STATEMENT OF INTENT:
(1) What interests or drives you?
Society's perception on specific topics and mental health in particular is something that really interests me. I feel especially now that it's important to acknowledge disorders which can be overlooked as it isn't physically visible to others. For this project I have decided to focus on inner struggles such as Body Dysmorphia Disorder and the feeling of detachment from outer society.
Last year the work I did didn't really have any meaning to it, there wasn't any sort of connection between me and the work being made, it was just celebrity portraiture. Although I am still interested in portraiture and intend to use it this year, I want to explore figurative portraiture and form a sort of narrative instead of just having a face on a background.
(2) What materials do you think might best serve your investigations? what media/areas do you intend to explore?
I am comfortable with doing graphite and charcoal pieces on a relatively small scale but I feel oil paint is the medium I want to primarily use in this project and scale is the area i want to explore further while still having some tonal studies and sketches. Photography is an integral part of my project and will help massively, taking photographs and then creating studies and eventually composed pieces from them will give me a substantial body of work. As mentioned, I hope to create a narrative with the pieces I do so it really makes an impact. I didn't work on canvas much last year and would like to work on it more this year as well as hard board and possibly mirrored surfaces.
(3) How will you measure your success?
Being able to make a piece that invokes emotion within the viewer and really makes the viewer think is success to me. In order to reach that point, keeping track of my studio practice by updating my blog is a good way to measure it.