Self- Directed Summative Assessment:

Untitled, A3, tissue paper and PVA on canvas, March 2014.

Untitled, A4 and A6, tissue paper and PVA on canvas, March 2014.

Untitled, A3, tissue paper and PVA on canvas, March 2014.

Untitled, A0, tissue paper and PVA with coloured card on canvas, March 2014.

Statement for Self-directed work:

I went on a train journey from Leicester to London and quickly drew whatever shapes caught my eye, some within the train most from outside the window. When I got back to the studio I started experimenting with what I could do with the shapes how I could compose them on paper. I immediately thought of last terms work and thought I could build on that using these new shapes to explore that style of composition which I found from Kandinsky's abstract work, use watercolours at first focusing on basic black lines with fill in colours. When I showed this to a fellow student she said it reminded her of Joan Miro work, I have looked at Miro's work in the past and saw the link straight away.

I then chose to stick with certain shapes and leave the rest behind me, put all my focus onto just some of the shapes. I liked working with the triangles and circles most, so I cut out these shapes from coloured card. I chose the brightest colours I could, having recently looked at Peter Halley’s work, I was interested in making the brightest work possible. Halley uses almost neon bright paints to create painting of geometric shapes on canvases.    

After my experiments using collage, I found the work of Marcelo Jacome’s work at the Saatchi Gallery in London, the colours he uses and the shapes they make reminded me of my work. Taking my work 3D felt like the right move forward, the shapes had already come off the paper, taking them off the wall seemed to make sense. I experimented a lot with the 3D element of the shapes, although I felt the triangles and circles belonged on the wall, but I like using tissue paper to create the shapes. I thought this would be an interesting textual contrast to the sharpness of the card. I could create the squares using florescent coloured card on a canvas and have the tissue paper in the background – so some parts would show through were the card wasn’t.

When applying the tissue paper triangles to the canvas, the PVA took some of the dye from the paper and it dripped down the canvas, over the some shapes – I like the effect this gives, it adds to what I saw in the tissue paper shapes to begin with. The card shapes would never have done that, I believe that the harsh card and breakable tissue paper shapes would add to the contrast of the colours and the differences in shapes.