Me at Modern Art Oxford

It's been a while since my last post, but here I am last August, celebrating the culmination of my course standing in the Cafe at Modern Art Oxford in front of my completed work. Although the course did not progress beyond this point (at least, not as yet! - I still hold out hope that it may at some point), I was still hugely inspired to develop my work and already had a direction to go in. I happened upon a piece of art on E-bay whilst doing a bit of research to find out if I could sell my work on there. The piece was composed of rich brown tones and had a vein of silver leaf running through it. Purely abstract and simple but I was inspired enough to produce a couple of sketchbook homages which I felt turned out pretty well. (See image on left). My artwork went on hold for a bit whilst the new term at school took over but was reinvigorated once more by a documentary I saw on the BBC about the typeface Helvetica. As a designer, I have always had a passion for typography and the documentary provided an insight into this important font. What I found particularly interesting was the fact that Helvetica had been designed to create the ultimate in legibility, or at least, it had come to symbolise that quality. I was immediately gripped with the idea of using this font, but twisting and distorting it to obscure it's legibility, and rushed off to draw a little post-it note sketch for future reference. Almost at the same time, I had bought the 'Street Sketchbook' book, full of superb, contemporary art and illustration by Graffiti artists. I loved the way they mixed design and contemporary style and was again hugely inspired by the work I saw, wanting to create a similar, cool, contemporary thread within my work. To move me away from the whimsy of the Teddy Bears. The post-it sketch kept staring back at me every time I used my computer until I was moved to develop some initial experiments in my sketchbook. These acted as the grounding for the larger scale pieces I have since been working on ...