My contemporaneous account of the making process is here. In the course of completing this series, I have collected ideas and links to previous work related to the newcomer artistic enterprise of anthroposcenic landscapes. This is beginning to settle into … Continue reading Assignment 3 – four paintings
Anthropocene, or ‘the age of humans’; Anthroposcenic*, human intrusions into the natural world. There is hardly anywhere we are not. Hardly a place where we haven’t left our mark. Nowhere we haven’t influenced. Often for good but almost always in … Continue reading Assignment 3 – Anthroposcenic
As university blogs (learning logs) are transitory creatures, this will be the permanent home of links to research papers originating in psychology and having relevance to art. This is about pseudo-hallucinations (vivid mental imagery) and Ganzflicker. Pseudo-hallucinations: why some people see more vivid mental images than others – test yourself here (theconversation.com) Cognitive flexibility, IQ, and creativity. IQ tests can’t measure it, but ‘cognitive flexibility’ is key to learning and creativity (theconversation.com) How context (a museum) affects your appreciation of art. BPS Research Digest Feb 2015. Why colour shifted abstracts are less attractive than the original (they used a Delaunay … Continue reading Psychology and/of art
In the course of thinking about the narrative project and coming up with very little, I began (16th June), putting some mirror foil to the test to see how it performs with veiling (a white watercolour wash) which we discussed … Continue reading Part 3, project 3, constructing narratives, and project 4, reflective surfaces
3rd June 2021. After considering a number of other possibilities, including ‘modernising’ some of the classics as I have with Degas’ Petit Rat and Woman Sitting on a Balcony, and Matisse’s painting of his wife Amelie (the green stripe painting), … Continue reading Parallel project – magical realism, first sketches
“We are the people we’ve been waiting for” My preferred news radio programme is BBC 5Live. Never pompous, good incisive journalism, and plenty of humour. There’s also a lot of sport which I tolerate to the extent that I often know who manages what team because it seeps in when I’m not looking, and right now it’s in a full-on excitement lather about the 2020 (yes, it is) UEFA Euros. This is such a massive footie fest that it has its own song but I’d heard it before I knew that, and it was that line, “We are the people … Continue reading Parallel project #5
Research point 2: Boo Ritson, Rachel Russell. Boo Ritson: my first feeling about these images (and what are they? sculptures, paintings, paintings of sculptures?) is a slight revulsion. They look dead but they also look strange and it occurs to me that they fall into that uncanny valley whereby something purportedly a human proxy, is too real to be a proxy but just misses being real. The idea that Ritson uses the sitter – body, hair, clothing – in her work gives me the creeps. Boo Ritson | Artnet Rachel Russell: is this her in the – what is it, … Continue reading Part 3, project 2, becoming an image
Yinka Shonibare | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts This man makes products of his work and his work is in the Bisa Butler mould of total colour and like her he addresses colonialism, race, class, and identity. Fab. Another … Continue reading Part 3, project 1, working with clothing
COVID permitting, this will be happening over the August Bank Holiday weekend and the weekend following; that is the 28th-30th August and the 4th-5th September. So the paperwork is in and I’m waiting to hear where I might be exhibiting. … Continue reading Steyning Arts Trail 2021
Group think in art – is this a fundamental problem for the critique? Summary Creative arts are, by their very nature, subjectively received and evaluated. Reviewers and critics, on the basis of education and experience, are arguably the ones who draw lines for the rest of us between the populist and the critically acclaimed. But use of language is itself an art; influencing others and persuading them of value and merit. I will argue here for raised awareness of the power of language to influence the setting of subjective criteria, introducing researched techniques that place opinion under scrutiny and avoid … Continue reading Critical review, option 1 – communication
Strayfish Arts 