Author: Shae

Through this painting course I have really learnt about abstract art and the different ways it manifest. It had opened me to a new style of painting that I never really took seriously, now I kind of love it. I think abstract art is a lot more fun to create and I have found new ways to make the process of painting more interesting than the outcome. There are many different processes I never really thought or have tried with paint that are rewarding, even painting on different surfaces and breaking out of the traditional way of painting.

I think these two images are my most successful. I wouldn’t say they’re as extreme as some of the abstract artist I looked at but I did get inspiration from them. The one on the left is from week4 while the other is from week 3. I think you can see from these two images how I took the line drawing aspect and build up of paint process from the previous weeks 1 and 2. I feel like you can see the development between the two. Week 3s painting is very straight forward, using only blue in a build up of a shape where the line drawing is conformed to. Week 4s painting is expanded on, there’s more colour and they have purpose, for example the red is meant to represent their faces and the green, yellow and purple is their clothing. The paint is messily blobbed on and I feel like the lines, that are subtracted paint, clean the painting up a little but don’t restrict the painting or fully tells you what it is.

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This week I continued working off the image of my family. I painted these on different objects. I decided to fully branch out and use full and different colours.

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This image (above) is painted on a clear plastic plate.

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This painting is painted on a wooden board. I took the Joan Mitchell approach and used colours and lines to create my image at the start. I didn’t know how I felt about it so I went the Callum Innes route and covered it in blue paint and then subtracted as much of the blue paint as I could. I tried to take the paint away with my paintbrush at first and then I put these papers over it and flattened it and they came out with these images. I just think they’re an interesting outcome of the process

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This painting was painted on the cover of a note book. I kind of did the same process as the painting above but this time I left the blue so you can see hints of the painting underneath

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For this painting I took inspiration from the way Amy Sillman has blocked out colours and then drawings overtop of them. I messily made sort of blobs of the shapes of my family image and then used the paintbrush to erase and mix the paint to make the outline.

Helen Frankenthaler was an abstract artist painter, born 12 December 1928 and died in 27 December 2011. Her paintings are abstract expressionism that is filled with colour. I really like Frankenthaler style, the colours are soft and light and the image doesn’t really conform to a clear shape. I like the abstract style of the paintings and I feel like I’ve taken more of that approach too. From Frankenthaler, I got the inspiration to kind of be more free with my paintings and allow different shapes and lines to come from the process rather than set a clearcut intention.

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Callum Innes is another abstract artist. From Innes, I took inspiration from the subtraction technique. I liked the idea of adding and subtracting and something different coming out of it each time. Sometimes the mess that the subtraction makes is more interesting than the painting itself, just like the process can be more entertain than the image itself. This is a technique I have been using a lot through this brief since I found out about it.

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Amy Sillman is a painter whose practise also includes drawings and cartoons. I like Sillmans use of colour blocking and overlaying of drawings. I like how you can kind of see an outline. She has a different approach to the other two artist. The inspiration I’ve taken with her is the way she fills up the space with bold colouring. (although I do need to branch out from just blue).

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Joan Mitchell is another abstract painter and printmaker born in 1925. I like how her abstract style is more of multiple lines of colours that build up. I have definitely used this process and take inspiration from it. The colours are bold, the lines aren’t clean and colours merge.

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All these painters are abstract and I feel like thats a style I’ve never seriously considered so its been fun to take that road and learn about abstract artist and see and take inspiration from.

For this week, I decided to take the messy approach. For all these paintings I just sloppy layered paint all over my paper, this is like the experiments I did for the first week. In the first week I focused on layering the paint and seeing how thick it could be on paper and if I could make messy things look good, some were a bust and others were okay. This week, I took that approach and tried different techniques of drawing with/ on the paint.

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This is a painting (above) where I layered the paint by just slapping spots of paint on paper with my paintbrush. I let it dry for a day and then I did a line drawing of my family, like I did in the second week. I scratched the paint to make this line drawing with the bottom of my paintbrush. The line is a little subtle but I think I like that aspect of it.

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With this painting, I layered it by doing multiple strokes of paint. This time I did the line drawing while the paint was wet so the line has come out clearer and uses a subtracting type method to the painting

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These last paintings are a mess I’ll admit. I did a line drawing then I cut out two different shapes from the one drawing. I tried to use them as stencils and then layer paint in the gaps. They’re not that clean-cut but like I said, messy is the theme of this week for me. For the painting above, after the stencil step I decided to add colour to the white. This involved into me layering red over the whole image. I then tried my best to subtract the red paint and because its really bad poster paint it somehow worked. It left the middle now purple and the background blue with slight spots of purple

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For this painting I tried the scratchy type look of paint running out and layers of red surrounding it.

For this week we had to have 6 reference photos and do paintings and drawings based off of them. I think you can tell by my paintings that I had limited paints and they’re annoyingly terrible

they all had requirements

• Photo including people
• Photo without people
• Piece of printed fabric
• Printed image of a painting before 1900
• Printed screen grab from a film
• Piece of trash

I used an image of my mum, dad and sister, for the image with people

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This is a random photo I took of the moon and a tree for the image without people

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I used a screen grab from the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox

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This is the printed fabric I used

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This is the famous “Scream” painting by Edvard Munch 1893

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This is the piece of trash

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These are just my experiments that I just played around poster paint (because I don’t have any normal paint at the moment) I covered my hands in paint, moved puddles of paint with my hands and paint brush. Tried to wash my hands and remove the paint by wiping it on paper. Took away paint with the end of a paintbrush

https://youtu.be/Cgo3jjn0Onw

This is a video of my brother getting out to deliver the package to a kaumatua.

Reflection: This whole photography journey has been very up and down. My theme always seems to change throughout considering lockdown and work got in the way, but it always stuck to the “care and good of the work”. During Covid, there’s always people that are still working behind the scenes. My kaupapa is surrounded by the mahi done for kaumatua during lockdown. It starts off with my mum working from home, doing calls and sometimes she would have to go and check on the kaumatua (she’s a nurse and essential worker). Then it switched more people working and showing them physically going and doing the mahi. I think its important that everyone does their part during lockdown, whether its essential work or just following the lockdown rules. I think essential workers are the best kaupapa for “the care and good of the work”

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This is somewhat of the process of delivering. It was kind of difficult to get good photos considering I was working at the time. This is us completely packed in a van full of boxes and bags.

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During level 4-3 I also worked at my mums work to help kaumatua during lockdown. We make food and hygiene packages for the kaumatua in the Waikato and deliver it to them. I basically just took images in my point of view as the vans are being loaded and we prepare for deliveries

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Even though Covid and lockdown forced everyone to stay home, it didn’t stop my mum from working. My mum is a nurse that works for a charity that looks after Kaumatua in the Waikato area. This is my mum working from home during level 4. I tried to make all the images close ups to try and capture how the work is the main subject while having hints of home life. My mum isn’t shown fully in the image, symbolising important mahi done by unknown figures. I think its important to acknowledge people working hard and looking after old people especially in this time where they’re more at risk of Covid.