In my work, I am interested in music culture and how this can be interpreted in an art context; specifically, how the emotions aroused by the music can be portrayed through art.
The piece consists of two photographs: the first is me standing in front of a blank canvas wearing a plain white t-shirt, the second is the same photo but with a completed canvas and a painted shirt. The process of composing these photographs included: building an 80cm by 40cm canvas, mounting the canvas and taking the first photo, covering the canvas in sheet music, painting the canvas (with oil paint), and taking the second photo.
I didn’t begin this assignment with the intention of finishing it as a photography piece. I was given a set of instructions which told me to make a piece inspired my music, and the emotion that it creates. I chose to work from my relaxed playlist which vastly affected what kind of painting it became. Some of the songs included Blink 182 I miss you, Cage The Elephant Cigarette Daydreams and Panic! At The Disco Northern Downpour. These songs were also included in the sheet music in the background. These kinds of songs are lyrically interesting, and especially songs such as Northern Downpour give off a very surrealist feel, e.g.
“If all our life is but a dream Fantastic posing greed Then we should feed our jewelry to the sea”
I decided on the surrealism. I looked to a couple of surrealist artists. For example, Dali’s The Happy Unicorn has the exact right daydream feel to it that feel would represent my music well.
The biggest influence on my painting was Vladimir Kush. His work has a very dreamy, beautiful quality to it, a quality I tried to incorporate into my own painting.
The calm nature of my chosen music and the colour scheme of these surreal works complement each other well. So, I decided on a pastel, (but not limited) colour scheme. I also tried to make what I painted seem as realistic as possible to create the surrealist feel.
Unlike these paintings though, my piece is very busy and intricate. This is because my text implied that I must represent a whole playlist, that’s 98 songs, all with different implications.
While making the painting, and further analysis of my text, I decided that the process was more important than the outcome… that’s when I decided that it was to become photography. The before and after pictures is a good way to represent the process of the painting, and the artist’s involvement. The line that stood out to me most in the text was: ‘Become the art’. More times than not, the artist does become art- being covered in as much paint as the painting, showing their passion. This is what I wanted to represent in my photographs.