Nick Gentry is a British artists from London. His art is influenced by the development of consumerism, technology, identity and cyber culture in society. Gentry is known for his floppy disc paintings which is pretty self explanatory. he paints on floppy discs and produces spectacular portraits. What attracts me to this artist is the fact he uses personal projects and recycled media, in other words old school media such as floppy discs, newspapers, cassette tapes and records. I came across this artist on pinterest and was instantly amazed at his work - the fact the something so simple such as a floppy disc can bring a piece to life and add that 3d element to it. My final piece is based on Gentry's work. Unlike him i didn't directly paint on my discs as I am not as brave as Gentry but I still took inspiration from him. What makes him different from the other artist i have studied and are inspired by is he uses recycling media and brings something's different to the table. He successfully brings that old school media to the modern day and it doesn't look dated one bit. Almost give the portraits paintings a kind of robotic and futuristic feeling. This maybe all down all the colours and tones he uses as an artist.
Contextual studies
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Georges Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat is well known for his technique for pointillism. This consists of applying small strokes of pure colour and allowing the
Thursday, 5 June 2014
Jackson Pollock
Born on January 28th 1912 in Cody, Wyoming arytist Jackson Pollock studies under Thomas Hart Benton before leaving tarditional painting techniques to explore abstract expressionism via his splatter and action pieces, which involved pouring paint and other media directly onto canvas. He was renowed and critiqued for his conventions. Unfortunately, Pollock died in 1956 due to drink driving which ended in him crashing into a tree.
What attracted me to the artitist Jackson Pollock was how free he was with his paintings and for someone who is rather expressing with their such as myself is a great thing to see. Jacksons mother had artistic ambitions which i can relate to as art has been and is a passion that runs through my family so there is some sorta similarity.
I always have a tendancy to decorate my sketchbooks with nail varnish or paint to give an abstract look hence why i studied this specific artist as several people have said to me that it reminds them of Pollocks work.
Below you can see an inspired Pollock piece. I simply used nail varnish on white canvas and deliberty left a border round the edges of the canvas to give a more clenaer and sharper look. Its one of my favourite pieces as its so simple yet you can see different thing within the piece itself.
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Thursday, 15 May 2014
François Nielly
Francoise Nielly is a
French knife painter who is famous for painting vibrant and colourful close up
portraits of people such as Barack Obama. She studies fine arts and art deco
preparation. As well as being a photographer, she has also been in the
advertising business for the last 15 years as an illustrator. Her painting is
expressive and has a fascinating vital energy to it.
Her fluorescent
strokes are probably her most dramatic creations with oils and canvas. Her
impressive work beats with gust projecting movement, energy and rapturous
emotions.
Nielly is fairly similar to Mithouard as they both use an
energetic colour palette to produce their work and they mostly do figure and
portrait work. Oil and knife combine sculpt her
images from a material that is, at the same time, biting and incisive, charnel
and sensual. Whether she paints the human body or portraits, the artist takes a
risk; her painting is sexual, her colours free, exuberant, surprising, even
explosive, the cut of her knife incisive, her colour pallet dazzling.
As a fan of Niellys work, I like the fact most of the
time she doesn’t use realistic colours such as fleshy tones as shown above in
the right image. Possibly why I am drawn to this French artist as I thoroughly enjoy
mixing it up and throwing in complementing colours to make it more exciting.
Marchal Mithouard
Marchal
Mithouard
Marchal Mithouard
otherwise known in the artist industry as (Shaka) is a 36-year old artist who,
for 15 years, has been portraying his contemporaries in their most
characteristic expressions.
After he discovered
spray paint in 1995, his coloured and sometimes grotesque faces very quickly
began to cover the walls of his hometown, Evry. Marchal Mithouard is
known for his amazing three dimensional street art inspired paintings. I am
intrigued and fascinated at how he can make his paintings seem so life like by using
exaggerated perspective and realism to create the illusion of them popping out.
Mithouard attaches objects to the painting to create the illusion that
individuals are coming to life on the canvas. His technique is known as
bas-relief which involves making certain elements of the work more prominent
than others by either carving away material or adding new layers. It is not new,
having been used widely in parts of Italy during the Renaissance, and even
earlier in other parts of the world. He draws influences from a variety of
artistic styles such as; painting, sculptures, serigraph, photography and
tattooing, and has risen as a major figure in urban art.
For using such intricate shapes and bright colours, I
find it interesting how he doesn’t use realistic colours to create his human
figures, but instead uses luminescing colours such as, bright blues, greens,
yellows and pinks to make it more graffiti like. These are not typical colours
for a realistic face but (Shaka) knows how to do and make it work. His
paintings appear to have an underlying theme of revolt and rebellion. His influences
include Vincent Van Gogh, La Caravage and expressionism.
Marchal has enjoyed art from a very young age, from the
age of nine he started oil painting and from there his love for graffiti
progressed. He found comfort in graffiti as he would do it for leisure purposes
and to express how he was feeling. He now mixes graffiti with traditional
painting and his work is a result of all of these experiences. He was
influenced by subculture and alternative culture, as well as punk and Jamaican
music. At the beginning, he did a lot of small stencils against racism and
messages about anarchy, around Jamaican music. Mithouard likes to relate how he
works to hip hop, as he feels mixing things to make music is similar to the way
he works on canvas, making sculptures and doing graffiti. His first studio was
an old factory building in Paris and in 2007, it was the first time he had used
the three dimensional effect, which to this day he is known for. He would
simply find things on the floor and stick them to his canvas and build his
masterpiece from there. The reason he went down the three dimensional route was
because he found the flat surface of the canvas or wall too limiting to
effectively highlight the absurd behaviour of his characters.
Some may argue that Marchal Mithouards works is too
violent, too aggressive but he, himself sees this as a compliment. Behind the
violence and energetic colour palette lies a message of sensibility. The
message that Mithouard (Shaka) is trying to get across is the struggle for
individuality in social power politics. Caravaggio is one artist that has
influenced Mithouard as his paintings too were also strong and contrasting.
Unlike his paintings, Mithouard is a very calm person but
uses art as a way to fight and express his emotions. Much like myself which is
why I can relate to this artist. Not only does Marchal Mithouard specialize in
figure composition, he also does spectacular portrait work and again uses the
vibrancy to capture the emotion and personality. I myself like to experiment
with different mediums and movements, so there is almost a similarity between
us. Another thing is Mithouard rarely does a painting in black and white as it
doesn’t give off a sense of energy, again I find myself relating to this artists
as I believe that colour brings a painting to life and adds character to it. I
will continue to look at Mithouards work and add elements of his graffiti style
to my own work as I find him very inspiring.
I am currently using Mithouard as an inspiration of mine for exploratory media as I am a great fan of his work and i am mesmerised by the vibrant colour he uses. Canvas work fascinates me as it has a great texture to it which allows me build up on my artwork and give that 3D element to it that Marchal successfully creates. Heres an example of me experiementating ad using vibrant colours almost looks rather trippy.
It intriguing how he applies the direction of the colours
in the same way as the contours of the face so it still has that realistic feel
to it. If you look closely at some of Mithouards work you can see several faces
and messages or words within the whole artwork itself. This shows that this 3D
graffiti artist has the patience to produce these intricate characters. Below
is an fantastic example of this.
As an artist myself who specialises in portraiture I see
Marchal as a great example to follow by. His masterpieces almost give the
illusion that someone has puked a rainbow on a canvas as you get lost in the colours.
I personally think if Mithouard was more of an achromatic artist then I would
be less interested in his work. I can identify elements of Van Gogh’s work in
his own especially when it comes to his portrait work as soon above.
Funnily enough, Mithouard done his own interpretation of Gogh’s
famous portrait which looks almost the same as the real thing but with the
slight twist of Marchals style. We can still identify it through the intricate
shapes and luminescing colours.
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