Self-Evaluation

This is a self-evaluation of my previous work last year and also a look towards what I would like to achieve and change this year within my work.

Where has my work come from?

• In second year, I became more preoccupied in the theory behind my work, my subject matter developed from just observational painting to thinking about alternate realities and escapism in printmaking.

• I was drawn towards the drawing aspect of printmaking and particularly stone lithography, although I didn’t get much time to practice stone lithography in the studio, I believe I liked the techniques I developed using it because it was a lot of drawing and sketching work. Drawing with stone and creating prints also allowed me to create work that could be at once both realistic and surrealist.

• The concept of escapism and alternate realities I explored in second year surfaced as a consequence of the pandemic in which I found I was constantly trying to find some form of escapism from the reality of the situation around us, whether this be through watching a film or a book. I found it an interesting and strong concept to explore as the basis of it comes from imagination, so the ideas are almost limitless.

• My concern however with some of my print work from second year is that it needed to be more technically difficult, as I had not had much time to do lithography my only attempts were brief, I didn’t get much time to really try to perfect working with the mediums. Also looking back at the prints, I created I found them to be slightly underwhelming, perhaps this may be due to the subject matter.

What is it about?

• All my work was about escapism and alternate realities that you seek in everyday life, it came together with lithography better than it did in any over medium as a way to showcase the sense of a different word beyond ours in a realistic way through mark making.

• Both the ideas and the process came together, however I reached a point at the end of the semester where I felt that I hadn’t quite created art that was that personal, looking back it was still quite shallow in the sense that although it explored this sense of escapism that I am interested in, it could have portrayed a deeper and more personal sense of meaning that I didn’t quite manage to bring together.

• So therefore, going into third year I want to look at exploring something that is more personal to myself as that will give my work more direction and depth because it is coming from a place of deeper meaning.

Where is it going?

• I would like to further this idea of escapism but instead think about it within my own life – through people.

• I have given a lot of thought into what influences my day-to-day life, what has impacted each stage of my life and the most prevalent is my family and my friends who have been around me. I would like to explore the faces that I see almost every day of my life.

• Therefore, I think my subject matter will be people and familiar faces that are close to me, the best method and technique for this would be lithography as it is a process that I feel most comfortable with and allows me to explore a new way of drawing that doesn’t just involve a pencil but instead use a variety of crayons, pencils, washes, and ink. By doing portraits I am leaning towards keeping the style more realism based, but I would also like to think about surrealism and how I can incorporate that into the portraits to experiment with the image and how the viewer perceives them.

My influences:

What artists have particularly inspired you and why?

Some artists that have inspired me throughout my art practice, I have learnt from their exploration of realism and surrealism in different approaches, some with pencil, lithography, paint and etching:

• Jono Dry – His intense photorealistic and surrealist drawings introduced me to a way of drawing I had never seen before; I have also learnt from his method of creating a reference image to create his surrealist works.

• Maurits C. Escher – The first artist I came across using lithography to create portraits and optical illusions. His work introduced me to the possibilities of working on stone.

• Rembrandt – I researched into Rembrandt in second year for his portrait work, although I didn’t end up doing portraits in second year, I looked at his self-portrait etchings as part of my research and I really enjoyed his exploration of emotions, which is something I would like to look at more this year.

• F. Ernest Jackson – I found this artist towards the end of the year so didn’t get to do much research on him, but his lithograph portraits are really interesting as he uses a variety of techniques, so moving forward this semester I am definitely going to take a closer look at his works.

• Donald Furst – Furst’s lithographs of doors and entrances are what inspired me last year when looking into the concept of escapism, by looking at his work I could see how even a simple drawing could look so impactful using lithography.

Can you identify any pieces of work that you have seen that have inspired you?

• “The Black Hat” – F. Ernest Jackson

• “Mask” – Jono Dry

• “Dusk” – Jono Dry

• “Hand with Reflecting Sphere” – M.C. Escher

Can you identify any techniques, media, or multimedia that you have seen that inspires you?

After doing woodcuts in first year and then using both screen-printing and lithography in second year I gravitated towards lithography towards the end of the year. I think going forward with portraits the process of lithography gives me the control I need to create realistic portrait work but to also work with different techniques I couldn’t use with other processes.