YEAR 4 Artist Statment and Documentation
I am a contemporary artist who works in figurative and gestural painting, and paint on canvas. The primary medium I use in my work are acrylic paints. The subject matter for most or nearly all my works are nature and landscape. I paint nature to honour it for its immersible support in providing food and another sources of life. For this academic year my work has primarily focused on the use of grid and squares; grids are useful in the sense to bring order, tidiness and control to the disorder within my individual work. In my case grids keep my untidy individual paintings in order. The nature of my painting technique, which is watered-down acrylic paint on canvas, juxtaposes the neatness of grid. The individual smaller paintings are in the shape of squares and rectangles. This is because I have been conditioned to believe that I can see the entirety of the ‘picture’ within a square shaped frame and this is due to its common use for TV screens, computers, books and now phones to the windows. A square or rectangular shape has come to be my comfort shape, as it's a shape I am most familiar with in my daily life. And this led me to have an automatic sense of ‘order’ associated with that shape. To expand on why I use watered-down acrylic; at the beginning of this academic year, I was obsessed with J.M.W. Turners watercolour painting of British landscape. But I preferred working of canvases due to its flexibility yet durable compared to paper and so to combine the watercolour look on canvas I choose this watered-down acrylic technique. Some of the artist who have inspired my work are Etel Adnan, Amy Sillman and Agnes Martin. The relationship between Adnan’s work to my work comes from her attachment to the places she has been or lived and can be seem in her poems too. Her art style is minimal and figurative, her palate includes bold and bright colour which to me represents her joy and attachment to those places. I have certain emotional attachments to the landscapes in my art works too, and the colours and transparency of my paintings help me to see beyond just the landscape and allow me to feel the presence of the nature. As for Silliman’s works, she inspires me to not control the work and allow me to let the brush and paint take the lead, she has taught me to appreciate the mistakes and not be strict about the picture I am making and be playful with my work. Sillman has been an inspirational artist in my art journey with her relatable writings which expresses the struggles and expectation of an artist. For example, in her articles Shit Happens, (2015) Sillman talked about overworking the painting to the point the artwork changes as one of daily struggles of an artist. However, although I sometimes want the work of art to create itself and give it all the freedom to be whatever it desires, as an artist I feel the need to control and have authority over my work. I reluctantly admit that I don’t want the work to overpower me. So, here’s where the grid and Martin enters. Although I am slave to the process of making the work, which involves cutting the canvas into squares, priming them, painting on repeat until I have enough squares to make a large grid; it is still very mediative process. There is a presence of sublimity and serenity in her works which makes the work so powerful that it encourages the viewers to look beyond its materiality with its geometric shapes and grids. The repetition within her work encourages me to see the beauty in the mundane every day. Grids are very adaptable, I desire to work large but with the technique I choose to work comes with some limitations, for example the paint dries uneven leaving blotches and dripping marks all over the surface making it hard to layer and blend. So, the grid was my way to allow myself to work small and yet cumulatively produce a big piece. As for what I want for my work, personally my work has a calming effect on me, that’s due to personal attachment I have towards these places. For example, ‘Hazy Memories’, 2024, brought out sense of peace and harmony after being assembled into grid and a sense of playfulness within the work. As for my viewers I hope my work encourages them to see beauty in simple things. |
Semester 1; Exhibition 1: Khoas, 19th November 2024
Description: The total size of the art is 1m x 1m, the individual squares are the size of A5, painted on unstrached canvas, watered-down arcylic paints and watercolour, hang up using gold drawing pin
Semester 1; Exhibition 2: Winter Cabaret, 12th December 2024
Description: The total size of the grid is 1m x 1.3m, individual squares unstrached canvas are 50cm x 50 cm ( not preciesly measured );
The individual cat paints are 22.5cm x 19cm , the meduim used in for all of this work are watercolour,
papers are taped and the canvas are pined using gold drawing pins, which perfectly juxtapose eachother (pins versus paper table and paper versus canvas).
Semester 2 ; Exhibition 1: Interim show, 11th march 2025
The start of the grid journey
Watercolour Postcards
These post cards paintings came to be as way to bring back my joy for painting landscape and also to practice watercolour , espeically after being a will inspired with J.M.W Turner’s art.
And the grid came to be as a way to display all of them and see them at once . It was this work that sort of seem to have an impact as a grid compared to them on thier own.
Experiment 1= individual squares 50cm x50cm, playing around with concentration of colour,contrast, texture and markmaking.
Below are the photos I have taken of places I have been to, these landscapes are from England and India the two places I belong. These are my inspiration for my art.