New Silk screens analysis of work so far and moving forward.

As discussed in a previous post I have experimented with different ways of portraying the landscape, within my practice by using the circular tondo format, using bright colouration as well as abstracting it to a point so that it has moved to a state whereby it appears to be very far removed from any particular reference to the landscape instead having the appearance of something else that may not have its origins within a particular place. 

Coastal Landscape Study, 2015, Oil on MDF, 70 x 70cm

Figment of the Imagination, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 20 x 35cm

Although this has been valid and necessary experimentation, I feel that the work that is most effective with regards to my original research statement in which I set out to explore the crossover between between place and memory has been that that explicitly references the places I have been using as subject matter. The end results of this experimentation have contained a direct reference to the places I have been exploring which would be obvious to the viewer.

Similarly as mentioned within my previous blog, the issue of colour has continued to be an overriding concern within this project. My natural inclination being to amplify and exagerrate it's use within my practice. One aspect that I feel has been particulary effective has been the fashion in which I have been able to introduce a sense of distortion via the scanning process. In analysing this I think that it has had the effect of creating a sense of dislocation which has been more effective than the use of bright non-naturalistic colour characteristic of much of my experimentation during this unit, which has had more of a hallucinatory quality to it. 

Another aspect of the work that I feel has been partially effective, but hoped to expand upon was the crossover and juxtaposition between the spontaneous use of paint alongside the more graphic silkscreen printed imagery, which has helped to create a greater sense of tension and drama within the work. 

Drift I, 2015, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 29 x 40cm

Irregular Fluctuation I, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 25 x 36cm

With all of these aspects in mind I set about creating a set of four new silk screens, in which I referenced the landscape of the walk I had undertaken close to my parents house, a walk I had undertaken many times as a child and throughout my adult life. With my intention being of silkscreening on top of a painted surface I mixed a series of colours which corresponded to the original photographs that I was using as my subject matter.

I experimented with a number of different images which I scanned and subjected to the distortion process that I had been utilising within much of my earlier studies, before arriving at four pieces that I felt were the most effective.

The four final images that I chose were composed of a mixture of vertical and horizontal distortion. I was particular pleased with the fact that these images more than my previous experimentation explicitly referenced and could be traced back to the landscape from where the imagery had been derived. The distortion helped to create a strong visual language that this was a landscape that was fragmenting, disintegrating as well as creating a visual sense of displacement and disconnection. I felt the most effective areas were those in which the distortion began to change and adjust familiar elements such as the telegraph poles, trees and vegetation so that they started to have the appearance of something less grounded within the real world, whilst simultaneously recongnisable as something with an origin in the landscape.

Now is Past (after John Clare) study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Landscape (a lost object), 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Disconnect, Study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Undulation study, 2015, Silkscreen and Acrylic on Paper, 40 x 70cm

Initially I experimented by using the paints that I had mixed from the original photographs taken from my walk. I silkscreened the four images on top of these painted surfaces, a selection of which I have shown above. 

In analysing the results of this experimentation, I was pleased with the juxtaposition of the printed and painted surfaces, which I felt genenerated an interesting contrast. Alongside this I felt that the used of naturalistic colours was also effective as it referenced the places from which I had derived the imagery. Similarly the distortion that had been created within the original scans transferred across well onto the printed surfaces changing the nature of the places that I was depicting and adding another interesting dynamic to the work. I was pleased with the areas of the composition in which the paint appeared to be bleeding and smudging outside of the picture plane.

However I felt that there were a number of ways in which these images were not effective. The painted areas were quite crude and whilst effective I felt that the brush marks needed to be refined in order to be less apparent. Similarly although my use of colour was more effective in terms of depicting the landscape that I was referencing I still felt that the colours were too heavy, whilst the use of black ink for the silkscreened areas represented too great a contrast alongside the painterly areas. It felt although the printed areas sat on top of the painted areas without there being enough interchange between the two different states.

Landscape, colour and dislocation

'I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.' (Strayed, 2013)

The idea of walking as a cathartic, healing, redemptive process is the storyline of the film wild, 2014. The film is based on the 2012 memoirs by the same name of Cheryl Strayed and is an account of an epic hike she undertook along a 1,100 mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995. Strayed describes the three month trip as a spiritual journey, a way of finding her way back to the person that she used to be. Following the death of her mother from cancer aged 45, combined with an abusive father during her childhood Strayed's life had slipped into a freefall of heroin abuse and a series of destructive affairs.

Although ill equipped and with very little experience of hiking on such an epic walk Strayed undertook the jouney as a way of helping her to come to terms with losing her mother. Strayed realised that surviving the adversity and setbacks along the way way was due to the difficult childhood that she had once blamed for her troubles. The film captures perfectly the experience of the cyclical repetitive nature of enduring an experience as well as the redemptive and spiritually uplifting nature of successfully completing an arduous journey and coming to terms with a troubled past.
 

As my Master's Project has progressed I realise that this project has operated on quite a personal level. The places that I have chosen in order to inform my work have been taken from the landscape in and around the area in which I have grown up. A once familiar landscape that I have returned to after a ten year exodus having moved away to university before moving to London. Having recently been forced to return to this landscape due to illness, I have experienced a sense of dislocation and separation from it. By immersing myself in it once again I feel that I have come face to face with the memories of a former self embedded within this landscape. 

Expanding Landscape, 2015, Oil on Paper, 40 x 60cm

Slippage I, 2015, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF, 26 x 40cm

Is it possible that my use of strong non-naturalistic colour as well as experimentation with distortion has been some attempt at manifesting this sense of dislocation? It seems that my default setting is to use bright colours, regardless of the colours inherent within the places depicted. Within my Master's Project I have oscillated between using strong colours and abandoning it completely in favour of using just black ink and paint, as depicted in the pieces above and those shown below. Place has been a consistent and ongoing concern within my work however it is the colour that has been a changeable element.

Irregular Fluctuation, 2015, Silkscreen on MDF, 25 x 36cm

Simulcrum, 2015, Pen and Ink on Paper, 70 x 100cm

In going forward I think it would be beneficial for me to attempt to re-introduce colour back into the work but to moderate its use so that it relates back to the places that are being depicted as well as toning it down so as not to be overly non-naturalistic or bright. Not only do I feel that this would be beneficial in terms of the work being produced but also as a way forcing myself to curb my natural instincts with regard to my use of colour.

Framing:

As part of the Bishop's Art Prize 'Streams of Living Water,' I had one of my silkscreens, slippage chosen to be exhibited as part of the competition. 

Richard Wade, 2015, Slippage I, Silkscreen and Gloss on MDF.

I contemplated several ways in which I was going to display this piece and decided in the end that it would be most effective to have it float mounted and framed within a box frame.

Richard Wade, 2015, Slippage I with box frame, 39 x 48.5cm.

 In choosing to frame my work using a float mount and box frame, I felt that this was in keeping with my research and related to the idea of a blending and blurring between the past and the present.  

Suspending the work within the window I felt helped to create the appearance that the work was hovering or floating above the rear backing board, which I felt gave it an added sense of ambiguity as well as adding to the sense that it was unanchored within the physical world of place and the landscape. 

Using this method of framing enabled the edges of the image to be visible within the frame allowing a shadow to be cast onto the background. I felt that this helped to create the impression that this was an object or a fragment that belonged as a part of something 
else.


Strayed, Cheryl, (2013) 'Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found.' London: Atlantic Books.