Picasso meets Street Art

 

Today's #sothebyssundaysketch subject matter was Picasso's doodle drawings of his female muses. I studied Picasso in my art GCSE classes, alongside Braque, with a particular emphasis on Cubism. In my large sketchbook, I experimented with drawing a Cubist apple in pencil in the style of one of Picasso's still life works I'd glued in for reference. I also glued on a picture of Braque Cubist collage and extended it imaginatively, painting his plank of wood even longer and adding a guitar collage at the bottom of the page. Previously, I had done something similar with a Bonnard painting by extending it but this time, I stayed with the same style, colours and objects as him. I found these exercises very useful for developing my art technique which in turn improved my own original works. I also filled a ringbinder file on art history, with notes on artists, art critique and theory about artworks, including full colour print outs of examples of artists' works. Delving into art history and theory as well as researching artists and art movements started then and has continued ever since. This was furthered when I then studied art at a higher level with another art teacher who developed my art process and practice by encouraging me to put even more creative, conceptual thought into it. She showed me how to think up my own topic and go wherever the art and my imagination take me, while putting the ideas together as a project in stages.  

As part of my art practice, I use art history as a reference point and love to pour over images of artworks, thinking about the art movements they reflect. So I took a look at various pictures of Picasso's doodling portraits and decided to combine a few frequent features in them: 

• Picasso's use of thick, bold lines for drawing facial outlines / features
• His muses are often looking to the right, as you look at the picture
• Using newspapers as a background to draw on, giving his doodles more meaning and visual interest
• Red doodle lines on the face
• Although many were monochrome drawings, some were layered with a few colours, either as thinner, coloured lines or as blocks of colour, reminiscent of Frida Kahlo's sketchbook with bold, colourful drawings.

Blue was Picasso's favourite colour so although it's not a predominant colour in his doodles, I chose it as my main marker pen colour. A black pen would have disappeared against the dark, black crossword boxes, making whole sections of my doodle too difficult to see. So I thought about which colours would stand out against the black areas of the puzzle and decided to use more than one colour to build up the doodling marks and expressiveness, rather than end up with a monocolour (blue) line drawing. I chose a yellow marker to complement the blue lines and red to boldly stand out and highlight sections of the doodle. 

I rummaged through several newspapers before selecting this crossword puzzle page. Cubist art uses written articles in their collages so I initially searched for which topic and article I wanted to doodle on. However, when I saw the puzzle page, I thought this would make for an excellent background to this portrait for several reasons: 

• One, I can work with the lines the puzzles create on the page to create an interesting composition by working around how the puzzles provide pre-existing words and dark shading to her face. For instance, I have placed her mouth next to "crosswords", So that 'words' are near her heart-shaped lips, to give the impression she is not silent. So the print on the page dictated how I drew my muse's face. 
• Two, the puzzles provide Cubist-like box shapes, referring back to Picasso's art movement, alongside his other approach, Surrealism. 
• Three, the puzzle boxes on the page mirror the angular cardboard box. 

I collected a few of these 3-sided boxes last year because they are similar to the structure of a canvas. I wrapped the newspaper around the cardboard box to get a sense of the dimensions of it before beginning to doodle in order to plan my composition. Recently, I have been reading about how the Impressionists and Cassatt mounted their pastel works onto canvas, So I cross-applied this idea to mounting my newspaper on a canvas-shaped cardboard box. The newspaper is wrapped around all the edges of the box. If you look at the artwork from different angles, you can see how the doodle carries on off-the-page and around the corner.  

My cardboard box reminded me of Adam Neate, a well-known street artist who had the fabulous idea of doing art on cardboard which he left as donations and later left around the streets for anybody and everybody to pick up and take home with them. Just as Neate's cardboard boxes were found objects (recycling waste), so were mine - they were sold as trays in a packet of biscuits I was eating! Neate's subject matter of figurative drawing and portraits coheres with Picasso's doodles, and both are ground-breaking styles in the history of art so I thought they would match up well when I combine them in this artwork. Indeed, Neate cites Picasso as one of his major artistic influences so the two styles are quite  compatible with each other, despite belonging to different art movements.

In this work, I wanted to join the artistic conversation in art history between Neate and Picasso and explore how to further the ideas in their works. Street Art is inherently public art and accessible to all, so posting it on the internet is a way of achieving this open accessibility of art, outside the world of galleries, especially now when art galleries are closed. Although I am not about to leave my cardboard artworks around the streets, I love Neate's idea of doing that! I wish I had found one - I certainly would have taken it home to enjoy 🙂 🖼😍 👍 not have thrown it in the bin! 🗑😱😭 I think it was a creative, fun, engaging way for him to spread his passion for art and involve everyone in the aesthetic experience of looking at art, no matter who they are or whether they can afford to buy art or not. There needs to be a certain amount of Free Art (ie. free to view or even sometimes own) around in the world, otherwise art and the aesthetic experience of looking at art cannot become part of everyone's life.

 Art is, and always has been, a natural part of everyday life, as can be seen by elaborate cave paintings! And if people feel alienated from having easy access to artworks, then the commercial and gallery sides of the art world will suffer anyway in the long run, through disinterest in art at a societal level. So I think creative approaches to curating artworks in public, such as Neate's Open Gallery exhibition in the street and local Art Festival events which can include permanent outdoor artworks, are a fun and vital aspect of the art world and generate a love of art 💖🖼.

 In keeping with this accessible approach to art, I curate my artworks in my online gallery on Pinterest, where every Pinterest board functions as though it were a virtual room in a gallery, exhibiting a particular collection of works: 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/libakauckyArtPhotoGallery/ 

It's a continuous work in progress as I add to my gallery and/or move art works around from one virtual room to another. 

Study and final design for full length statue of Lady Mary Shepherd

 

I discovered in previous drawings that using my watercolour pencils (dry) in my black cartridge paper sketchbook gives a statue-like visual look to a drawing, so I used this combination again, to bring a bronze statue quality to my drawing. My aim was to invite the viewer to vividly imagine what Shepherd would look like as this particular design of a (life-sized) bronze statue standing on a plinth (which is why I placed my drawing on an easel to give the idea of height).

Before beginning the drawing above, I did this sketch below in my A3 size sketchbook with a 7B pencil:

The aim of this pencil drawing was twofold: one, to think out how to transform the painting of Shepherd as a 10 year old girl into a full length statue of her as an adult; two, to create a full length pencil portrait of Shepherd. I based her adult face on my previous sketch of her (2018). Here, I stayed with the same clothes she was wearing in Nasmyth's 1788 painting. I considered adding the jacket and bonnet her mother is wearing in Nasmyth's painting to adapt her look to a more adult style. However, that painting is an outdoor one and, in that era, women changed their clothing style depending on whether they were indoors or outdoors, what they were doing and even the time of day. 

I wanted to depict her as she may look when writing at her desk so decided on a dress-style to suit. Nevertheless, this dress is not as casual as it looks - I found paintings of women in this era wearing this style of dress in various different social settings. So portraying her in this style somewhat straddles informal and formal settings because it is a dress that could be worn to a ball or salon but could equally be worn at home when sitting at her desk writing. I also remained with this dress design because it was a style which remained in fashion when Shepherd was an adult, for instance, Regency era dresses. As I was drawing it, I thought about how to clearly symbolise her as a philosopher and author of treatises in a way which would be immediately obvious to the viewer, from a distance, without needing to read the inscription first. So, while drawing her arms, I incorporated one of her published books in her left hand. To emphasise her philosophy, I inscribed the title of her last treatise on the book cover. 

I want Shepherd to have the equivalent statue to the male philosophers, and generally, look the way numerous public, historical, respectful, representative statues of men are designed to honour them. Not some abstract statue because that would objectify Shepherd, erase her from history, in a way, by not depicting her as a human being, so preventing the viewer from connecting with Shepherd herself and her philosophical writings. When I created the hashtag #StatueForMaryShepherd (registered 2018) I did not mean for in the way the Wollstonecraft statue is designed ie. for her not representational one of her. I simply meant for in the sense of posthumously giving Shepherd a statue that honours her as a philosopher, celebrates her treatises and renders her visible and known to the general public by depicting her as realistically as possible. 

I am aware that there is a copy-cat petition for a statue for Mary Shepherd created a year after mine in 2019 (after a conference [25th-26th January 2019] was changed to one bearing her name despite none of the talks being on Shepherd). Their petition uses very similar wording to mine and is with the same petition organization (change.org). They even have an identical hashtag to mine for their campaign other than leaving out Mary Shepherd's surname (ie. #statueformary) which doesn't even make sense, especially given that Mary is a very common name. The person who put forward this petition was an UG student at the time. Somebody within the philosophy faculty should have stopped her and pointed out that you do not create a petition for something that is already out there as one. The government made this plain quite recently that this is the case. Indeed, I quote from their website giving guidelines and standards that must be adhered to when submitting a petition: 

'We'll have to reject your petition if:

It calls for the same action as a petition that's already open."

https://petition.parliament.uk/help

Therefore, the petition that was created after mine should be taken down. It's not possible to be unaware of my petition, it was and still is easy to find through a quick Google search and is on the same petition site as theirs. I am an active feminist/researcher in Philosophy and had already presented two academic papers on Shepherd at well-known academic events, submitted an abstract on Shepherd to a Scottish Philosophy conference, written an ebook on Shepherd and had attended philosophy conferences for many years, including the week-long Hume Society 2011 conference at Edinburgh University, Scotland. So I'm struggling to see how their remarkably similar Shepherd Statue petition could be created in error.

So it's inappropriate that the University of Edinburgh Philosophy Department, Diversity Reading List and Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) are supporting this conference committee's copycat petition while completely ignoring mine. Yet, at the same time, claiming they acknowledge and support under-represented people in Philosophy e.g. women, BME and LGBT+. Clearly not, when I am a young, lesbian, gender-fluid woman who is ethnically half Slav, yet they do nothing but distract off and drown out my petition. Just because some (mainly students) philosophers wish, as a group, to pull rank on me thinking they have more power than I do as a single individual, doesn't mean they should be allowed to do so. And, furthermore, they employ a technological expert to run their campaign for them. 

These philosophers could have simply signed my petition if they felt so strongly about Mary Shepherd the philosopher that hardly anyone researches! I did a headcount and believe there are no more than 10 others who have written on Shepherd, worldwide. Indeed, it appears that I am the only philosopher in the UK to research and write papers and a book on Mary Shepherd. I'm also a British philosopher so you can't feign ignorance. I also shared it with my then Facebook friends on Facebook (friends and visible to the public) who, all but one, are philosophers. I would have welcomed support from the philosophy community, students and lecturers! I still do! My petition is on-going so I'll be delighted if you sign it. 👍🙂 

https://www.change.org/p/nicola-sturgeon-first-time-for-a-statue-of-lady-mary-shepherd-first-scottish-female-philosopher 

Portraits and depictions of famous women in the past

One of the main themes of yesterday's #sotherbyssundaysketch was portraits of famous people in the past so I shared two posts on my Instagram showing my portrait of the philosopher I research, Lady Mary Shepherd which I drew in 2018. 

First post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMsIULOAs2b/?igshid=jkyilp7u9ngn 

Second post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMsIo6BAgra/?igshid=itsh5z9y27kd

The first post I shared shows the entire page in my 3D art sketchbook e.g. sketches, prep work, research and ideas for pottery, clay modelling, statues etc. Seeing the whole page gives the context around this first sketch and reveals some of my preparation process, especially how I tested different materials and colours before selecting a few that suit the look of a bronze coloured statue. Hence I chose a metallic pencil rather than a flesh coloured one. Out of those experimental marks I ticked, I started with the metallic bronze-like coloured pencil because this was only a first sketch, drawn in one go as an initial study for the statue for Shepherd. 

Nevertheless, my sketch also doubles up as an historical-style portrait sketch of Shepherd. For this, I was inspired by Cassandra Austen's 1810 drawing of her sister, Jane, which you can see below:

https://museumcrush.org/the-rarely-displayed-portrait-of-jane-austen-joining-five-others-for-austen-200/#gallery-2

The hue of the metallic pencil I used has a similar look to the brownish, 18th/19th century sketches so I thought it was in keeping with Shepherd's era (1777-1847). By basing my sketching style somewhat on Cassandra Austen's depiction of her sister, I attempted to create an intimate, sisterly portrait of Shepherd, rather than a formal, distant depiction of her. 

For this first sketch, I looked at a painting of Mary Shepherd (then Primrose, her family name) as a 10 year old child with her family. It's a small depiction of her in a pastoral setting, in which we only see her profile. See below for that painting by Alexander Nasmyth (1788), Mary is standing second from the right.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_3rd_Earl_of_Rosebery_with_his_family_outside_of_Barnbougle_Castle.png#mw-jump-to-license

We don't have one of her as an adult, so I've taken this child portrait and projected her into young adulthood when she writes her treatises, which she later publishes. I tried to imagine how she might appear if her child portrait were put through some computer software which would adapt her face into adulthood and drew what I pictured in my head. I wanted to be as realistic as possible because it is a pencil study for my proposed representational, life-like bronze statue of her. So my artistic process reflects that my design proposal is not imposing some abstract, non-representational, symbolic, going off on my own artistic tangent type of design. Instead, I am creating an historically accurate design as far as possible ie I keep her within her era, and further sketches for the design proposal will develop this, down to the fashion style of her clothes. 

Why was I drawing a statue design proposal sketch of Shepherd? Because I had started a petition calling for a statue of Shepherd after having been inspired by attending the unveiling of the Fawcett statue in London. Once I'd created the petition, I realised it would be helpful to include a photo on my petition site to make her more real to people who had never heard of her. I also wanted to concretely show what I have in mind and that it would be a representational-style statue, especially since there are no paintings or drawings available of her as an adult. I decided I needed to do further historical research into the fashion of her era, especially during her earlier adulthood. So I began with a simple portrait focusing on her face, rather than depicting the full length of the statue from head to toe. This also gave me time to experiment with various gestures, expressions, poses and whether she would be sitting or standing. 

I was going to go on to do other sketches the same day but my mother loved this one because she felt it had character and expressed her personality as she comes through in her writings. So I uploaded it to my petition site. This is the one and only sketch of Shepherd I have done to date. I tried to portray her facial expression as I see her sitting at her desk, thinking critically/philosophizing while disagreeing with most philosophers of her era and more, with a - no Hume, you are totally wrong about that! - look on her face! 😏 

See the link below for the on-going petition I started in 2018. My petition here is the first petition created to call for a statue of Mary Shepherd, to be put alongside the existing statues of other Scottish philosophers in Scotland (all men) e.g. Hume, Adam Smith: 

https://www.change.org/p/nicola-sturgeon-first-time-for-a-statue-of-lady-mary-shepherd-first-scottish-female-philosopher

I also created and registered the hashtag below for my campaign for a statue of Shepherd:

#StatueForMaryShepherd 

Here's a link to my post on my statue proposal:

https://theladymaryshepherdphilosophysalon.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-statue-commemorating-lady-mary.html

Mother's Day inspiration: Cassatt's Mother and Child pastel works of art (updated)

 

Mary Cassatt has been one of my favourite artists for a long time. I love using pastels and she used the medium to great effect. Her mother and child artworks have a warmth to them that draws one in. Several years ago, I went to a Cassatt exhibition in London. I came away even more obsessed with her work. So, it was a no-brainer that, given it's mother's day today, I'd want to do a pastel work on the theme of mother and child. I chose to personalise it by drawing a scene from my childhood with me in a hug with my mother. A snapshot of my daily life - I had a hug every day with my mother. Daily life was also the main feature of Impressionism not religion or mythology. I'm sitting on her knee, my legs wound round her left leg, my arms around her waist as she holds me in an embrace. 

Gesture and gaze were two important themes in Cassatt's works, so I've chosen an interlocking position between myself and my mother. If you were to draw the shape of our arms/hands, it would create a tilted oval shape. Use of space on the page and hand gestures are central for Cassatt and in this artwork of mine above, I have depicted our close, encircling arms and hands to resemble /symbolise our close bond. Cassatt wanted to illustrate, through her works, that closeness between mother and child is not something which happens automatically, thus she didn't create a sentimental mood. This can be seen in her works where the gazes are not direct eye-to-eye contact. Her mother and child artworks are possibly based on psychological theories (e.g. Freud) I haven't drawn upon for my artworks, here or elsewhere. There were other artists she knew well that also painted mother and child works e.g. Renoir. Unlike Cassatt, I've depicted a direct gaze, as a way of showing an emotional bond between us in addition to the physical closeness of hugging in an outdoor space rather than in a confined indoor space, such as the home. My figure drawing is three times the size of our dimensions in the original photograph. I have panned out to a full length viewpoint and shown some expanse of space around the figures. I was keen to make the composition vertical rather than keep to Cassatt's horizontal line between mother and child in close-up.

Clothes played an important part in Cassatt's art. So, in my work here, I've used modern clothes to show my mother's active, sporty personality. Although Cassatt depicts the women and girls in a passive way, I chose to show us as both active, in motion and sporty - we had played tennis together in the same clothes as depicted here just prior to this photo. My mother's relaxed body pose sums up her laid-back personality. My legs wrapped around her left leg and my arms round her back illustrate my physical strength (as I support my own body weight) and my athleticism. Cassatt's focus was on the child whereas I've used the gesture of the embrace and the eye-to-eye contact between us to enable the viewer to see both me and my mother as the focal point. We are interacting and communicating with each other in a meaningful, non-sentimental way.

I love this photo and I thought it would make an unusual composition. Pastel was popular at the end of the nineteenth century, the pre-Impressionist era. Pastel has an immediacy about it and, because it's matte, has an honesty within it. A naturalness, which I think Cassatt's artworks have in abundance. This matte quality was considered, back then, to be radical and breaking academic rules about art. Now we think it's classical and traditional. Luckily for us, she did experiment by breaking the rules because, otherwise, we wouldn't have her amazing artworks to enjoy. Like Hunter, she was a colourist but within Impressionism. So, I'm following on from Sothebys Sunday Sketch, a fortnight ago, which featured the Scottish colourist, George Leslie Hunter. 

Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, I juxtaposed colours opposite each other in the colour wheel I used. This makes the subject matter more vibrant and intense. I chose vibrant green for the background because this is a colour Cassatt used for her background 'Mother and Child' (in pastel, 1914). Under her pastel works she used charcoal which remained visible. I used pencil which hasn't remained visible. I deliberately drew over it.  Cassatt liked to leave areas of her work unfinished where you can see the colour of the paper. Although, much as I love the unfinished look and do it myself sometimes, I haven't done so in this one. Nevertheless, I've gone for the mild version of Cassatt's technique (unlike traditional pastel technique which I've used on my mother's jumper) by leaving gaps between the pastel marks. This is particularly clear on my blue dress in the pastel work. No colour symbolism is intended in the work.

Light features strongly for both Impressionists and Colourists and Cassatt was in line with this. I've stayed with this importance of light, similar to Cassatt, by varying the amount of pastel powder I applied to the textured paper. To make the background flatter and recede I applied pastel powder by doing broad strokes with the flat side of the pastel stick and smudging it in with my finger. In order for the subject matter to stand out, I used the top of the pastel stick to draw bold marks that give a thickness to the lines. It also gives off thick pastel powder which I blew on to disperse the excess powder but which, nevertheless, still left the thickness of the mark. Unlike Cassatt who used steam to create various pastel textures, such as clumping, I used dry pastels only. Playing with the pastel powder helps create light.

In my previous painting, 'Self-portrait with Flowers and Hat in Oil' (previous post), I similarly wanted a flat, receding background so that the subject matter felt closer. I achieved this flat background by smudging the green oil paint thinly and evenly with a kitchen towel. The green complements the deep reds but doesn't overpower them due to its flat, softer texture.

Just because Cassatt drew mother and child pastel works doesn't mean she was shy and retiring or that she restricted herself to this subject matter. Despite her father's disapproval, she studied art, even though, like now, the learning experience and content was not the same as for men. She spent most of her years in France, being already fluent in French and German, even though she was American. There was more freedom of movement back then, than even now! The Scottish Colourists equally just went off to France on a whim. Cassatt was close friends with Degas (even though they didn't always agree with each other) having a studio very close to his. Yet, she remained an active feminist throughout her life campaigning for women's right to vote, as well as, equal educational and career opportunities. This led certain critics to label her as a masculine woman who does masculine artworks.  Which goes to show that a masculine woman is simply one that doesn't just passively sit in a corner twiddling her fingers. We're still fighting for the same rights in the 21st century as she was in the 19th and early 20th, and we are still seen in much the same way! Time to finally bring about long awaited change!

Thus, Cassatt is an artist we should celebrate at any time but especially so on Mother's Day because she's a feminist and portrays the mother/child relationship in a non-ideological (political, religious, gender stereotypical) way. She depicts them as having a close bond but which, at the same time, allows them both to have their own individuality! I have done the same in my pastel artwork but changed certain aspects e.g. direction of gaze to show that emotional bonding doesn't mean a loss of separate identity!

Self-Portrait with Flowers: Oil Painting

#sothebyssundaysketch is always a race against time. Will I finish before the light fades and I end up taking a yellowy photo of my artistic attempt taken in artificial light? 🤔 This is really tight when it's winter but now the days are longer, it's a little better. I have until 5pm until the sunlight weakens. Then I panic. I feel like I'm on The Great British Bake-Off, except it's the Great Sotheby's Sunday Sketch-Off!

Yesterday, it was an art history lesson again. I love those. I'd never heard of the famous French artist, Jean-Pierre Cassigneul (1935-). He's known for his stylish women usually wearing a hat with interest. For instance, a hat with flowers, often in a modern 'take' on Post-Impressionism e.g. Le 21 Juin (Willow Gallery) woman seated at table in black dress, white pearls and wide-rimmed hat with flowers. Like Bonnard, he uses blocks of bright colours. (Sotheby's example was an oil painting of a woman seated at a table wearing a large hat with flowers resting her head in her right hand with a fruit bowl and a plate with a knife in front of her on the table.) I didn't have time to look through Cassigneul's paintings and learn much about him before thinking up my own composition and painting it. Only once I'd finished my painting, taken a photo 📷 of it in natural light and uploaded it, did I have more time to read about Cassigneul and look through further images of his work yesterday evening and today while writing this post. 

Before beginning to sketch it out, I sat in front of my blank oil painting paper and went through many different permutations and ideas. Eventually, I settled on one composition and even then it took on a life of its own. I never quite know where a drawing or painting is going to take me until it is completed. The same is true of my academic books and research - I write a book plan, down to chapter titles and topic outlines, only to find that the book has a life of its own and goes in its own direction, takes shape without me, and I merely follow. 

I turned this painting into an autobiographical one with me as the woman wearing my own hat 👒with flower. I do actually possess this hat and I have worn it but I have changed it considerably for this painting for colour unity. I placed it on the table but it didn't speak to me so I put it on and took some bad selfies 📱 (one of which I lost, I don't know where it went, I think it accidentally deleted itself) to help me envisage the perspective of the angles I need to draw to depict the hat sitting on my head. I then drew the selfie in pencil and this became the portrait and composition. The bouquet came from my imagination. Unlike last week's #sothebyssundaysketch still life oil painting, I didn't use a 9B pencil, leave the dark pencil marks on the paper and paint the oil over the under-drawing. This time I used a lighter 3B pencil, drew my self-portrait, then rubbed it out, only leaving faint markings as my guidelines to paint over. As with the previous oil painting, I drew in pencil over the oil paint during the painting process to give definition of line, but to a lesser extent than in the prior one. It's similar to sgraffito but it creates dark pencil lines rather than showing the paper or oil colours beneath. In this painting, you mostly see this effect in the bouquet and my smiling lips and the line to depict the crease in the cheek when one smiles. 

Unlike Cassigneul, I'm going for a natural look not a fashionable one, hence I've left out any depiction of the clothes so there's no visual distraction from the symbolism in the flowers and the portrait - it's the soulmate idea of it's the person that matters, not the trappings. If anything, I'm recreating a 60's look as seen by the flowing hair and style of hat. Except I changed the colour of my hat from cream to red and dark peach and changed the white flower on my hat to a dahlia 🏵 reflecting the colour of my hair to symbolise long-term bond, commitment and marriage 👰. The bouquet I'm holding is reflecting the symbolism of the dahlia by foreshadowing a bridal bouquet. I used the end of my paintbrush to draw the petals of the dahlia in a passionate, swirling motion (sgraffito technique). My hair, hat and flower are more in the post-impressionist style as is the block of deep red in the 💐. The red in the hat is then reflected in the red of my lips and the bouquet of tulips to represent soulmates and true love with one red rose 🌹 in the centre of the bouquet to stand for love at first sight. The red rose also symbolises passionate, endless love. I am holding the 24 deep red tulips 🌷 bouquet which signifies a mutual 'I'm Yours Forever' and is gift wrapped.🎁 I am looking out from the painting and the one I love receives the meaningful bouquet from me. There's a mutual exchange. I smile warmly, lovingly at The One. My intention is to create intimacy and draw the viewer into the painting. 

In the image on Instagram I've taken a close-up of my oil painting so the full bouquet 💐cannot be seen. For that image, see my PinInterest gallery:

https://pin.it/2EIxgVC

In the latter image, you can see the full bouquet with a bit of the gift wrapping around it but not that I am holding it. I've omitted that part in my painting, it's something I've left to the imagination of the viewer to contemplate the gestures and story taking place in the painting. 

Oil Painting

Yesterday, (28th Feb.) I did my first ever oil painting🎨🖼🖌 - see above! Why? I have some oil painting paper and oil paints I hadn't used yet. I tend to reach for my trusty acrylic! So when Sothebys' #sotherbyssundaysketch chose a George Leslie Hunter's (1877-1931) oil painting I thought it was a good opportunity to crack open my new oil paints, give them a try and see what happens. I didn't know what to expect. I thought the oil paint would be incredibly thick, opaque and not as easy to work with as acrylic. But then I thought watercolour would be difficult to work with. I assumed they would be very runny, watery and hard to control because all the colours would bleed into each other randomly. However, neither oils nor watercolour were that different from acrylic. 

I'd never heard of G. L. Hunter so I decided to look into him as an artist because history is my thing, whether it is history of philosophy, history of feminism, history of art, history of fashion, history of music, history of dance, history of women's sports, history of science, basically, history and the history of anything I'm interested in! 👍

I discovered that he was born in 19th century Scotland, grew up in America and was a self-taught artist who was later classified as a Scottish colourist. What does this mean? As the name suggests, colourists in art are mainly interested in the effect of light and use of colour. They particularly like vibrant colours which set a mood. Scotland didn't do it for them in terms of light and they wanted to loosen up their style and be exposed to different forms of art and expand their horizons, ideas and explore natural light so they went to France since France is sunnier 🌞. 

I was inspired to track down some of Hunter's paintings to see how this looked in practice and found quite a few examples of his paintings. They tend to have the same themes and motifs. His paintings were mainly of still life which have flowers, fruit and the occasional book as constant motifs. Quite often, he'd have a door panel on the left hand side of the background, or a curtain/drape on the right hand side as a background. Sometimes, he would replace a curtain drape with cloth draped on a table as part of the still life. 

I selected some of his motifs in various paintings and put them together to find objects around my home to create my own original still life oil painting, in the spirit of Hunter. 

This is the painting where I used the idea of incorporating a book with fruit on it:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-leslie-hunter/anemones-in-a-japanese-vase-fPj2kahSv4rRoV3YuB84LQ2

I took the angle of the table in this painting and used this idea for my table as well as for the large format book I chose:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-leslie-hunter/stocks-in-a-white-vase-S2yw0tCNvw6lnPQ1h3SnpQ2

And here, I liked the combination of orange and lemon with a glass, so I took that and turned the wine glass into my cocktail glass I bought with my drink at the Hard Rock Cafe in London. 🙂 

http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-leslie-hunter/still-life-of-fruit-and-a-wine-glass-lk0axfEMeTPC94_WNl7Lfw2

And here's a good example of how Hunter makes a study of citrus fruit:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-leslie-hunter/still-life-of-anemones-and-citrus-fruit-ea9IQr-BPG1jGSiuunWQqA2 

I chose not to have a door panel as a background but instead to have a picture window looking out onto my back garden with a view of a tree and long leafy plants. I used loose bold lines in pencil for the plants to gesture towards Fauvism which was a movement that influenced colourists. I employed bold, strong colours for the flowers which are reflected in the fruit. The children on the book cover also reflect these strong, vibrant colours. I restricted my palette to yellow, vermilion red, green, white, mixed the colours to produce orange, peach and light brown for the tree. The predominant colours in my painting are vibrant orange, yellow and green to give a zesty mood.

Hunter used ink with his oils whereas I've combined the oil paints with pencil for the original sketch and during the painting process. I used pencil for a sgraffito effect. Sgraffito is when you scratch wet paint to reveal the colour underneath. However, I didn't scratch the wet paint to reveal a different colour. I used sgraffiti to give definition and expressive marks, precise lettering as well as to make certain lines stand out against the paint. I thought it gave strength of line and definite shape to objects.

I find his still life oil paintings appealing. Nevertheless, unlike Hunter I incorporated autobiographical aspects into my painting as well as a social commentary on life in 2021. 

Autobiographically, the Hard Rock Cafe cocktail glass symbolises that I'm a singer/musician born and bred in London. The citrus fruit and the view of the garden shows my love of nature and eating healthy food. My passion for books is represented by the book on the table and symbolises my identity as an academic. It's also a beautifully illustrated book for children. I was surrounded by such beautiful books growing up. The love of illustrated books reflects my life as an artist and it's a poetry book written in Czech to reflect my Czech identity which is an important part of who I am despite being a Londoner all my life and identifying as one. 

Currently, life is asocial, unlike in the recent past, when you were free to come and go, travel, go to the shops, cafes, bars, restaurants, concerts, cinemas, and meet people from all walks of life. The freedom of the past is seen in the carefree children as they run together holding hands. The importance of human contact and touch is expressed by this girl and boy on the book cover. The hard rock cafe glass reflects the adult desire for and importance of social contact. It represents going out, as do the running children, which juxtaposes with the indoor domestic still life. 'Still' being an important word here. The 'still' non-active scene indoors is compared with the bustling, active outdoors which the children are enjoying in nature and the adults by going to a bar. This is why I chose to have a garden as a background because it serves to illustrate the indoor/outdoor contrast in lifestyle. Even so, the outdoor spaces are layered. The garden is a home garden, whereas the children are outdoors in a public space ie a local park while the adults have travelled further afield to a different type of public space ie to a London (city) bar.

See a full length photo of my painting, as well as several close-ups, on my Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/libakaucky/

Materials I used: oil paints (Daler-Rowney); paint brushes (Daler-Rowney); pencils (9B; F; Derwent Graphic); oil painting paper, Georgian (Daler-Rowney) 

Size: 406 × 305mm