Today has been a surprisingly productive day for me, but not in the way I usually mean! I went and did a gallery visit all by myself! I went to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool to see the John Moores Painting Prize which is exhibited every two years and is a major strand in the Liverpool Biennial. I really enjoyed myself, and although my course has very little to do with painting as a fine artist, there were lots of different techniques in painting, that I find I could possibly even incorporate into my own designs.
The first striking image I saw was 'Industrialist on Wheels' by Geraldine Swayne (2009), I really liked this piece because it was produced by oil on canvas, and I absolutely love mixed media pieces. I think it's so raw and exciting, with lots of different textures. I'd love to use these different techniques in some of my own work.
In the same room was a piece called 'Butchering A Pig by Sigrid Holmwood (2010)', which I had recognized also in the Saatchi Gallery when we went to London. I really don't like these images, however it is interesting that they should be picked for a prize and be in the John Moores Painting Prize due to Saatchi's prominence in modern art today.
A piece that I thought was really interesting was one called 'Spectrum Jesus by Keith Conventry (2009)', this piece was really interesting because it was painted with oil on canvas, and then had a sheet of reflective glass as part of the frame, however this was the artists' intention, as Coventry says of his work: "...The reflective glass slows down the speed at which you can consume the image." I think this is really interesting, I don't like the painting so much, but the idea is really clever and very interesting, especially when the subject matter is Jesus, which has the connotations of religion, which has never been clear or easy to see for anyone.
A further image that I really loved was called 'Multiplicity Study by Edward Coyle (2009)', I loved this because it wasn't just a standard, traditional flat painting and uses lots of depth of field. I also think the piece was quite simple, and very graphical with some of it's lovely very Swiss, straight lines. As well as all this, I love the colours used and the shapes. I'd love to consider using colours and shapes like this in some of my own work.
Finally, I loved the painting 'Mountain Peaks by Richard Harrison (2008)'. I usually don't like such abstract art, I often wonder how they have won a prize by simply throwing paint at a canvas, however, I absolutely love this image. The colours used, I think, capture exactly what they need to about a mountain.
There was another piece very similar to this called 'The Emperor Mountain by Zhang Wei (2010)' which I didn't like as much as the previous painting. It was done in a similar way, however the painting doesn't have the distinct outlines that 'Mountain Peaks' had, and for this reason, to me, the image just looks like a heavy, dark mass on the canvas.
It was really interesting to look at something different than the normal digital art, and graphics work that I need to produce as part of my course, and it has given me lots of new ideas that I can use for future works.
