Reflection

Over the last few days I have been thinking about what colour scheme I wanted to use. I considered historical war paintings that I saw in the national gallery as well as Peter Paul Rubens painting ‘The consequences of war’ and thought about the use of dark and rich/bold colours in these paintings. I thought about the discussion I’d had with my tutor previously where he said that even the backgrounds of my paintings allude to a sense of figuration and that it may be better to focus on the loose and abstract style of the background rather than trying to incorporate figures into my paintings. I’ve started to paint a piece that I hope will convey feelings of anger, chaos, movement, destruction, power, death/violence and other themes associated with war. Currently I don’t intend to add any figures into my painting but I will wait and see how it looks when it is complete and then decide whether it needs any structural elements of if the message/ context can be read without them.

I’ve been using oil paint on canvas with linseed oil and white spirit as paint thinners. I’ve enjoyed using the linseed oil as it makes the paint more fluid and allows me to move it on the canvas much more freely with a lot more movement, as well as helping it to blend the colours into each other more easily.

I chose a square canvas because my first painting was square shaped and it felt like a more bold/ definite shape compared to a rectangular shaped canvas, which helped mirror my subject matter. I chose a large scale canvas (100x100cm) because I wanted to be able to put a lot of movement and gesture into my painting which is something that’s difficult to do on a smaller scale.

Having completed the painting, I decided not to add any figures into the painting because I liked the looseness and abstractness of the paint on the canvas and the way the fluid brushstrokes allude to a sense of figuration. There is a sense of organised chaos in the painting which I believe is a result of my technique/method of application- wet into wet, using lots of movement in my wrists and arms as well as my chosen colour palette- red, blacks, blues, yellow ochre, browns, white. The painting highlights and conveys the emotions associated with war and violence and there are links between my painting and ‘The consequences of war’ by peter Paul Rubens which I studied as inspiration for this piece.

Fmp week 6

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