toy story

... and I settled on toys, specifically teddy bears. I gave dolls a try during the developmental stages and they just looked a bit too much like the scary dolls out of those Chucky films - not the sort of vision I had in mind! Bears struck a chord with me... they had a sense of the innocence of a child. Their faces perma-frozen in a state of cute bewilderment. The fluffiness of them added to their cuteness and gave them a sense of fragility and softness. They were ideal vessels to represent my daughter. I had ben keen not to go down a completely figurative route again. I'd already put myself in the picture through the self portrait work earlier in the course and felt uncomfortable using my daughter's image in that way. Using the bears as a symbol allowed me to suggest aspects of her essence instead. The idea then, was becoming clearer but still didn't quite have the edge I needed to give it that little bit of quirky sparkle. Which is where the Identikit came in. I started to carry out research on the internet. My original hope being maybe to construct the bears three dimensionally, somehow piecing together bits of bears to create the desired effect. I gave up on this fairly quickly as the practicalities would have resulted, I'm sure, in creatures much like those created by the twisted Sid in Toy Story! I was then keen to use original Identikit elements from the 1960's and 70's to construct my own Bear identikit set. Sadly (because I thought the idea was cool!), this also met an unresolved end, when it proved impossible to get hold of the original identikit sets. I had been doing some paintings with my GCSE students in the style of the German Expressionist painters, and resolved to continue this expressive, painterly approach, utilising elements of identikit facial re-construction.
The idea of juxtaposing the soft and cute teddies with the harsh realities of criminal life appealed to me. The criminality representative of one's potential at birth. I was trying to say something about the harshness of the world into which my daughter was being born. Of course, great things happen every day, but these are peppered by the horrific things which seem to dominate the news. Giving the bears this criminal undercurrent spoke to me of this ever present evil which surrounds us. Also of the potential we all have as children. To follow one path (the bear) and become moral and just citizens, or to react against it and become the criminal undercurrent.

Teddy bears picnic

So, since my last post I've become a Daddy and have been working my socks off to produce work for the end of course exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. The tack I had initially taken in response to Faisal Abdu' Allah's work, using photographic imagery as a basis (See attached images) has changed fairly radically.

The original intention was to link to Faisal's central theme of identity and create a number of photo / mixed media pieces in response to my impending fatherhood. This work progressed quite nicely, with some successful experimental trials transferring photographic imagery and working with paint and ink in, what for me, were new and exciting ways. I was really enjoying the making process and producing work which I thought was quite cool.

It was only upon going through the first critique process around February time (incidentally coinciding with the birth of my daughter) that I started to realise that, whilst the imagery was cool and I was having great fun making it, it's meaning was fairly superficial. It no longer represented what fatherhood was all about. The initial imagery, which had been squarely centered on me and my feelings now seemed irrelevant. Fatherhood now seemed to focus more my daughter and the joy she had brought and the potential which awaited her as she entered the world. The photographic approach also seemed somehow crude and dark, unlike my usual art and indeed my personality. Infact, some of this photographic work became so dark I was in fear of showing it to my wife lest she think I'd been body snatched!!

So, I began searching for an alternative take on the idea. I was still keen to pursue the angle of fatherhood and what it meant to me but needed a new angle, a new edge...