hold the front page

Well, I've just discovered that apparently my picture made the front page of the Oxford Times no less - very exciting! Haven't seen the paper but my hope is it may make the website, so i can at least suss out whether they caught my better side!! The presentation of our 'collective' work and Open evening are on Thursday, which I'm both nervous (for the presentation) and excited about. More press are coming I think, to talk to us about the work and about how the course has effected us, which is really exciting. Hopefully the presentation will be fab and running at a decent pace before then.
School starts back next week, so I've been busy getting my Art room straight and getting all the paperwork done I've been putting off until now. GCSE results were brill so it's all positive for the year ahead, fingers crossed!

Teddy bears' Nick Pic

So, the teddy bears are all up now in the Modern Art Oxford Cafe. I gave them the collective title of Teddy Bears' Nick Pic, a pun on the fact that the paintings are like the photo's taken of criminals in the 'nick'. It was great to finally get the work up on the wall, it finally felt like a proper event, the team at MAO were great in helping it to look as professional as possible. The Oxford Mail came in and took my picture with the bears but I don't know if I featured in the article or not (We don't get that paper round our way). Gill, another member of our 'collective', was featured and her work looked fab.
Work has been progressing full tilt on the final presentation now. With almost 3 days solid invested in putting it together and making it make sense (a difficulty with the way I waffle on...) I think I'm finally there. The presentation next Thursday marks the culmination of what has been a really inspiring year for my artistic development. It will also be the mark which decides our overall grading. More about that whenever I know...

And so, with the work going up at Modern Art Oxford on Monday and the urgent need to get them framed buzzing about in the back of my head, a decision was made to go with the teddy bears. Although 5 have been made, the 4 square pieces are the ones which will be exhibited, as they work well together as a series. The larger piece will be staying at home, but can still be enjoyed by all as I've included it top left. It made sense to stick with these, as most of the development in my sketchbook had been based around the identikit idea. Also, the artists I had looked at and the research carried out all linked to this body of work. Although I still feel very happy with the way the portraits turned out, they lack the sense of unity which this work has. I also feel the humorous juxtaposition of the imagery will entice the public to look more closely at them. I've certainly had more fun with this work than in anything I've produced in a long time and in comparison the portraits are a little more po-faced perhaps. These are not taking themselves too seriously.

The end is nigh

I finally managed to finish the other portrait pieces begun way back around November time last year. These had sat upstairs in the spare room, discarded whilst I diverted my attention to the teddy images. I was really uncertain how I could turn them around, I was so unhappy with them at the beginning stage. But with a bit of perseverance I feel really pleased with the direction in which they have gone. I'm particularly pleased with the 2 larger pieces (the colour one posted yesterday and the black and white piece at the top left). These were so dark to begin with, I wasn't sure if they could be salvaged at all. But on looking back through my sketchbook I found inspiration, using gridded lines and boxes to fragment the face and interconnect the various elements of the pictures. The black and white image uses the same numbers as the colour image mentioned yesterday and works as a companion piece, the dark to the other pieces light. The 2 red pieces have been treated with a similar paint quality, simply over-working the original photographic image and breaking up the background to create a fractured quality. I think they represent the different facets of my personality very well, it's just a shame they probably wont be seen by a wider audience, as I think I'm likely to stick with the teddies for the display at Modern Art Oxford next week. Anyrate, I've put a poll in, so if you visit, please feel free to let me know which work you think is stronger. It will be interesting to hear your views.

Bear with a sore head

So, I finally managed to finish my bears last week. In all I have 5 complete, 4 the same size which will likely be the ones to be exhibited at Modern Art Oxford. The two most recent teddies have evolved in style, even over the last 3 months, which I find quite interesting. I've been doing a lot of painting recently on a smaller scale, both for an exhibition at school and in my sketchbook (to show a clearer working process) and the result seems to be a more convincing finish in the more recent pieces. The original teddies look more rough and simplistic by comparison. I've also added menacing shadows to the more recent images, which I think adds to their sense of maturity of style. I've included examples of the old and newer versions so you can compare. The numbers the bears hold and the 'line-up' backgrounds help emphasise the criminal qualities of the identikit faces. The grey colouring helps the primary colours of the bears themselves to really spring forward visually and evokes the plain walls which I assume to cover the walls of police interrogation areas. I've also made great progress on the 2 large scale portrait pieces I started this whole MA work with. To the point where I'm now feeling a little torn over which body of work to actually exhibit. To have started disliking the portrait work so intensely, it feels good to know that persevering with them has borne fruit of success. What began as something quite dark and depressing has changed into something bright that more accurately reflects where I am coming from and my personality. At several points during the making of it, I still felt unsure if it was going anywhere. The theme has moved away from fatherhood slightly to reflect more on the notion of relationship. Looking specifically at the relationships I have with others. The portrait includes these relationships in written form , using scrabble-like tiles. I liked the idea of using these tiles as the worth of each letter and consequently each word could be added up to compare the relative value of the relationships. As it turned out Husband and consumer scored highest with 38 points each. The finished piece, one of the largest scale pieces I've produced in a number of years, is pictured on the left.