle of Merlot from about the £15 mark. Hoo-yeah.