Graham Sutherland

Graham Sutherland was an artist who during his career painted a number of portraits. The one I'm particularly interested in is his portrait of Winston Churchill. Churchill hates this painting and refused to display it. It was later found out that Lady Churchill destroyed the painting. I find it fascinating that one painting could cause so much hatred from one person and would resolve to the destruction of a piece of art.

Nelson Mandela

With the death of Nelson Mandela still very fresh in peoples mind, I thought it would be a good idea to do some work based on him. I decided to go back to doing quick paintings in random places as I think overall this had the best impact and worked well. I did small portraits of Mandela's face around the studio to convey the amount of impact he has had in the world that we live in today. Like the paintings their discreet and we probably don't notice, but the impact has definitely changed society.

Propeller

This painting is of Edward Smith who was the captain of the titanic. Many people believe if it wasn't for his poor decision making, the titanic might not have crashed into the iceberg and sank.

While I was happy with the way this looked, I found the interpretation too obvious and I fear I might be becoming too literal with my paintings and their meanings.

Margaret Thatcher

Wanting to continue to paint currently talked about figures, I thought painting Margaret Thatcher would be a good next step. The reason behind painting her on the back of my canvas as opposed to the front is because of the controversial that had surrounded the former prime minister while she was alive. For many people she is a hated figure who created more problems than solutions. So whether she deserved to be painting on a canvas is highly debatable. But by painting her face on the back it's almost like she doesn't exist or matter, which could represent the way many people feel about her.

Yet she has still been immortalised with paint, and although controversial, she did indeed cause change in society. So even though it's not noticeable like the portrait, things have been influentially changed because of her.

Coloured portrait

All of my portraits so far have been in black and white. I thought it would be a good idea to experiment with doing a coloured portrait and see if I liked the results. I decided to paint a portrait of Miley Cyrus because she's such a talked about person at the moment, mostly for the outrageous way she's behaving at the moment. Like my previous Miley Cyrus painting I did it on plastic.

Originally I wasn't so sure about the end result. I preferred the less literal interpretations I was getting with using black and white.

However something accidentally happened to this piece of work which actually gave it some meaning. Because of the large amount of layers of paint, the painting started to crack and fall off the plastic. I saw this as an opportunity to save this work from having no relevance to my project.

 I now see this piece as a representation of the deterioration of modern culture. The entertainment business is falling apart and people such as Miley Cyrus are gaining attention for the wrong reasons. The cracks in this painting covey the cracks of the entertainment industry and the influence it is creating with the younger generation of today.

Albert Fish

This painting is expanding onto the idea of controversial people being immortalised with paint. I picked the serial killer Albert Fish as his name may be well known but his is otherwise not. I wanted to see peoples reactions when they realised that such a monstrous figure has been painted on the back of a chair, an everyday object that is used all the time.

Artist talk

Presentation- Minho Kwon
In this presentation, I focused on one particular drawing by an artist called Minho Kwon. I saw his work in London at the Jerwood gallery for the Jerwood drawing prize. This particular piece of work is called 'Neo Tower of Babel' and is pencil on tracing paper.

I was interested by the structural nature of this drawing. Usually anything structural doesn't usually catch my interest but this intriged me. After doing some research on Kwon, it appears that his inspiration for his drawings could have stemmed from the regmented structure of his past in Korea, where he lived for most of his life. He intends for his work to respond to the world in which he lives.

He was introduced to architecture from an early age, so combined the two together to create the juxtaposition between the history and the politics of Korea. The result of this reveals drawings almost resembling an architects blueprint.

"These architectural elements are more than the means to an end; they are capable of acting as a metaphor, thereby revealing the imaginative scope of the work as a whole" Minho Kwon

His work at the Jerwood is a reconstruction of the Tower of Babel, which is something which forms the focus of a story told in the book of Genesis of the Bible. The story summed up is man set out to build the Tower of Babel, arrogantly assuming their technological skill would enable them to reach God. This angered God and to punish man he divided the language they spoke. Kwon's drawings visualize his interpretation of a new Tower. It also shows architecture from the Classical and Medieval through to the industrial and modern periods. The overlaying predictions depict the main sources of power from each of these periods.

Kwon wants to provoke questions such as whether we have already reached God or because of our arrogant nature we will be punished again. His technique of provoking these are to show the traces of human civilization; man's eternal drive towards God.

Feedback
In the feedback, we further discussed the idea that this is Kwon's way of saying human civilisation is becoming too advanced and too arrogant. Questions were asked as to why there was something which looked like a Centar in the drawing. I wasn't able to find any information about this and everyone including myself found it particularly odd that there was something organic in such a structured geometric drawing. My guess is that is has something to link to the religious side of it, perhaps mocking the Christian story by adding a mythological creature in there.

Another thing which was discussed in the feedback were the faint, horizontal pencil lines which went all across Kwon's drawing. On first glance, it looks like they're just used for a backdrop to help construct the drawing. But it was mentioned by someone else that they could have an alternative meaning. With the lines not erased, the drawing looks unfinished. And this could link to the fact that that Kwon's 'Tower' is never finshed, t's still being constructed because of the speed that the human race is advancing.