Evaluation

Final major project evaluation

For my final major project pieces, I created three Indigenous portraits ranging from 45cmx35cm to 90cmx50cm, incorporating fluid painting to reflect my concept of Indigenous people being the re-connection between humanity and nature.

I personally feel that my work was successful because I had previously stated that I would be critiquing my work on how realistic I found the portraits when using the gritty, deep tones inspired by Jason Liosatos’ portraits, and how vibrant, intricate and organic I found the lines and colour in the fluid painting. The fluid painting was a particular risk when approaching the idea of success with my final piece because of how unpredictable the nature of the technique is, the colours being the only control I really had over it, but I managed to manipulate the colours into thick and thin lines that stretched from the realistic portrait, almost like the tendrils that were maintaining the bond between the portrait and nature.

I feel that my work clearly related to the historical, social, cultural and political issues because of how wide the spectrum of my concept ranges. When looking at the Native American Indian aspects of my Indigenous culture concept, I feel like there are many aspects that relate to political and historical issues. I approached these ideas by taking advantage of my location and visited the mayflower steps in Plymouth, a location which marks the beginning of America’s history but also the beginning of a mass genocide of the Native American society after the colonization, arising many political issues. The Native American Indian aspect also rouses historic issues, since as mentioned before, it relates to topics such as American history and British history in one from our perspective.

I feel like the concept of Indigenous people being the re-connection between humanity and nature also sparks thoughts on the cultural and social issues because it allows reflection of our own culture and allows us to compare it to other cultures like the Indigenous culture which is so different from our own, being more connected to nature through their everyday life, whereas we’ve become quite disconnected and more connected with technology, as observed by Steve Cutts, an artist I had looked at earlier in my project. Socially, I feel like my concept portrays how our society as a whole is one of consumerism and slight nature deficit disorder in comparison to the Indigenous society, meaning that we tend to consume things like food, materials and other things without really appreciate where they came from and we’ve become very detached from nature.

I came to decide upon fluid painting as a media for my development after studying the visual elements I found most prominent in the Indigenous cultures after gaining some secondary research but also through visiting the Plymouth museum. I found that in particular aspects of their culture such as their clothes, jewellery, facial paint and art work, the visual elements were mainly the vibrant, bold colours, the intricate, detailed patterns and the flowing, continuous lines. After some thought, I did some research and came across the fluid painting technique which I feel incorporates all of those elements. I also feel that it reflects my concept quite well, the long flowing lines of organic colour being manipulated by hand to re-connect with the portrait.

The main artists that influenced me in this project were Nancy Wood and Leif Podhajsky, the two fluid painting artists, and Jason Liosatos, the artist whose gallery I visited in Totnes and specialized with creating deep, bold portraits of realistic aesthetic. I had initially thought of a final piece at the beginning that had a more illustrated appearance after I had already seen work by Steve Cutts before doing a more in depth study on him further in my book, but that idea was soon changed when I visited Liosatos’ gallery and was immediately influenced by his deep, rustic tonal portraits.

I encounter problems in particular with my fluid painting experiments when I used powder paints and found them to be too dry when they began crumbling so I had to put a small coating of PVA glue over the top. After this problem, I learned which paints to use and which paints to avoid. For my final piece, I used acrylic but mixed in water to prevent the paint from getting too dry. The water also allowed the paint to run over the canvas better and layer easily with other colours. In my experimentation stage, I also created natural paints made from rocks but found them too watery and thin when using in the style of Jason Liosatos, so I decided that I wouldn’t continue the idea further and would use thicker based paints instead such as acrylic or oil.

I managed to demonstrate non-tutor led work in regards to my documentation on my blog and in my sketchbook of both secondary and primary source research and also development. I used a range of different methods such as mind maps, reflection, analysis and a worksheet to show the independent work where I individually worked towards developing a final concept and final piece.

From this project, I learned a range of different skills practically such as how to sufficiently and effectively use the fluid painting technique. I also learned how to create more realistic and in depth portraits using tone, tints and colour, something I feel was especially successful in my final pieces and experiments. I’ve learned how to analyse my work in a more structured and consistent fashion, finding ways of annotating my work and others’ work in a way that not only makes sense to others reading, but to myself.

After much thought, I feel that I’ve considered my work’s presentation by thinking about just what audience my work is aimed at. My work is a contrasting piece of what I can only describe as two opposites of a spectrum. On one hand, there is the seriousness of the portrait that shows the hard faced, stony expressions of the Indigenous people, but also the wild and passionate energy in the fluid painting that reflects the inner culture of the Indigenous societies. I feel like in displaying my work, I would arrange the pieces quite high up on the wall, and if I could choose where to present them, I would have them on a dark wall with a light above them to enhance the powerful emotion coursing through the piece.

Overall, I feel that my target would be people that would maybe like to study my piece and not only understand the original concept, but take things of their own from it. I would be inclined to say that my work would be viewed for educational reasons by an audience that would like to learn from it and further understand different cultures than our own to create a future path of better understand of other cultures and also make small changes in their own lives by considering the natural and organic way of life; a life in which these cultures so different from our own lives. I would think that the type of people I am trying to subconsciously attract are students, teachers or worldly people with a thirst for open perspectives about the world in which we live in.

Olive Flannery

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