Overwhelming

I have begun work on a new digital & oil painting, with it’s possibilities, aesthetically and more interestingly intellectually. The idea of being OVERWHELMED is born by experiencing the present moment, a self imposed determination, or according to our government, one of self responsibility. To stay safe from the existential threat of an air born virus ready to tap us on the shoulder, like a shark in open waters. I have been inspire by Tiepolo’s ceiling paintings. The sense of a spiritual other, and compositionally the placement of a character filled narrative. The Coronation of the Virgin painted in 1704-1740 amongst other of his monumental scribbles. In a fit of hurried sculpting I created the cupid in red plasticine which to photograph at different angles.

Interestingly when rendered he looked quite evil, emotionally understandable, for my idea of Devine symbolism sincally corresponds with the eventual representation. When I finished the colouring in process on my iPad, I realised I had two other Characters, in my artistic kit bag previously used in the listening device body of paintings.

Meanwhile I have always been fascinated with Rodin’s Balzac sculpture. He has one robed in a very powerful pose and in the Rodin Museum in Paris, his studio and (One of my favourite places to visit in my youth when visiting my sister). Another, naked rotund version also imprinted in my visual library, and one in Sydney, opposite the state library of NSW there is another 3D bronze manifestation of this great French writer. So I researched his oeuvre to find out what the fuss was all about.

La Comédie Humaine, was revealed to me with it’s 2000 plus characters. Talk about being overwhelmed!

La Illusion Perdue, came up on Google, when I was looking for his take on being overwhelmed, ironically about a poet from Angoulême, France, (close to my origins, where my mother originated from) who gets corrupted in Paris by Journalism and capitalism. Anyway, this is the journey I’m on at the moment, using the Balzacian model, reoccurring characters to setup visual narratives which encompass the Overwhelming Random Thoughts brought about by the feeling of isolation and dystopia surrounding us day to day.

I am contemporary too, politically, depicting opinionated males feeling unheard, and a predominately Maternal discourse on domestic abuse and coercive control language, rendering the powerful impotent, this is overwhelming to the protagonists. The red crow is the observer. This is an unsettling landscape set under water a world not well travelled by humanity, fluid in nature and open to fears but also exploration of its condition.

Digital Image Pre Oil Painting. 25.1.2022

Here, before I print this out on canvas, mount it on a stretcher and work on assimilating the oil paints in a confluence of the two mediums to increase a sense of the overwhelmed and I must say confusion for an audience expecting conventional painting.

I finally printed the digital painting out on Canvas at the maximum width the printer could cope with 60cm but compensating for the sides that fold over and stapled. I use 20 inch stretcher bars and 28 inch length.
Very pleased with the materiality of this print. I have clear images of my plasticine actors and fluid digital paint strokes. Now to close the composition with some confident oil painting.😳 26.1.2022

Finally I started painting the oil paint on the digital canvas print, and I’m interested with the emotional value of the confluence between oil and digital including 3 dimensional photographed plasticine sculpture.
All have diverse materiality and it takes courage to attack the image with oil paint. On the 5.2.2022

I’m happy with the first scribble.

The final image has the dark oil paints applied acting has the shadows, unifying all the techniques into one composition.

The picture above is a pencil Ipad drawing, of my character “Upset,” a drawing of my plasticine sculpture which has appeared in Overwhelming and Listening devices. The cast is growing, I have fear, the fish, the red crow the observer, Cupid, old love, and the yellow female figure, which will be my leading lady. The paintings narratives are driven by contemporary events, and the 2022 post pandemic zeitgeist.

I will be growing new members for my stage, of oil and digital painting to delve into a baroque Balzacian visual approach to documenting today, so that I can reflect on this historic overwhelming era in the future.

My interests are in the lived experience of today, with the unique existential threats, the combination of interacting emotions. Humanity needs to internalise, recognise and find strategies to reconcile.

I am also open to having a conversation online about this approach and suggestions of other characters that can represent a contemporary feeling which will appear in my growing painting methodology previously used in WORK IN PROGRESS during my UNSW ART & DESIGN Masters thesis. So If you would like to join me in expressing this feeling of being overwhelmed comments below.

The final painting took 6 hours to complete, with the final layer of oil paint. Interestingly there is a similarity to applying oils on canvas with a brush in a traditional methodology and process, coexisting with the new digital iPad techniques. I guess that is why I take to this methodology like a duck to water. I have not sealed it with a varnish, because the first time I apply a matte varnish it left a chalky residue on the surface.and actually deadened the darks.

So finally I finished my first true OIL and Digital Painting. let me know what you think i’ll be interested.

Overwhelming, 2022, 51cmx76cm, Oil and Digital Painting on Canvas

Below is the digital A5 EXHIBITION BOOKLET, PRESS ON THE IMAGE TO VIEW IT