Imaginary Landscapes

This is an acrylic on canvas painting of a short story I wrote based on a vague memory. The memory was of a carnival in Swansea when I was 5. In these paintings I tried to create a dream world in which reality and memory merge. The direction the piece moves in is suggestive of the crowds of red. And the face at the bottom my face in awe.

Keeping to the dream like theme, this landscape painting is representative of myself and my cousin on a day at the beach. Again nothing in the painting is fact, only loosely based on a vague but fond memory of mine. The peer in the background is symbolic of the mumbles in swansea, and the shapes in the sky represent clouds and ships passing.

Hidden Women

This is a mixed media acrylic piece I created using photographs I took of a friend wearing an old bed sheet, I wanted to disguise (hide) the female form by using horizontal lines and rough brush strokes.

This is an Ink and water piece on top of tissue paper, the wrinkles in the tissue flow like the sheet did on my model in the photo shoot, I like the transparency created when the ink was watered down. Giving the woman in the piece no recognisable feature I managed to hide her identity.

Using a PVA and tissue paper background, I used a photograph from my photo shoot to create this water and ink piece.

A level Work: Discarded

This Art is from my Alevel project titled Discarded

The second of a two canvas piece, I used a photo of a transvestite as my main inspiration, someone who is socially looked down on and misunderstood. Using the same colour scheme I attempted to create a strange character. I think leaving one eye unpainted adds to the strangeness of the piece.

This is a final piece, acrylic on canvas. I used a surreal colour scheme and ignored human proportions to create a discarded member of society, the piece looks awkward and uncomfortable, which is what I was trying to create. I used shapes and blending techniques similar to that of Chagal.

This page from my sketch book shows a young boy who looks tormented and riddled with anger as he squeezed a toy grenade, Instantly I saw him as a discarded maybe mistreated human and needed to use him in my project. For some reason his head seemed to large for his body and so in my sketch I really wanted to emphasise the idea.

This is an acrylic painting I did of one of the twins in Arbus's photograph. Using a black background I used lose brush strokes and unrealistic colours to create this painting. I think leaving the eyes black really added an eerie feel to the piece.

This is two pages from my sketchbook, where I tested different ways to tackle my influence. The photograph I used was eerie to look at and genuinely made me feel uneasy. I wanted to try and replicate that surge of emotion in my work, I used a variety of recycled newspaper and black ink at first, using a brush and water to get a spooky feel.

This is a mix-media approach I took to the theme. After printing copies of Arbus's work I selected some recycled materials and got to work on a painted black acrylic background. The girl in the original photograph had a very androgynous look and I liked this aspect of her.

This piece was created by using a range of materials i found within the bin, I thought using the materials that people had thrown interlinked with my title very well. The man Features in Arbus's work his cleft palate, bald head and tattoos made him stand out for me. I used charcoal to emphasise features and shape.

South African Art Journal

ALL of this work is taken from a personal sketchbook/diary that I kept throughout my time in South Africa, these pieces are examples of what my journal looks like.

This is an acrylic painting created by myself for a friend during my Gap year in South Africa. The piece is very personal to me as it was the first that i had a deadline for out side of school. I also sold the finished piece. The little girl was taken from a photo that my friend had taken during his visits to India.

This was one of the first water colour pieces in my journal. On a trip to Nysna myself and a friend experienced a lot of the south African wild life, but one of the most memorable animals was a baby giraffe. This quick water colour painting mounted on a map of Nysna reminds me of that game lodge, one of my fondest memories of my gap year so far.

This is a Pencil sketch directly from my art journal, that took around 45 minutes. The little girl was inspired by a photograph I saw while travelling South Africa, her sad expression is what urged me to draw her. The most interesting element in the original photograph, was the girls desperate and troubled eyes.

In South Africa a topic frequently discussed is "Race" and "colour".
From my first sketch of the young African girl I created this, an acrylic painting on a piece of canvas board. I used only a two colour pallet (blue and white) to create this little girl. I wanted the girl to look younger, so I changed the shape of her face and moved her features slightly closer together.My inspiration for this was taken from the black and white divide during the apatite era.

This is a simple water colour collage painting of a township in Cape Town. On my arrival to the country we drove past this incredible township, I had never seen anything like it in my life, the houses where piled on top of each other and these man made shelters slanted and sloped in all directions. It radiated feelings of despair and poverty but at the same time the vibrant colours of the makeshift houses suggested something else.

This is a simple line illustration of a man begging in the street.
The R100 notes in the background are a metaphor alluding to the fact that there is such extreme poverty in existence, and only a few kilometers away there is massive amounts of wealth.

This line drawing is inspired by a day trip to Cape Town, as I crossed a bridge in the city a homeless black man put his hand out to shake mine, I responded by reaching my hand out to meet his. With this the man pulled me towards him and told me to give him money because I looked like a "Rich white man". Although at the time it was a scary experience it taught me a lesson.