Project proposal:

  The Depths of Our Fears;

It is my intention to produce a series of paintings for a collection based upon the above title ‘The Depths of Our Fears’. I will to use this title as a starting point for my project in order to project people’s fears into visual form to try and get the subconscious conscious and portray what some people may be blind to or oblivious of. I will produce a full body of work including Sketchbook work, Illustrations, personal reflective journal writings, experimental paintings, colour studies, finished paintings and a Final Show Presentation will be provided.

My main subject matter will be about people’s darkest fears, things they may not realise they are frightened of simply because the subject has never been raised with them before. Things you see in films but would never associate with yourself in your real life because you think it all has a fairy tale happy ending for yourself, things I consider the majority of people not to see because they take all they have for granted and choose not to see because; consciously may be to horrid a thing to think about and that it in fact gives you a moment of panic or anxiety. It is this very feeling that I will pursue and depict it in my work, so as to give the viewer a very uneasy feeling when looking upon my work. This concept is merely the starting point for my project and as I progress through my project my research will inform knowledge and understanding of the concept of ‘fear’ will gradually become enlightened  and new doorways and direction for my concept will present themselves to me.

Ideas and inspiration for my depictions will come from a variety of sources, movies, novels, newspaper articles on current events and so on. first and foremost I will talk to people one on one about the thing they fear and try to tap into what it is that would make them feel this sense of anxiety when thinking about the subject at hand. Close friends will be the people who will be willing to open up to me about such disturbing thing they will understand what my reasons are for being intrigued by such things without judging. After these talks I will begin to gather an idea in my head of what type of ideas it is that would frighten them the most, I will then try to narrow these ideas down the a certain phase I.E pre scene, post-scene, or actual image. Through watching movies and documentaries I feel  will personify this feeling the best as it not something I can go out and experience myself and whether or not I can find someone who has experienced any of these thing is uncertain, let alone trying to get them to open up to somebody they may not know.

When watching a movie personally I find that the pre-scene, can be the most intense feeling between what is happening in the movie and the audience. The suspense build’s.  the guessing of and anticipation of what may or may not be about to happen can be nerve wracking as people in today’s society tend to think the worst and run away with the imagination; If we take for example Steven Spielberg’s film adaption of Jaws (1975), the entire first half of the film is spent building suspense for the audience; in order to try and focus the commitment of the viewer’s perception and imagination of the creature; the climax of this commitment takes place on the first glimpse of the creature I.E realization of the truth. I feel this is the way to take my scene caption forward.

Due to my inability to finance live models I will be using photography to supply me with my raw material. After identifying the scenes I wish to depict and how I wish to compose them I will carry out a number of on scene photography shoots with friends of mine, compose the photographs and bring them back to my studio to work from. I plan to depict full size paintings of each scene I find the most powerful and also do smaller narrative paintings alongside these.

 I will be bringing forward into this project  the powerful sense of drama and ugly realism that Caravaggio brought to his paintings that I have been looking at in my previous project and research more contemporary artists such as Frances bacon, Jean Michel Basquiat, Kathe Kollwitz, William Kentridge, E.T.C  to try and have the drama in my work but with a more contemporary modern art feel to it in order to try combine the powerfulness of the post-renaissance and the fresh and new art that is today. My primary medium will be oil paint but I will also be using a range of materials and mediums for experimentation such as, water paints, acrylic paints, tempera, household paints and varnishes, mixed media spectrum gel modelling past ETC in order to try and find the style that I think will capture the powerful emotions I wish to portray best.