Exhibition tomorrow!!

I came into class Monday morning expecting the worst... To hate the painting I had spent Friday working on. So it was a big relief to see it there with just a few touch ups to do, firstly to fix the visible rings around the scabs, and secondly to fix where the paint had come off from sitting on the wooden blocks while the glue was drying. Yay! Didn't take long to fix up.
Because of the sizes of Dan and I's work there were 3 walls put together with us receiving a side each. I feel a bit guilty because my work is facing the entrance so can be seen as soon as you walk through the door, not sure I deserve that space to be honest! Luckily there was still space for the rest of the class to hang their work using the outer walls as well. i feel bad about getting extra since we were only meant to get max of 2 each. There were some tense moments as I talked about which works to hang in my space and in the end decided on the large scab painting that had just been finished and the painting with the angry face. I feel like these 2 work together to show both the mental and physical scarring that people get through their lives. Paul did most of the hanging for me, my brain couldn't keep up with his quick calculations for where the nails had to be placed in order for my paintings to be where I wanted. Next we stuck up our labels and were told to come up with prices with a bit of help. After talking to Paul I decided on $400 for the large scab and $150 for the angry face. I will be surprised if they sell, but happy since I've never sold anything before! I took photos of mine and everyone else's work up, the exhibition looks amazing. I will just put the photos of my work up in case there is any conflict with me putting up photos of their work on my blog. I am preparing some notes now for my speech to the panel now so better get back to work! :)

Tessa.

on the home stretch

Yesterday my dad came over to my place in the morning so we could take my paintings over to cit in his car. The 122x120cm paintings didn't fit inside so I wrapped them up and we attached them to the roof rack. When we got to cit Paul helped me with attaching strips of wood to the backs for them to hang by. I took some pics coz they looked quite cute and funny with Christine's rabbit's as weights. Thanks Christine! :)
I spent most of the day working on the second big painting that i started a couple days ago with 2 big scabs on it. Here's my whole process:
1. Some layers of gesso
2.layer of black
3. rough blue/white/black layer to offer a variance in shades coming through my next layers.
4. Clear impasto gel textured with my hands.
5. Red/yellow/orange/brown smoothed over with my hands.
6. Orange wash
7. Red wash
8. Modelling paste used to create 3D scabs
9. Splashes, drips etc put roughly over painting with red and brown paints
10. another layer of textured impasto
11. Scabs painted with brown, black, red, yellow. Took ages of applying layers and changing it to look right. Ran out of time in the end and I needed to look at it with fresh eyes so stopped.
12. Also had to paint around scabs again to fix where I had gotten the scab colours on the skin. Need to go over again because it looks funny now.
13. Put some splashes over top of impasto to have some rough matte contrast the shiny.
14 put it upside down on small blocks because still wet and attached the strips of wood for hanging.

Hopefully I will have time to do my finishing touches on Monday.

Tessa.

photos

I thought it was about time I put in a couple better quality photos. They're still not great but definitely better than the pics I took with my phone! When the stuff is hanging I'll take some better photos.
Also, I was in the exhibition space today vacuuming, and I had a good look in the exhibition space for visual arts. It is tiny! there are walls put in place for us to use with enough for some people to use 1.2m and the rest to use 2.4. which is quite small, especially since my painting with multiple scars is 1.2m width on its own. This means I will only be able to hang 2 of the paintings.

I only intend to have the above painting as experimentation but thought I should get some better quality pics since the last ones I posted were such poor quality.

Tessa.

Artist statement

So, after some class brainstorming I have finally come up with titles for my paintings, yay. It's hard to think of them with the titles but that's probably because I've become used to referring to them as angry style painting and lots of scars on big board painting. Lol. (Which weren't entirely suitable :p) my small board with the big scab on it is called 'wound', the big board with lots of scars is called 'healing' and the angry face is called 'hurt'. If I do a big scab on another big board I will call it scarred. The series is called scar.

And here is my artist statement to go with them at the exhibition.

My 'Scar' series has been an exploration of paint and style to create a mood and form of expression for past events and emotions in my life, which people can reflect on in their own lives. It draws a connection between the mental and physical scars people receive through their lives, and more directly reflects on moments in my life which have left a lasting impact. Each scar is a physical reminder of a memory or mistake, some more vivid and painful to recall than others. Other memories of mental pain have left scars which are slowly healing in my mind.

This is 101 words, the limit is 100 so I think it will do. Any constructive criticism is appreciated, but it's getting typed up this arvo anyway so don't do it if it's already too late for me to change anything!!

Angry portraiture

Now I will give an update of my angry portrait. I decided to use the first expression as a reference because this is the image I have drawn the most so feel comfortable drawing it now, plus I think it has been the most successful expression. The step I did after the blue under painting was cover it in impasto gel with my textured hand prints, then after it dried I put some yellow, brown, orange paint... Then another layer because the blue was too visible. After that I put a wash in orange, then a light red wash. Then I drew on the face which I am not happy with yet, I need to do something with the eyes to make them more angry. I then tested the impasto over the permanent marker and it was fine so coated the whole board with another layer of textured impasto. That's. all I've done so far, so here are some pics.

Tessa.

1 week!

I have been doing lots of painting these past few days, working on my large painting with lots of scars and my painting/drawing of my angry face. I'll start with the scars.

I started by covering the whole surface with impasto gel and texturing it with my hand prints. Once that had dried I started putting in the black lines. I purposefully didn't have them measures or ruled because I think they look better and suit me better free hand with different thicknesses+ wonky. I also painted the edge black. I then painted over the squares at the top which hadn't been done yet, then impasto on them. After that I used red and brown to put splashes, hand marks, drips etc on the painting in a random way. Then I used white paint to paint over the scars so they would stand out. Mu original intention was to have them brown like the other scab but beecause they are so small i did not think brown would stand out enough. The white was a bit bright so then i added a couple layers of watered down browny red paint. The next step will be to go at it with a knife so it doesn't look so perfect.

My bus is nearly at my work now so I'm gonna wrap this up will do a separate post about my other painting later.

Like always pics are in random order.

Tessa.