Module Summary - Methodology

For this module, I have been investigating the four elements - Fire, Water, Earth and Air, and their relationship with the human body and mind. I wanted to transfer the skills and knowledge of abstract expressionism that I experimented with in the first year, with my previous love of detailed work - specifically portraiture. At the beginning of this project, I was unsure where I wanted to take it. I loosely experimented for a while, with a few different mediums and ways of representing my ideas, but I eventually settled on paint. I have always had a love for paint and I found that I enjoyed the process of painting my ideas, and then using digital forms of media to enhance them further. I started by painting animals as a form of representation and even a more literal approach of just painting the elements themselves. However, I loved the contrast of portraiture with the raw imagery and how it presented two extreme forces - nature, and human emotion. I developed this idea further using silhouettes of faces, body parts and even full body silhouettes to represent the spirit of the elements within a person. I am happy to have produced a higher volume of work this year, and at various scales, which is something I have struggled with previously. I believe I have shown my skillset better, but have more so enjoyed the process of creation throughout this model and have not thought to deeply about my ideas before doing them, which I have found more enjoyable. I want to provoke emotion in my work, as I believe people can relate a feeling with the strong and powerful nature of each of the 4 forces. However, even if this is not the case, I believe my work has been successful as it has allowed me to be creative and experience a range of emotions myself while creating it, which was highly important for me this year.

I have been inspired by many artists for this project, including John Burden, Naomi Walker, Emma Fey and Wolfgang Stiller. Each artist has researched the elements, spirituality or portraiture in their work and has fuelled my ideas.