Formative feedback

Student name Alison MacPherson Student number 512480

Course/Unit Painting 1 Assignment number 5

Type of tutorial (written)

Overall Comments Many thanks for sending me your fifth and final assignment.

This last assignment showed your work developing in different directions and I particularly like the experiments with impasto. Combing through the wet paint in a systematic process and minimally oriented way can produce work that if stylized and presented professionally on a matt non- emotive surface would pass for contemporary art today. Again the more complex butterfly wing paintings formalised and properly presented would be of interest in today’s art world.

The use of impasto of course has its antecedents and various artists such and the Frenchman Jean Fautrier and the French themselves made much of Art Informal or Tachisme, a form of abstract art. Tachisme was considered to be the European version of Abstract Expressionism.

Other European artists along with Fautrier is Wols worth looking at for the emotional intensity of his work. Bram Bogart who is lesser known in this country is as an artist who made much use of monochromatic thick paint trowelled on to create a thick minimal abstraction. You could include these examples in your research. For a broader critical enquiry you could raise the question of comparison between European and American Abstraction.

Fautrier

Wols

Bogart

The textured paintings are a new development and they start of with a Jackson Pollock like painting where it looks as if it had been stood on its side and the paint run but on reading your blog I see it was inspired by knitting which is just as good if not better. Researching further, an artist to look up might be Larry Poons. He started off with a signature op art style using dots but wishing to move on worked with poured paint and then on to a more conventional abstract expressionism. Artist who presents a strong signature style can have problems with moving on. The new style has to be equally strong and a development from one to the other should be evident. It is not an easy thing to do. Equally as a student it is difficult not to bump into work done by preceding generations of artists, as you investigate and try to find a language of painting that suits you own way of working. There have been a great many artists producing work in different styles in the 20th Century so it is important to know who they are, where they fit in and somehow to navigate your way through the maze until you find your own personal way of working.

Larry Poons

The later paintings using fishing net or pencil sharpenings, or paint swatches have that tachiste look to them. Look at the work of Alberto Burri and his use of sack cloth and other modern materials and remember to include this research in your blog.

Burri

The Contemporary solution to this problem of course is to present the fishing nets, pencil sharpening’s etc as found objects in their own right as read made sculptures, a device which comes from Marcel Duchamp. You can see this in the work of a conceptualists like Martin Creed with his blob of blue tack or ball of crumpled paper.

Creed

Feedback on assignment Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

You have investigated different approaches to your three flower paintings with their rich use of paint and varied technical approach. It is interesting comparing the actual paintings to the photographs on your blog. Looking at your brush painted one, I see it as let down by a lack of liveliness in the bowl but in the small photograph I don’t see this at all. The effects of the photographic process and the printed image have improved the picture by increasing the contrast, altering the colours and tones and changing the temperature of the picture. It probably has the effect of putting a glaze of over the picture that helps pull it together. This of course is the difficulty of having your work judged online but it does have a positive side effect, which is that if the photograph of your picture looks better than the original, be guided by the picture to make alterations to the original.

The second flower painting is the most successful, being expressively painted with the palette knife and has rich approach overall. I don’t think it needs to be stuck on to the painted piece of cardboard as it can quite happily stand on its own. The cut up and reassembled grid painting is interesting for its colour scheme as much as anything else. It has a deconstructed look to it but out of Hackney’s Photo joiners rather than an original cubist painting. The smaller version in the sketchbook works better as it is not so formal and plays better with colour and shape and has an overall freshness to it.

Sketchbooks Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

The sketchbooks are very informative and show the germination of an idea leading on to further developments such as in ‘looking at a lemon’ and in the flower paintings. There is a variety of materials used and they have a workman like feel to them.

Research Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

In your research you can investigate not only historic abstraction but also contemporary variations and also that great staple of art, Flower Painting. To keep it focussed you might like to concentrate on 20th century Scottish artists who have painted flowers from painters to Jean Armour, Joan Eardley, and JD Peploe. The following are generally thought of as Edinburgh School painters and there was also a second generation who were taught by this first group of artists at Edinburgh School of Art.

• William Crozier[2] (1893–1930) • (1894–1963) • Sir William Gillies (1898–1973) • Sir William MacTaggart[3] (1903–1981) • John Maxwell (1905–1962) • Sir Robin Philipson (1916–1992) • (1895–1965) • Adam Bruce Thomson (1885–1976)

Redpath

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis Your own work can be seen in a context that not only looks back but also looks forward and experimentation with different approaches and processes is part of this strategy along with critical thinking and analysis.

Suggested reading/viewing Context As it is difficult for you to reach the large Galleries at present there are a number of art programmes on BBC I player that you can watch such as that on Rachel Whiteread on Imagine and for contrast, Tove Jansson the Finish Painter, Writer and Illustrator of the Moomins.

As this is your final assignment and you will want to be assembling work for assessment, read the instructions carefully about what work to send. Assessors like to see the development work leading up to a finished piece and if you can arrange to do that using A1 light card as a support you will have to work out what work you can put together to send. They will look at your Blog and see work there as well as looking at the sketchbook so make sure that the blog shows all your work around a project. They will also read your critical analysis to assess its quality. If you have redone a finished piece on the advise of your tutor you can include that as an extra piece of work as assessors like to see how you have responded to advice and of course it is advisable to give your opinions on how it went.

Well done for completing the course. Thank you for being such a good student and I wish you best of luck with your assessment.

Tutor name James Cowan

Date 7.12.17

Next assignment due Completed