Painting

I thought that I would just do ceramics for my MA  but recently I have been thinking about painting again. I'm not sure if it  will be part of my MA at the moment but I have begun working on a large painting of the sea. I am interested in capturing the movement and texture of the sea, particularly waves, based on photos that I took in Thailand. While I was working on my annotated bibliography, I found that I just 'needed' to paint so I went and bought a large canvas and went about painting it. I haven't managed to complete it yet but I made a start by laying down a thin wash of oil paint on to the canvas surface. My painting will eventually be based on a very close-up photo of a crashing wave. I wanted to add texture onto the surface of the canvas so I mixed sand with PVA glue and applied it to part of the surface where the crest of the wave would be.

Gerhard Richter 'Panorama' exhibition

I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition at the Tate. I had been meaning to go but the fact that it finishes on January 8th encouraged me to go and join the German crowds. I had looked at Richter's work before when I was looking at visual impairments and ways of distorting or obscuring images. I found his method of blurring paint very interesting and I looked at his painted photographs as a way of obscuring my paintings for my FMP. He is an interesting painter because he considers both the capacities of painting as well as it's limitations. He questioned Duchamp's thoughts on the incapacities of painting and produced his own version of 'Nude descending a staircase' with his painting of 'Ema (Nude on a staircase) 1966:

Marcel Duchamp 'Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2' 1912

Gerhard Richter ' Ema (Nude on a Staircase) 1966

Richter has produced a diverse range of paintings; many are based on photographs, although he has produced a lot of large abstract canvases. I wanted to know why he started blurring his paintings and discovered it was to show the materiality of paint and to show a sense of movement that can be expressed in photographs.

There were many paintings in this exhibition but here are a few which caught my eye, for various reasons:

Curtain III (Light) 1965

I liked the composition of this painting, it could have been abstract but for the bottom of the painting that gave the subject away. This painting reminded me of Alison Watt's work that I looked at last year - beautiful, massive canvases depicting white fabric.

Seascape (Sea-Sea) 1970

I thought this a clever painting, even though Richter was producing paintings from photos, this painting looks rather abstract in that one has difficulty working out that the top half of the painting is in fact sea and not sky as one would expect. It inspired me to continue with a painting of a wave that I have begun.

Detail (Brown) 1970

I am really interested in small details and getting up close to objects and photographing them. For this reason I liked this painting. Although it looks quite ordimary, I like the fact that Richter took close-up photos of his paintings and made more paintings from these detailed shots.

Room 6 (Exploring Abstraction) was full of very large and brightly coloured abstract paintings. However, I was very much drawn to the small portrait on wood panel of his daughter. I thought it technically brilliant in it's small understated way:

'Betty' 1977

The paintings in Room 9 (18 October 1977) were based on the mysterious deaths of former Nazis on 18 October 1977. All were in shades of gray and varied in terms of blurredness. I was particularly drawn to 'Hanged':

'Hanged' 1988

The painting is based on police photographs of the event. I find this ghostly image very moving, it is very obscured so that the viewer only sees a hint of the subject. Very clever.

September, 2005

I wrote one word in my notes when I saw this painting - 'awesome'. Because I have lived in New York, I feel an affinity with the city . When the twin towers were attacked I just stared at the TV all day, it was hideous. I think this painting is a powerful interpretation of a horrific event.

I'm pleased I went to see this exhibition as I nearly missed it. There has been a lot of discussion in our work-in-progress seminars recently about the future of painting. Having seen this exhibition, I think that painting still has a lot to 'say' in the visual arts and will continue to play an important part in contemporary art. It has inspired me to carry on painting.

Contemporary Ceramic Artists using surface texture in their work

I came across the ceramic artist Natasha Lewer when I went to the BlindArt exhibition in Banbury. The exhibition had been designed for people with visual impairments and the work on display was by both sighted artists and artists with partial or little sight. The audience was actively encouraged to touch all of the exhibits. Natasha Lewer produces ceramic sculptures that are based on organic forms such as those found in the sea. A lot of her work is covered with a flocking material which makes it extremely tactile and enticing to touch. I contacted the artist to ask how she 'flocked' her pieces as I really like the effects that can be achieved with this method of working. Apparently it is a very complicated process involving specialist machinery so she has her work professionally flocked!

Natasha Lewer 'Barnacles' (ceramic and flocking)

Natasha Lewer 'Primaries' (glazed and flocked ceramic)

Natasha Lewer 'Red and blue blood cells' (ceramic and flocking)

I like the tactile quality of this work and the interesting organic forms that the artist produces. It is also nice to see work that is highly coloured since so much ceramic work at the moment is matt, white porcelain.

Another ceramic artist using texture in her work is Annette Bugansky. She produces forms that look like they have been knitted by way of impressing and slipcasting:

Annette Bugansky (detail)

Annette Bugansky

I really like the tactile quality of this work and it relates well to the work I have been doing with fabric and porcelain slip. I think it's a very interesting way of combining textiles and ceramics to produce work that can be explored through touch.

Ikuko Iwamoto is another interesting ceramic artist and she has produced ceramic work for the visually impaired. She has developed the tactile quality of her work using dots and spikes on the surface and she invites her audience to touch it:

Ikuko Iwamoto 'Spiky spiky bowl'

Ikuko Iwamoto 'Nucleolus pofupofu teapot'

I also really like the work of Tamsin van Essen. I first came across her work at the 'Skin' exhibition at the Wellcome Instute in London. She had produced two apothecary pots that were decorated to look like the skin disease psoriasis. Her work explores the stigma of diseases and the contemporary quest for perfection and beauty. She manipulates her ceramic works to accentuate blemishes and faults such as acne, syphillis and osteoporosis:

Tamsin van Essen 'Psoriasis' Apothecary jar 2008-2010

'Psoriasis' (detail)

I think the glazing effects that she achieves in her work are very impressive. She must have had to carry out an enormous amount of experiments with undergalzes, glazes, slips etc. to achieve the desired results of emulating certain human diseases. I am very interested in her work as it has strong links with medicine which fascinates me. I particularly like the 'psoriasis' pot above as the cream crackled glaze on the top of the piece reminds me of lace and it has a tactile quality reminiscent of fine fabric.

Work in progress seminar

I went to see my old ceramics tutor from college to have a chat to him about my MA project. In a way, my MA project is a continuation of the work I did for the final project of my foundation course. During my final major project I explored the notion of using the sense of touch to experience ceramics and I looked at ways of adding texture to a ceramic object so that surface texture was just as important to the overall design of the finished piece as other aspects such as form, concept, glazing, material etc.

We talked about looking into the socio-political history of women and embroidery since I am looking to incorporate embroidery into my MA work. We also touched on 'what is art now?' Is a concept on its own enough or is a piece of work without a concept enough? We talked about Grayson Perry's attitude to contemporary art - that Duchamps started 'conceptual art' almost 100 years ago with his 'fountain sculpture' in 1917 and that Perry believes this idea to be out-dated now. In my opinion, I think that there has to be a concept behind a piece of work for it to be art. But for me, a concept isn't enough. I like to see a well produced and skillfully produced piece of art, whether it be a ceramic piece, a painting, a photograph, or a textile piece. I like to be able to admire the workmanship and skill that has gone into producing the work, as well as to appreciate the ideas and the concepts behind it.

I looked at a few videos on youtube about Richard Slee and Jeff Koons. Of particular note was the video of Grayson Perry interviewing Slee about his ceramic piece 'Sausage'. In it, Slee talks about the piece and what the concepts are behind it. He talked about it being a parody of the male maker and the death of the male DIYer.

I had my work in progress seminar in which I explained a little about what I had been doing up until now and I talked about what I had been doing so far for my MA. My fellow students seemed to like the two woven pieces that I showed them and the idea of using sense of touch to explore the pieces seemed to be greeted positively. They appreciated the tactility of the pieces and so I was pleased with that as this was my aim.

I got some interesting feedback - that my pieces were reminiscent of natural structures - wasps nests and birds nests, the fragility of birds eggs. The idea of wrapping around different objects such as parts of the body was also mentioned. The tutor Kerry mentioned how important the sense of touch was when designing ancient Egyptian art -  'haptic' meaning 'touch'. Irena also made the point that my pieces were very fragile and if someone used their sense of touch alone to experience them, they may not survive since the 'viewer' would have no concept of how fragile they were. I think that this was a fair point to make and one worth bearing in mind for future work.

Vanda also made the point that the coloured metallic oxides that I had used on the first piece added nothing to the end result as the matt porcelain was beautiful on its own and the use of colour only distracted the eye from the pureness of the porcelain.

I think it is important to get feedback on work from your peergroup as it can help to get fresh ideas for future work and it helps to see whether the work is getting the reaction that you wanted it to have. Does it fulfill the requirements or is it slightly off the mark?

Bone China and fabric

I built up two other bowls using the same method as before but using liquid bone china instead of porcelain slip. I wanted to compare the qualities of the bone china and porcelain. In theory the two types of clay are very similar.

Porcelain is fine in texture and white and tough when fired. It can be either opaque or translucent. It is notoriously difficult to handle as it has a critical moisture range to it can easily be too soft or dry to handle. It fires to 1280-1300'c.

Bone china is prepared with special characteristics of thinness, translucency, whiteness and extreme strength. Calcined bone is added which acts like a flux to the clay body making it fuse into a tough glass-like substance at temperatures above 1240'c. It has a poor mechanical strength before firing and a limited top firing range after which it quickly loses it's shape and collapses. Because of its smoothness and whiteness it is very well suited to fine decoration. In the 1980's, the ceramicist Angela Verdon made interesting slipcast pierced and scratched forms from bone china:

 Angela Verdon 1980 Porcelain

Angela Verdon 'Paper Thin Porcelain Vase

I used the same method to weave thin strips of different fabric that had been immersed in bone china slip around a balloon:

This photo was taken after the slip had dried but before firing. I stitched a strip of organza with embroidery thread using chain stitch. I used organza because it doesn't absorb the slip very well (being man-made) whereas the stitches should work well. I wanted to make the stitches stand out visually so I painted copper oxide mixed with bone china slip onto the thread. This appears black in the above photo.

This structure is incredibly delicate, perhaps more so than those in porcelain. However, this could be because I built it more delicately than those built in porcelain. I did like how the copper oxide accentuated the chain stitch however. I think that the structure has warped just as much as the porcelain but the amount of warpage will depend on the height of the structure I guess. At the moment I am learning about the materials and what happens if I do such and such to it.

I built a second piece with bone china using some fleece material so that hopefully the structure will be a little stronger:

I also used the shaggy wool as I really like the tactile quality of this when it is fired. I stitched a long strip of organza with emroidery thread and chain stitch as above but I have added more copper oxide to it. I hope I haven't overdone it but I wanted to accentuate the light and dark parts of the structure - where the fabric strips cover others so creating shadow  and lighter sections etc. The piece was left to dry over the Christmas holidays and will hopefully be fired next week.