Experimenting Time!
- Jessica White
- Jan 15, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 10, 2019
After coming across the artist Tacita Dean and her piece "Majesty" (2006) on the Tate website I had a lightbulb moment! I was in awe of this piece, its size and the crisp beauty of the photograph. As well as creating digital pieces (Yew Trees) I also choose to highlight the original photographs I took to inspire the digital work (Go to 'My Photography' to have a look!). I always take a photo in black and white or monochrome if you prefer! and just like "Majesty" I have isolated the Yew tree by painting around the tree with white acrylic paint, leaving the main structure of the tree exposed and I think it makes the tree pop!
Bellow is the first of my photographs that I experimented on, at this point I'd only just started however, I began to notice that I was really satisfied with the effect that the white paint was creating.
The effect of almost blocking out the background but still being able to just see it, like a distant memory. My main motivation was to create pieces of art that make the audience look twice and think.
After this I wanted to develop further to see my monochrome photographs in a new light and context. At this point I wanted to paint out all of my chosen photographs backgrounds as the art work is focused just on the tree, not the whole image. So I just started printing off my photos around A5 to see how it went, I was only using some art paper as its a little thicker than normal cartage paper and I knew that it could take the paint.
Earlier on in my experiment I was focused on recreating Tacita Deans 'Deformed Trees' (but without using gouache), the idea of still keeping a background but at a misty distance. However I started to go thinker with my paint, trying to completely remove the background.
As I was still experimenting I decided that it wouldn't hurt to do a bit of both!
Below are the other photographs that I altered.
After looking back at the results I was starting to like what I saw, in the fact that highlighting and isolating the tree made room for shapes and forms to appear in the work. The second picture in the sideshow sways more to the idea of identifying shapes the Yew tree makes, relating to my idea of portals. It reminds me of the artist Ian Mckeevers piece "The Marianne North Painting No. 3", using paint to create texture and depth yet being abstracted it suggests portals and thresholds.
Thought I'd Downsize!
After reading up a bit more about the artist Tacita Dean, I came across an interesting inspiration of her's. She was inspired by old postcards that she had collect over the years of The Forest of Fontainebleau, leading her to look into old English trees such as Oaks and Yews.
Its fascinating when you find another person who has the same interests, thoughts and ideas! I have a huge fascination with old trees, particularly the Yew trees. So, after reading that text I thought about trying to make postcards of my own as buying postcards of Yew tress was hard to find, expensive, and I would rather come across these items in a charity shop than buy on Ebay!
I solved the problem by digging out my HP Sprocket which acts like a modern Polaroid, but instead on an instant photo from a camera you can print off your images through a mini portable printer that connects to your phone through Bluetooth.
Then I went to work "destroying" the photographs, using the same white acrylic paint to detach the tree from the photo.
Due to the different paper surface this resulted to added texture on the mini piece, which was interesting. What was also intriguing was that when you looked at the photo from an angle the light touches over it you get a complete shine over the tree but nothing else, giving the tree a more three dimensional feel.
Click through the two photos below to see what I mean!
I named this piece "Hidden Stoke". Its name is a combination of both the location, West Stoke (Kingley Vale) and the word 'Hidden' refers to my works original context. I want to focus my art along the idea of making people see whats infront of them, but in a way that makes them look twice, to look deeper, and to think. We as people rush through life and don't take notice of the little things in front of us, in this case trees. I want people to recognise that and to think and see what is around them everyday, even the little things.
All of my original photographs are taken from Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve, England.
The Yew is the piece.
Going Digital ... Again!
whilst I was creating my mini postcards I thought "I could do this digitally!", so I quickly got my iPad Pro and got to work! Its captivating how you have an idea or you get inspired and you create a piece and it leads to another, then develops further, I've gone a full circle back to technology.
Above is the result of a first attempt, here I tried to kind of replicate a paintbrush effect as I still wanted to include some texture to the piece.
To the left is a 2:02 minute time-lapse video of how I came to create "Dark Grove". I apologise to the way the process has been recorded as it moves around a lot, so can be hard to watch, but enjoy!
To the right is another piece I created in the same style but has no name yet! I relish this piece as the photograph itself is crisp and the monochrome effect really makes it look eery and intimidating.
This then also reverts back to how I relate my work to old animated movies/films and animation. I always think of the humanoid trees in the Disney Classic "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs"
Below is a new piece I've been working on...
This is a work in progress. Ive decided to tryout the idea of just applying a solid colour background instead to trying to replicate a paintbrush surface as I found that this new process makes the tree stand out more, but will see when completed!
Comments