Chapter 1 - What did you want your work in the Copeland show to achieve?

23rd of June, 2021.

Having had such a fascination throughout the year on people’s stories, I felt it made sense to use my life and my journey as the direct inspiration for this work. I decided to make the piece a triptych as I wanted it to have this storybook feeling of a beginning, middle and end, and I hoped that with the basic features of a figure, path and landscape, the viewer could pick up that a journey was being made across three canvases. Initially I had decided to use collage as a base for aesthetic reasons and the success it had had in previous commissions I've done, but quickly it became clear in the preliminary pieces that the bits of newspaper I selected were both personal and universally relatable, particularly with the texts that jumped out to me. This alongside photos of precious memories in my life created a fascinating dichotomy that I think not only reflected the atmosphere of Covid and the Modern Day, but I felt it also showed my mental passage through this year. I've always found the news and social media difficult in the way that it hits you from so many different viewpoints and can often feel relentless in your day-to-day, these memories have not only got me through this year, but have also been places I sometimes wish I could go back to. This alongside the figurative aspect of the work I felt displayed a clear message of what this triptych was about, Life is tough, the journey is long, but every now and then we need to take stock, look-back, develop an attitude of gratitude, and carry on. Having had a tutorial with Larry, in which he felt I could conceal the message of my work, and give the piece a sense of depth that bit by bit of the viewer unpicks, I decided to fill out the canvases with an abstract expressionist style that I’d used in previous commissions. I hoped that this would convey my passion not only for nature, but also the frantic unpredictability of our lives, and how the journey is never plain sailing. Once the works were finished and up at the Copeland, I was really hoping people would be able to bring their own lives into the work.

It’s also an account of my own battle with loneliness, and my tenacity to continue, echoing Zachery Seagar’s introduction to the Art of Solitude a hope that “they show how we might truly connect with ourselves and, in the process, how we can meaningfully connect with those around us, including the earth itself.” The Art of Solitude, Selected writings edited by Zachery Seager, Macmillan Collector’s Library, page xii.

Chapter 2 - What are your thoughts and reflections on the Copeland show?

29th of June,

2021.

I was really pleased with how the works turned out, various people from the audience responded really well to the two images that were shown and many picked up a sense of hope that were engrained in the paintings. However in the group crits, and from several outside opinions, it seemed that the work had too much going on in it, and left some feeling confused and unnerved by the sheer amount of colour. I was told that there was no place for you to rest your eye, which to some extent I didn't understand, because I think there was a real harmony between the three canvases(only 1 colour of different tones were used in each canvas), which for sure would've had some effect on how the two paintings stood in the show, and as the triptych was reflective of a story, your eye needed to be moving along this passage(path), and also one of the key messages of the triptych was how unpredictable and chaotic life has been this past year; So in light of that, why should there be a place for your eye to rest?(especially as I didn't think the composition was jarring at all).

Regardless, I took this into consideration, especially as it is my ambition to make my work as universally accessible as possible, and if a small percentage can't understand what I'm saying, or feel too overwhelmed by the composition, then it's in my best interest to see how I can take on-board those criticisms and elevate my work further. I felt that all three paintings needed to be shown and needed more space, but I learnt a lot more from this experience than I had anticipated, and I felt buoyed to really experiment in this final unit rather than attempt to complete rounded and finished works.

Chapter 3 - Battersea Art Fair, a rush of inspiration. 8th of July, 2021.

Seeking to find out how I could best use this final unit, I decided to go to the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park. There I knew I'd find a large assortment of artists, particularly painters, who I hoped might give me some inspiration. I was not disappointed, it was as if I had been dropped in a world of innovation and colour, everywhere I looked there were incredible ways of conveying people and nature, so many that I initially found it hard to choose who might be worth investigating further; that was until I stumbled across a seascape on a square 137 x 137 cm canvas, I was immersed in this world reminiscent of an Italian seaside town, so much so that I was ready to dive in, explore the town and settle in for a nice dinner. This was largely due to these glowing specs and gestures of white, coroleum blue, yellow and red jumping out of the canvas. I had never seen colour shine in that way and I could've stood there for hours. Luckily one of the artists who painted the work(Christine Relton) was there to answer my many questions; she told me that this affect that herself and her partner(Tom Marine) had achieved, was down to the use of oil sticks over a largely acrylic painted surface. Ready to head back to the studio and begin this technique, I didn't think it would be possible to encounter another artist that would have the same effect on me, this was until I came across a series of street scenes besotted with figures, that were painted in a way I hadn’t seen before. The painting was doing this incredible dance between abstraction and figuration(something that I've always wanted to achieve in my work), the composition also felt calm and busy at the same time, and the paint had a liquidity that seemed reminiscent of watercolour or acrylic. After talking with the artist(Andrew Hood), I was shocked to find out that he had achieved this affect with oils. This amazed me because I had only ever been able to liquefy oils with white spirit at the mercy of thinning the colour, here Andrew had managed to maintain its strength. Going forward, these 3 artists gave me a renewed excitement and energy for my studio practice this unit, and I was filled with ideas for new things to try.

Chapter 4 - Let the Alchemy Begin, 16th of July, 2021.

The period following the affordable art fair was an interesting phase for my work, in hindsight I feel that it was a surge to experiment, without much thought being given to the conceptual aspect of my work. I still felt it was important to tell my story, to try and convey a message of resilience and gratitude; Also to create my own world, one that feels cinematic and also loving towards landscape and nature. From an experimental point of view, both techniques were very exciting to use. Liquefying oil paint in a way I had never done before, made painting landscape feel a lot more vivid. This piece reminded me, that planning the structure of the image and the composition overall, is crucial in conveying what one wants the work to say and how they want the viewer to feel standing in front of it. The image had too much going on in it, anyone who saw it couldn’t understand the context and what it was communicating. The other piece I tried this experiment had more planning behind it(in regards the composition), but there was something about its direction that felt lost and unsure of itself. I feel I had more success with introducing the use of oil sticks into my work. The first two works I did using this, popped exactly the way I wanted them to, and I felt reflected a real love for landscape and it's emotive power. I continued using myself as the main figure because I still felt I was on this journey home, I still didn't feel settled in London but I was trying to encourage myself to have hope and be positive about my situation. Sam Fender, who's music has really spoken to my issues since the 1st lockdown, and he's someone who also struggles with this feeling of belonging and uses music to communicate that:

“There’s a lot of me that yearns for a strong family unit,” he explains. “My family’s been pretty mental and split apart and I want to build a family, I want to build a nest. Because our nest went all over the shop after the divorce when I was a kid.”(Sam Fender, Independent, Interview with Ellie Harrison).

I felt that the best way to communicate this message to others was to be pretty explicit in the way these images included me, so that by example, the viewer may also look on their own shortcomings and lives with a sense of hope. Bilbos song from the fellowship of the ring was ever ringing in my head when I painted these two images of myself on a journey, “the road goes ever on and on, down from the road where it began, now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can..”

Chapter 5 - Final Group Crit, thoughts and reflections. 4th of August, 2021.

The group crits outlined something that I had almost chosen to ignore in my recent work. As the subject matter and story are so deeply personal and on my part are an attempt to see things in a positive light, I hadn't considered, that translated onto canvas, the paintings would reflect how I'm really feeling, rather than what I hoped to convey. I got various responses such as melancholy, me against the world, and an unnerving sense of loneliness. A big part of this is due to both images having a solitary figure, and it’s not that I don't want this stuff being seen in my work, it's more that I want the viewer to feel that they can celebrate these things, as an opportunity to bring change in their own lives. What I also noticed from this crit, is that there's only so much a painting can communicate, and things such as life can be unpredictable, choose your own path and have an attitude of gratitude, are messages that are unlikely to be picked up unless explicitly written on a piece of paper. There were also views regarding the images being too busy, and there not being anywhere for your eye to rest. It was honestly quite hard criticism to take, particularly as each person had only been given five minutes to look at the work, but more because it was so closely connected to my struggles with mental health.

However what had initially been a really tough experience, turned out to be the turning point of a year where I’ve felt lost, and searching for a sense of home, and most importantly self-confidence. I've always wanted to be a technically gifted artist, someone who can survey a sea of people like Jao, and depict the scene in my own stylistic way. Centering my work in purely landscape and nature, leaning somewhat towards abstraction, has always made me feel insecure and intimidated.

In the past I’ve convinced myself that there wouldn't be enough substance in images of this kind, to authentically communicate who I am; but in mulling over the feedback I’d been given, I remembered a painting I did aged 16 at school, of an area in Scotland called Loch Choire(image below). I remember the experience so well because earlier on in painting that landscape, I got caught up in the need for it to bear resemblance to the photograph, and very quickly my teacher told me to forget that, and just paint how the environment made me feel. An environment that I feel produces in us an increased sense of our own worth:

"a sort of swelling and triumph that is extremely grateful to the human mind"(Edmund Burke)

I realised that this was the kind of work where I could feel at home and self confident. So going forward still unsure of where it might lead me, I decided to remove the figure from my landscapes, and try to be more measured in my painting, not feeling the need to fill out the space.

Chapter 6 - David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 8th of August, 2021.

To ignite this new direction in my work I decided to go to Hockney's RA exhibition, the Arrival of Spring. Walking around and taking in these scenes that covered every wall, I felt at home. Even on an iPad, Hockney is able to communicate to me the power and impact nature can have on our emotional state. There is no ulterior motive with his work, no hidden agenda, to me it's pure honest expression: “Hockney has shown again that painting nature is a resonant response to a great crisis”(Jonathon Jones, The Guardian). The way he would use also any shape and colour to depict trees, hills, flowers etc. is just mesmerising. It's almost identical to the effect that real landscapes have on us; "a sudden surprise of the soul which brings it to consider with attention the objects that seem to it unusual and extraordinary"(Rene Descartes). This way of working was echoed to me in a tutorial not long after, and I was encouraged to have a look at the work of Graham Crawley, who has no problem using any colour when it comes to landscape. I was also told why paint a tree brown, why not paint it yellow, red or blue?

Chapter 7 - "Take a deep breath and let go", 16th of August, 2021.

Taking myself(the figure), or any figure for that matter, out of my paintings was a really hard thing to do. There was something unexplainable about an empty space that terrified me, but after the first layer of colour covered the outlines of a figure in both of these paintings, it was as if I had lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. Suddenly I wasn’t painting with the weight of trying to communicate positive messages to others, I was purely reacting to nature, and enjoying every colour that I laid down. Suddenly I felt free.

Chapter 8 - What has Screenprinting and an emphasise on layering brought to your work? 20th of August, 2021.

I’ve always been fascinated by the mark a large brush leaves when beginning a layer of acrylic over a primed canvas. There's so many different shapes and marks that are left, the consistency of colour varying along the stroke. However as it was merely there to serve as a background tone, I never really tried to feed that effect into the images I’d be creating, the colour that went on top was always more important. Recently I found there was something very exciting about the idea of painting a landscape on an already deeply layered and worked in surface. Almost as if the physical aspect of a landscape, the ground and the soil were already there. I found though that if I just worked on this with a layer of acrylic, there wasn't enough to work with and the marks underneath would seem too gestural. A fellow student had suggested that I give screenprinting a go, particularly as you could build a pile of layers very quickly and have different colours responding to one another in such an interesting way. I picked it up very quickly, and felt that for each landscape I was planning to paint on top, I was building the foundations. When each canvas was ready for the outline of the landscape, they already felt aged and so much more real, even without what was to come the images were so interesting with the repeated marks and contrasting colours. With each work I also felt encouraged to really thin the acrylic and oil paint I applied on top, so that you could see right to the very back and noticing the depth and how each layer communicates with one another. Looking ahead(after SLG show) I’m very drawn to the possibility of working strictly in print-making as it clearly has so much to offer.

Chapter 9 - End of Year, Oh what to show, what to show?

Leading up to the proposals and final week we could work in the studios, I felt an urge to work on a larger scale, perhaps on my spare 2x2m canvas. This was largely due to the success I was having with the smaller canvases I’d been working on, and imagining how impressive they’d be to a wider audience, blown up in size. Particularly as size would allow the figure to feel even more immersed in the landscapes. Initially that's what I'd outlined in my first proposal, but after some really good discussions with fellow course mates, it became clear that not only was the size of the work being done for the wrong reasons(impressing others) but also I had very little time to do it, with regards to allowing each layer to dry. So with three of the five canvases still needing a few finishing touches I decided to resubmit my proposal and exhibit a collection of smaller works. In the end I felt it was the right decision and it landed itself to the phrase I've been trying to live buying this course which is less is more, seeing the work in the exhibition now, as a collection, I'm immensely proud, and think all 4 works sing really well together. It's been hard to establish a research question, as in ways, it is intimately connected with my own search for self-confidence and belonging which got really rocked by this lockdown, but tied all the way through, from journeys, to community art projects, photo collages, and memories, there’s been a consistent search and insistence on the importance of home and having a space of rest. Landscapes have been that harness for me, and it’s clear that my research has centred around; how art can serve as a place of comfort, hope and home for all those that encounter it. By being a scene that fills one with wonder, it can be a space of rest, a place to re-fuel, somewhere to re-align one’s perspective and focus on the simple things.