Artist Research
David Hockney
With David Hockney's 82 portraits, he wanted to see how long people would sit to create a portrait painting - three days. The paintings are made from oil paint and are painted without a photographic reference or prepatory drawings.
He decided on a plain background of blue and green to focus mainly on the figure. Making sure that the feet were in the paintings was a key feature which helped show each different person. Hockney also decided that allowing the subjects to sit was a main key, as he didn't want them to have to stand all day. Also the chair was becoming a main part of the art piece, changing the position of the chair in each painting.
Hockney also allowed each person to choose their own outfit for the portrait which helped add identity. In an interviewed Hockney stated that doing this project had helped him meet new people as he did not get out much.
These portraits help with my don't look at me paintings due t the photographic painting style used to paint each portrait.
John Currin
John Currin uses his classical painting techniques to portray highly charged social and sexual taboos. He's inspired by; old master portraits, pinups, pornography and B movies. The consistency throughout Currin's work helps to balance the beauty as well as the grotesque features portrayed.
In the early 2010s he worked primarily on depictions of lone females nude- lounging, evocative poses and in classical portrait compositions. Often featuring his wife as the main model, her features make appearances in recent paintings, which are subtly distorted in the face and body through mannerist elongations and other anatomical exaggerations.
Also he has made the pornographic contents less explicit and adding relegating glimpses in the background of some paintings and also implying eroticism through the paintings of food and/or symbols.
John Currins work links with some of my line drawings and pencil sketches due to the slight distortion in the figures.
Empathy Museum- A Mile in My Shoes
The Empathy Museum is a series of participatory art projects dedicated to helping people look at the world through other people's eyes. With a focus on storytelling and dialogue, the traveling museum explores how empathy and not only transform peoples personal relationships, but also help tackle global challenges such as prejudice, conflict and inequality.
A Mile in My Shoes is a shoe shop in which visitors are invited to walk a mile in someone else's shoes - literally. The shop is located in a giant shoebox, and holds a large collection of diverse shoes and audio stories that explore our shared humanity.
From a Syrian refugee to a sex worker, a war veteran to a neurosurgeon, visitors are invited to walk a mile in the shoes of a stranger while listening to their story. The stories cover different aspects of life, from loss and grief to hope and love and take the visitor on an empathetic as well as a physical journey.
This exhibition links well with my little book of shoe drawings, showing a range of different people's shoes.
Fernand Leger
Fernand Leger is a French sculptor, painter and film maker, who created a personal form of cubism which he modified into a more figurative, populist style. His work has a consistent graphic style, which favours in primary colours, patterns and bold forms.
Within Leger's figurative pieces there are a lot of simple shapes and forms which are outlined with bold black outlines, and the shadows and highlights painted in create a three dimensional element to the very two dimensional form.
The way in which the portraits are painted using primary colours, simple shapes and black outlines, gives the people a caricature style.
Fernand Leger's work links well with my current work within strangers, especially with the block coloured caricature pieces i have created.
Laura Lancaster
Laura Lancaster creates her paintings from an ongoing archive of photographs and films which she has found at thrift stores, flea markets and Ebay. The work transposes the discarded and forgotten snap-shots of anonymous strangers into an ambiguous and uncanny territory between abstraction and figuration. Shifting between the sentimental, the grotesque and the monstrous, she relocates them to a place of collective memory and subconscious experience.
Lancaster's work takes the subject away from its original context. The way she applies the paint to the canvas and disfigures the portrait, takes away the identity of stranger creating a mysterious look.
Lancaster's work links with my ongoing theme of strangers due to the loss of identity throughout my own work.
Gary Hume
Gary Hume is an English artist, who is strongly identified with the YBA artists who came to prominence in the early 1990s.
Water Paintings 1999 is a part of a series of silhouette paintings of a woman's body on a monochrome background. The artist has painted the standing bodies in a different colour over the top of the background. The drawings are large and the bodies fill the canvas. Overlaying the figures cause fragments of arms, shoulders, hands, face and breast to not belong to one singular body.
The different drawings of bodies range in size, creating the sense of perspective and movement as if the woman is moving her way closer to the viewer. Each woman has a different hairstyle, which is the only thing that distinguishes the difference between each figure.
Hume usually traces his images from photographs (found in magazines and books or taken himself) onto a sheet of acetate and projects the outline onto his hard painting surface. The Water Paintings were made from photographs, followed by drawings, of Hume's wife Georgie and a friend, Zoe.
He uses a household gloss paint to add that glossy, reflective finish to his water paintings.
Gary Hume's work links with my continuous line work due to the silhouettes i have been creating of photographs. I have used a similar technique to what the artist has used to create these pieces and by looking at his work in further detail, i may develop my work by overlaying my images and adding more colour to them.
Byron Signage - Charlie Smith Designs
Charlie Smith design is a studio is a group of passionate people who collaborate together to find a solution to a clients problem. On their website they state, " We believe that collaboration results in better design, so we work closely with our clients – all of whom have a direct relationship with Charlie. We have also built a select network of independent specialists such as photographers, copywriters, and programmers giving us the flexibility to deliver projects large and small".
The work they did when working with the restaurant chain Bryon helped inspire me with my project. The company don't have a singular logo or house style, so each restaurant is individually designed. There are no custom typefaces or brand colours, instead the designers work closely with the architecture and interior design team to develop each restaurant’s unique look and feel.
The hoarding built around the restaurant before opening (pictures above) is what inspired me most. I really liked the way the artists created small characters in a black liner. I found it very asthetically pleasing and has inspired to try turning my STRANGER photographs into character styled art.
Sophie Calle
Sophie Calle is a French photographer, writer as well as a conceptual and installation artist. Her work will frequently outline the vulnerability of a person, in conjunction with looking at a persons identity and intimacy.
Calle is well recognised for her detective-like ability to follow strangers around and investigate their private lives. This can be seen in many of her projects.
In the photograph 'The Hotel, Room 47', she worked as a maid gathering keys for hotel rooms, where during the times the visitors left she entered their rooms and photographed their belongings. The photographs became a grid like series with her own panels of text included along side each set.
Where as in the series,'Suite Vénitienne(1980)', she followed a stranger from Paris to Venice and documented the experience. By which she followed the rules of the stranger. For example there was no need to plan for lunch breaks because where the stranger planned to eat is where Sophie Calle had to eat.
These series of work will take a big role within my 'STRANGERS' project, due to the role I need to take to get the information i need to create my project.