Body of work - Our liminal state

My work here offers us a glimpse of the space in which we, in the physical body, exist - in the presence of something earthly and the surroundings of the eternal. We subside in this liminal space between consciously existing and non-existence   from the moment we are born.
 If we are condemned to life we are simultaneously obligated to be free from the structures imposed upon us because we are primitively constructed as ourselves, with the liberty to become ourselves.
 In the paintings we can now begin to choose, for ourselves as individuals, what it is we want to see, to believe, without a pre-conditioned or pre-existent element of choice – we may now begin to question, or we will forever dwell in the liminal shadows of nothingness.

 

Francis Bacon - liminal realization

'The following is an extract from a conversation Between Francis Bacon and David Sylvester.

It is, if one may say so, Bacon's profound realization of his own liminal style of Painting, the characteristics of  both abstract and figurative painting, and the nature of paint itself'.

7 head 1 1961

"For instance, the other day i painted the head of somebody, and what made the sockets of the eyes, the nose, the mouth where, when you analysed them just form which had nothing to do with the eyes,nose or mouth; but the paint moving from one contour to another made a likeness of this person i was trying to paint. i stopped; i thought for a moment i'd got something much nearer to what i want. then the next day i tried to make it further and to make it more poignant, more near, and i lost the image completely. Because this image is a kind of tightrope walk between what is called figurative painting and abstraction. it will go right out from abstraction but will really have nothing to do with it. It's an attempt to bring the figurative thing up to the nervous system more violently and more poignantly".

The Ambiguity of what Self?

This piece push's the notion of minimalism, it is an Eradication of all sense of object or life and plays with the notion of one’s interaction with the work  becoming an essential. Using multiple layers of all type of varnish’s and mediums  it exudes a highly reflective surface in selected places within the work, that when one looked upon one may see one’s self and therefore be within the space of the piece (within nothing) and in other spots would lose the reflection so one may glimpse themselves in the reflection but as the viewer analysis’s the piece they lose themselves and begin looking again.

The work is  much more physical, material based and literal  as opposed to the psychological thought of space and being that can evoke one's imagination and thought. 

'Liminality' and 'Nothingness' :

The following body of work is an attempt to eradicate everything that should give the viewer any sense of place or identity, it takes the minimalist approach in trying to tap into the idea of the liminal 'nothingness'

These works are removed  from almost all sense of representation  in order to offer more uncertainty to the viewer, and to eradicate any sense of belonging and eliminate any feeling of comfort the viewer may find in correlation to an object within the composition.

The works emulate so much ambiguity that the style of painting itself is now also in the liminal phase between abstract and representational art.



These works offer the viewer a glimpse of what they may interpret as an everyday object and the uncertainty of it ‘being’ or ‘not being’ while capitulating themselves to the psychological  space around these objects and offering them a taste of the liminal nothingness that may lie
ahead of them, reminding them
of the 'fragility' and scarceness of
of ones life.

blurred vision:

this is a combination of the notion of blurred vision with the dismissal of the figure. in order to try and further push the idea of uncertainty within the piece.

This piece was inspired by a piece called ‘black box’ created by the artist Miroslaw Malka. It portrays the idea of life and death. The light being life and the alley the journey which takes you to the darkness ‘death’. 

Relinquish:

The Following are the first series in my body of work i have made in correlation to my proposal. The raw material for these pieces came from a photo shoot in an controversial underground tunnel in my local town, this very site had days before been the crime scene of a young woman's rape. I chose this site in the hope that local artists might recognize the tunnel and relate it to this fear   

 

After a number of composition studies i came to the conclusion that the lone female figure would offer more for the viewer to interact and more for the imagination to try and tap into the idea of 'fear'.

                         

The piece shows a young woman, well dressed wearing heels in a dark artificially lit tunnel in the pitch black of night. The woman nears the exit with is only half seen in order to push the idea of the unknown.

       

     The finished series do begin to generate the feeling of fear, but it is rather one particular fear, almost as though I am telling the viewer what to be afraid of rather than allowing ones to feel the fear of one’s ‘real’ fear.

As i experimented with the composition of this piece  The one key message this set of work offered me was that ‘it is not what is in the painting, but that which is not that is the more fearful’. 'Uncertainty' and 'not knowing' offered more anxiety for the viewer.

Gerhard Richter - Tate Modern

Changing Waters

Mixed media piece created as my final piece for a project in my first year of University.