Thurs 14.03.2013

Ivon Hitchens

While I was searching in a section of the library for examples of Hockney's use of isometric perspective carrying on from my work yesterday, I also came across another artist called Ivon Hitchens who uses dense and very flat imagery in some works. The overall effect appears to suggest layering and opportunity for print. I became interested in Hitchens use of colour as well and how he uses this and shapes / brush marks to suggest forms, objects and images. This work has a very different feel to the more drawn / illustrative and detailed approach that I was looking at with the drawing workshop as they are much more painterly and abstract and they come from observation rather than from the imagination. I think that they might however be useful to my work in terms of translating what I see around me into colour and interesting images.

Ruth Issett

Henry Moore

     Today I also visited Tremough Library in order to have a look at the books available there. It is possible to order books from Tremough down to the Woodlane library but I wanted to be able to go through the process of browsing and looking through them first hand to get lots of ideas and inspiration. I spent quite a long time looking through the collection and brought back with me several titles with the intention of returning at a later stage to look again. I took out two books about colour and print by Ruth Issett who is an artist who focused on print both paper and textiles. I have always been attracted to her bright varied colours and the layered, collage-like feel which she achieves with her work. I also brought home a book about Henry Moore's textiles and another about the textile designs of 20th century artists as I thought this avenue would be useful in exploring the links between fine art practices such as painting with print and textiles / surface design. I took out another book about Kitaj and one about Indian textiles as well. The library had a large section about textiles from a huge range of different cultures and I think that using these two books as a starting point, I may go back and research this area more. The Kitaj book in particular interested me because it was called 'Art of Life' and suggested how integral to and reflective of these artworks are to the lives and culture of the people who produce them. Finally I found a book entitled 'Colourful World' with lots of images of photography from around the world which is grouped into sections of colour. I thought that this would be really useful for colour ideas and also because I am thinking about having a section within my inspiration / contextual sketchbook which focuses on different colours and tones.
     I also did some research into the exhibitions and artists which we will be seeing during the trip to Exeter tomorrow, so that I knew what to expect and where it would be most useful to spend my time. Katy Dove's work in the Spacex gallery looked interesting because of the variety of media which she uses and the way she employs elements such as colour to explore emotions and psychology. I wasn't sure whether Maia Conran's installation work in the Pheonix would be worth a look in relation to my project and I felt the same about Tatu Nickkanen's work in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. I did however research some of the other collections in the RAMM and thought that some of these might be of interest for drawing / artist research.