ART: ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH.

I think the concept and idea I had while designing my body of work for ‘Environment’ could be seen as quite unorthodox to the original briefing. I wanted to study into the body and how this is your own personal environment. So inevitably I was inspired by quite a lot of unconventional artist such as, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, and Jenny Saville. My body of work, was split into three different categories through my thought process. Figure drawings, Incidental markings/mark making and mark making into the theme of ‘Motions’. All under the umbrella of ‘The Body’.

Jenny Saville was one of the first people I look at when I came up with the concept of the body and relating that to the environment. I mainly began to look at her drawings, especially of pregnant women. I think I done this because it was the obvious option and plainly looking at the body as a simple silhouette rather than what’s inside. Jenny Saville is well in my comfort zone as I’ve studied her work many times before, and I think moving away from her style of work was a good choice on my behalf.

Pollock was my main source of inspiration into incidental markings. What most intrigued me about Jackson Pollock’s work was his ability to change a tone or connotation to a piece, simply by using different techniques of mark making. He was able to create a sense of rhythm and style to simple marking. Making it not so simple. The style he painted in was almost as if he was distorting an image to an extent, where you can re-interpret it in whichever way you wanted. My final piece was basically a collection of different mark making techniques into bodily-functions eg. Burping, coughing, swallowing, pulse etc. And by what I had interpreted from Pollock’s work helped me understand how to visualize something that can’t necessarily be seen. He also inspired me to work on a much larger scale. Once I had collected a variation of different mark making techniques I organised them into a complete composition.

As I began to research deeper into mark making artist I came across an artist called Cy Twombly. Cy Twombly created a more poetic way of representing mark making in comparison to Pollock. Pollock’s work represents to me marks of a distorted image, but Twombly’s shows more of a distorted concept. Which was a really interesting insight to grasp and contribute to my work. I could definitely describe my work as both of these things. While researching this artist I came across a video on YouTube of Twombly’s exhibition at the Tate museum (19^th June- 14^th September 2008) The director spoke about his interpretation into Twombly’s work and this was a good source of research for me because it questioned my own perceptions. Tate's Director Nicholas Serota - “You close your eyes and you make a mark. Then you make another mark and then you make another mark. Then you build up an image which is coming from within, rather than representation”. Toward the end of the brief I understood that, that was exactly the way I wanted to express myself during my mark making process so Twombly was an ideal person to look at for this brief. Twombly was someone I began to look at toward the end of my briefing and his inspiration moulded a lot of what I had created and covered a lot of what I was trying to do, including clarifying my own concept. I don’t regret looking at him last because my thought process through this brief was a really interesting too see come to life through visual recordings.

CY TWOMBLY