website research: Lisa Milroy

http://www.lisamilroy.net/

Lisa Milroy's home page, of her website is very simple, showing a piece of her work, with her name in large text at the other side. This being relevant to her practice due to the texi and image in the middle of the white background.
Something quite different and unique about her website is that the links to pages/ the menu, is on the bottom of the website, a very simple yet effective way to give the website more personality and make it different from the rest. I feel like the menu is too complex however as you have to click on a specific practice or artwork title to see it, making it so if your just researching or just looking through her work, you have to click on each page one by one.

Ferens art gallery Hull: Open Exhibition

Ferens art gallery is a gallery close to where i live, once every year it has an exhibition called "Open Exhibition" in which the gallery in open for any artist to submit work too. Most being begining artists such as students.

What i liked about last years gallery exhibition is the range of work included, having sculptures, drawings and paintings which all held different theories and practices. For example work that was included in last years gallery included abstract paintings on wood, sewn rabbits on clothes hangers, prints and landscapes.
For this years Open exhibition I took an entry form, showing how the enter the gallery and what kinds of art would be accepted.
It showed how artwork would be put on the gallery walls, giving diagrams with correct framing, what frames to used and what the gallery use's to put work up, called mirror plates.

The entry form gives information such as:

• who can enter?
• how many works can you enter?
• how much does it cost?
• how do you enter?
• how will the works be selected?
• how will you know if your work has been selected?
• how do i present your work?
• commission?
• is your work insured?

The entry form also let's you know that you can win prizes for your artwork and that you can sale your artwork, with a commission of 25%. After looking into this i might enter into the gallery to start getting my artwork and practice out there, not for the prize or to sell but just to see who likes my art and let people see my art.

Bauhaus: Chair designs and research

Researching into the characteristics of Bauhaus for my art 

Developing my art practice on from the topic of memories and experiences, I started to look into the characteristics of line and shape, linking to that of the Bauhaus movement.

Slatted chair 'ti 1a' 1922: Looking into a Bauhaus book titled '50 baubaus icons you should know' I looked at different chair designs in the bauhaus movement, This piece focuses more on the functions of the chair, rpoduction and construction, leading to straight edges, that of Bauhaus characteristics and wooden structures.

Round table, 1913-1924: The round table by Erich Dieckmann focuses more on the artists criteria and intentions rather than that of production and construction, relating more to my work through how it can represent and show the artists work and intentions. Dieckmann wanted to show how furniture could be broken up and constructed to suit his intentions, using wood and other materials in a more natural way to fit his aims of what he had plans to create.

Wassily chair B3: The Wassily chair is one of the most famous chairs in the Bauhaus movement, according to the artist 'Marcel Breuer', he got the idea for the material of the chair from his bicycle hand bars, wanting to create artwork that questioned how to handle and use different materials.

Studio Ghibli documentary: The Kingdom of dreams and madness

Leeds film feastival, artist documentary

During the Leeds film festival I went to go and see a movie called 'the kingdom of dreams and madness'. It was a documentary on the Japanese animation studio who made such films as; Grave of fireflies, spirited away and my neighbor totoro. Looking at the life of director, writer and artist, Miyazaki. The founder of the studio, who was working on his final film before retirement.

The reason I put this in my blog was due to the inspiration it had on me, even though the subject didn't have much to do with my own practice, it still inspired me to start creating work, never give up and how the job industry works outside life at university.

To watch Miyazaki work is amazing as he doesn't create 'art' in the normal way you would think, creating imagery for a story board and randomly making up the story as it goes, the story coming after the character designs and background designs, which are amazing water coloured, quick sketches.
His life is that of enjoyment, living out every day to the fullest, getting into work at 11am and leaving at 6pm, every day on the dot. In the documentary he shows how he gets inspiration, taking photographs of whereever he goes and whatever he see's, creating a large scrap book full of images. At this point he says how he wants to capture the positive time in his life, however once he attemped to do the opposite, taking negative pictures. He then says that he ended up taking photographs of the same things, laughing it off, and giving us a look at his life in a nutshell.
I feel as though lines in the documentary like this, that make you stop and think about your life in comparison, help to inspire you in whatever subject and path you choose in life, and this is why i choose to review this 'artist' so to speak.

Website research: Ferens art gallery Hull and Castle art gallery Leeds

After visiting galleries for personal and profession practice two, i looked into their websites to understand how they advertise and show the target audience, their galleries and artwork.

I found with the Leeds Castle art gallery, that it gives a very simple and white website, linking to the logo and look of their shop/ gallery in leeds. This also works well with the image and imagey. However instead of showing artwork to click on, to then see the artist, a picture of the artist is shown. Making you view the page to really see the work. This works for pages views but not in helping people navigate the website for research purposes as the viewer would then have to click on every artist to find what they were looking for.

The Feren's website however is very unsuccessful in bringing in the viewer of the artworld, more linking to families, due to being linked to the Hull city council. This is both bad and good, as it can bring in new audiences, however can drive others away, being a more complex website, only showing times and dates of events, rather than artists and a page to advertise the event itself.

John Moore painting prize: Emma Puntis part 2 - artists website

http://www.emmapuntis.com/


Emma Puntis's website is a very simple yet well thought out website, showing her style and personality through what the website looks like. Showing a vintage like style through the font type and pain background, linking to her vintage and detailed artwork.

The website's amount of text is limited, drawing attention to her art instead of the text, something to take note of when making my own website. For my own website I also want to get across my own style and practice, just like Emma Puntis.
What i feel could be done better about Emma Puntis's artist website is how its presented with the page, there not being a home page but instead first bringing the viewer to her gallery. I feel that as an artist we should let the viewer know about us and the context behind our work, and at the least our own style and practice, before showing them our artwork.

Website research: John Moores

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/johnmoores/jm2014/

After going to the John Moores painting prize at the walker gallery in the liverpool I began to look at the website for the gallery, researching more into the artists I saw there.
I believe the gallery page gives well informed and easy to find links to the different artists, however not all the artists get a link and therefore are more difficult and hard to find.This is due to only the winners of selected prizes getting links and pages, which was very upsetting.
The website however gives usefull links and formal text about everything in the gallery, making sure that you can find out everything you need to know as a viewer - I feel as though this is very useful and something that i need to take into consideration when designing my own website.

Website research: Chair painters and Pintrest

https://www.pinterest.com/pam_meek/paintings-of-chairs/
Pinterest inspired my gallery page for my wordpress website, due to the images of the artwork being in a grid system like order, which was easy to navigate. This research also gave me a look into artist's that linked to my art practice.
Researching into paintings of chairs took me to Pinterest, a website useds for collecting and showing images, artists that took my interest included Julie ford Oliver, Christos Tsimaris, Fred Salmon, Jason Bowyer and Amy Dixon (shown in order below)

Focusing on the colour of the chair and how that can show value and importance, maybe even portraiture, these paintings show large amounts of paint texture and marking techniques of paint, giving more focus to the chair in Julie Ford Olivers case, as she paints by days, creating a moment and linking to experience.

another artist who focuses on lighting to bring out colours and textures in the paint is Fred Salmon, who creates light that is reflected or shown through an object, which can't be seen. For example in the painting above a plant, a tree. Creating a feeling of a moment, environment or even time passing, while giving focus to the chairs and green shutters.

Linking to Fred Salmons work, Jason Bowyer also shows how light can be used to bring attention to an object, in this case a stool. Bowyer paints ligjt coming from the window, using textured oil paints and large brush strokes, compared to the more detailed brush strokes of the plant and stool.

Amy Dixon paints with both large textured brush strokes and tones of red, which are successful in bringing out detail to the painting. Showing importance and a moment in time, which i was highly inspired by Dixon states that "The work is about colour and a response to the world, inspiration is drawn from paying attention to the moment" This stands true in my work and her own, linking back to Avigdor Arikha's paintings which embrace the value and importance of the moment.

Amy Dixon's website
I took influence from Amy Dixon's website for my own, this was due to the way her website followed, being easy to navigate due to the tool bar at the top of the page. Taking me to the place I wanted to go and being highly visible. A charateristic I took into account when planning my own. This was also the case for her gallery, letting the viewer link on the links they wanted easily to get a bigger picture of her paintings.

Patrick Caulfield

Patrick Caulfield is an English painter and printmaker who is linked to Pop art. His work is characterised by flat images of objects, that are drawn with angular geometric elements and diagrams, isolated and brought out with area's on solid colours. By doing this Caulfield simplifies the representation of objects to a basic black outline, presenting images as emblems of a different reality, creating a new reality, through the new lines and solid colours. This then links to the importance of an object, giving the objects value, even if they are in a different reality.

The reason I find Patrick Caulfield's work so successful is due to his aims and intentions shown clearly through his work. Making objects important in a new way through the basic lines and solid colour, representing the objects as something more than what they really are. Caulfield shows an interesting choice of line and colour to link to his aims and intentions, something i believe i must do to show my intentions. Thinking more about the materials and media to do this and in doing so, thinking more about how I used line with paints. i also find the way he draws the objects (mainly the chairs) very fascinating, drawing them as if they were diagrams or geomatric designs compared to a more realistics style, something I was told to research into more from my crit.

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse is an artist who applies the use of colour in his paintings to creare feelings, emotions and atmosphere, being both positive and negative. Matisse began painting still-lives and lanscapes in a Flemish style, painting his first works in darker colours, creating a gloomy atmosphere. In these first experiments he gained experience and moved onto creating new emotions and feelings through tones and shades of paint, matisse used strong colours to create realistic qualities of impressionism.

Matisse's work is very successful in creating atmosphere and emotion through the colours and textures of the paint. He creates emotion which successfully gets across to the viewer without it being intentional, the marks and texture of the paint create shadow and lighting on the objects, giving them value and importance, and creating focus on them. In doing this Henri Matisse's work links to my own, giving the objects (the subject) in the painting value through colour and texture. The colour gives the painting atmosphere, showing what time of day or night it is, and in doing so creating a negative or positive emotion, due to the dark or light colours.

Joseph Kosuth and Jasper Johns

Joseph Kosuth's work is another piece I found white reading artist books, his work found in 'Themes of contemporary art'. His work titled 'one and three chairs' aims to make the audience question his work, asking which piece is really the chair? Is it really important? and is it art? The installation is set up so the three pieces of artwork become one, from left to right there is a photograph of the chair, the chair itself and then a dictionary definition of a chair. I find the idea of the chair fascinating and how the object becomes very important, even if it is a description of a chair or a photograph of one, it still is as important as the oringinal, if not more important.

Jasper Johns work 'Painted bronze, savarin can with brushes 1960' is a piece which interested me because of how its looks real, looking like a painting, a sculptre and the real object all at the same time, questioning what art is, linking to joseph kosuth's too. The reason however to why I picked to look at this work is because of the object he picked, being a sculpture of an object, which then looks like a painting, painting onto the sculture in very fine detail to make it look real.

Avigdor Arikha and Lisa Milroy

I looked into Arikha Avigdor due to how be makes objects valuable, meaning something through his paintings, giving them quality and depth. Through his paintings he looks into the embrace of the moment, capturing a moment through his paintings of objects and seemingly random things. The reason I find Avigdor Arika's work successful in capturing a moment is because of how the objects haven't been placed with a reason, but left in that moment that he's painted, this can be seen by how objects are cut off and not a focal point in the painting.

The reason i found Lisa Milroy's work relatable to my work was because of her layering of objects, placing them in different geomatrical orders and patterns in her paintings. This is something which inspired my work within my first year, however upon researching into Milroy I learnt that she paints these objects from memory, instead of from direct as I aim to look into memories and develop my research.