pieces from within / without

Unveil, 2016

EXPLORE

ENCOUNTER

SEE

TOUCH

And here are the final pieces from the Bristol show.

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‘UNVEIL‘ is about entering the state of dreaming, becoming your astral self, unveiling the door to that realm of infinite possibility of which the moon is a guardian.

‘EXPLORE‘ is a scene from one of my vivd dreams where the sun was rising over the seaside (the exact moment when the dark of night and the daylight fight for dominion over the dome of the sky) its light gently washing over the massive planet and the mirror-like sea. Even though there were no waves, the surf board moved on its own with my intention, much like everything else happens in dreams.

‘ENCOUNTER‘ is about the person I kept meeting in different scenarios in a number of the dreams (if not all) which inspired this collection of artworks. The geometric forest is a concept I came up with many years ago in a painting i was never pleased with, and now seemed like a good time to revisit it and give it new life.

‘SEE‘ is the attempt to visualise a bit of a dream where that person’s eyes were there, real, on his face, but they also somehow had the scale and gravity of immense planets, and at the same time they had the spiral pull of galaxies, it felt like I was being pulled in and I could float about and observe them from a distance one could fully observe a planet or a galaxy, while I was fully aware that I was looking into a pair of eyes right in front of me. A very surreal and overwhelming part of the dream but completely enthralling and mesmerising.

‘TOUCH‘ refers to the idea that in order to lucid dream, the first challenge (or the first gate of dreaming) is to be able to look at your hands during a dream. It also refers to the strange sensation of touching and experiencing the texture and weight, pull or push, of objects in dreams – enhanced and very real but at the same time… not.

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Originally ‘See’ and ‘Touch’ were quarter the size of the rest but because of a misunderstanding at the printer’s I had prints of all of them in both sizes.

That being said, if you like what you see, get in touch and you just might get one of the original prints! :)

within / without

I’ve been going on and on about the show and now it’s gone and passed, and I haven’t said a word about it.

As you probably already know, it was in two parts – from the 31st of March to the 6th of April and from the 7th to the 13th of April. We tried to make sure the people whose work would be up at the same time related with one another in some way and we found out that a lot of our works do that anyway. As almost everyone was exhibiting work that was part of their final year project (for the degree show in May) it was an amazing opportunity to experience the curatorial side of the whole ‘Encounter’ challenge. We found more connections between our work than we previously thought and also received amazing feedback on and after both opening nights.

My own work had nothing to do with my final project, which was probably not the best of ideas, but I wanted to focus on something fresh in my mind – at the time I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do an animation for my final piece or a very long scroll-type painting on a large scale. Neither would have worked well in the gallery space at Paper Arts, so in the end I chose the subject which had ceaselessly been on my mind since the Christmas holidays – DREAMS.

I’d been having a series of very vivid and realistic dreams with massive amounts of detail stored in my memories. I wouldn’t say that they influenced my waking life but I’ve always thought that if someone is in your dream, you have to tell them. A number of people were in my dreams, one person in particular, who also appears in the final images, more so than the others – when I shared my dreams with him, it became a common conversation topic, and a really exciting one at that, which brought us closer and solidified our friendship, something I was immensely happy about. So, in a sense, they actually did influence my waking life.

left to right: Jakeem Lee, Sara Christova (me), Jack Coles, Sophie Holbeche, Patrick Howells, Ayu Baker and Rhiannon Parnis. Unfortunately Heather Kirk couldn’t make it that evening. (photo by Emma Harry, additional edit by me)

Anyway, I shouldn’t go off on a tangent. The opening night for the second week was a lovely event which I thoroughly enjoyed. I got very positive feedback from our year tutor, Amelia, who believed I should go on with this for my final piece. That completely threw me off and I found myself wide-eyed and panicking, telling her it actually has nothing to do with my final piece (even though I’d already been trying to find a way to relate dreams with myths). Her suggestion was that I should find a way to do something similar… ‘because it really does work very well, good job!’

Even though I didn’t sell any of the prints I had on display (I was gutted when I realised I’d forgotten mount board and cellophane pockets) I am really happy to have had the chance to have my work seen by so many people. Hopefully it will have inspired some of them to truly explore and experience their dreams. :)

studies

A few days ago I was playing around with neon markers and ended up making these two images…

frequencies, 2016

distortion

frequencies has a lot to do with the dream-themed images I’ve been doing for the exhibition in Bristol (Within/Without). I like to think that when we dream all our frequencies are in tune so this is about them coming together slowly and all at once.

distortion comes from the same headspace but that has more to do with my final project for the degree show at the end of the year. In trying to figure out how to represent the god/consciousness that created our world I thought to experiment with the ‘blank TV screen’ visuals – that black and white distortion which is in constant motion that I once heard was in fact frequencies emitted from the Big Bang.

I’m planning to turn those into prints to have at the show, so if you like what you see, you know where to look :)

 

rise and fall / micah lidberg

Tom Rolfe, fellow course mate, illustrator, and printmaker, showed me a concertina booklet by Nobrow Press he’d recently bought – Rise and Fall by Micah Lidberg. It hit me instantly – the bright colours, simple shapes and markmaking, layering of elements, juxtaposition… and most importantly, the continuous image showing the unfolding of a timeline. I immediately knew I wanted to do something of the sort, and I believe this is how the 3,3m piece came about (that and my friend reminding me about scrolls and such).

After the presentation feedback and going through Rise and Fall again, I will be attempting a simplification of the narrative and visual language, as well as a scale expansion (moving towards a hanging installation rather than a handheld scroll).

bristol show / experiments

This is the first piece I did with the intention for it to be finalised and displayed in the upcoming exhibition. After doing a few more pieces it was certain, I wasn’t going to be putting this one up; not too pleased with the outcome.

That and the fact my idea shifted – this piece is mainly about the beginning of the dream, the physical self, the dream self and the influence of the moon. For all the other pieces I ended up settling on dreamscapes and scenes.

reader info: the original artwork is on the right (in the collage below), the other is inverted digitally and edited.

 

‘dreamer’remaerd’

 

‘dreamer’remaerd’ (detail) 

 

Bristol Show / concepts

Even though most people in the upcoming show in Bristol have decided to exhibit work they’ve been doing on their final uni projects, I decided to do something different, which I’ve been looking an excuse to do for quite a while now.

After having an almost overwhelming number of mad vivid dreams, I thought it would be really interesting to see how they look on paper. What you see below are development images, which I won’t be displaying but which I still find quite captivating.

Trying to portray the magical side of the very action of dreaming was a bit of a mind twisting endeavour so I decided to step away from the dreamer and focus on the dream itself. The sketch below was inspired by the ending bits of a dream I had, where after a mad party everyone went down to the beach, some of us surfing while those who couldn’t were just swimming about and splashing each other. I remember the sea crystal clear, almost mirroring the sky, the sunrise on one side, and the massive planet on the other. I couldn’t tell if it was light or dark because the moment in my mind was in the exact middle between night and day.

original

inverted + edit

inverted + additional edit

original + edit

Bristol Show / mission

Excitement is upon us!!

Earlier on in the academic year a bunch of us illustrators decided to be proactive and organise our own exhibition, showing the beauty and potential of illustration. We were more or less inspired by a few of our fine artist friends who did a couple of amazing independent shows at the Abacus (a place dearly missed since it had to close down) – Substance and Exposure. Of course, Illustration is different from Fine Art in a lot of ways, so we have decided to bring what we do out to the people.

Even though all of us are based in Cardiff, we felt it would be better for us if we extended our creative input and had the show in Bristol instead. After some months of serious planning and fundraising, things are finally being set in motion.

Last week we had a little trip to go see the venue (Colab & Paper Arts) for a general idea of the space we’d be working with, and how we could potentially place our artwork. I’d never been there before and was very pleasantly surprised to see the shop and cafe as well as the gallery.

The information about the show with posters and development work will be coming your way very very soon. Expect an exciting start to this April :)

Pretty Houses II

For the hidden city project I decided to do a series of paintings that capture colour in the city. I found some pictures on Tumblr.com of Notting Hill in London, Bristol and more, and I turned them into oil paintings.
Here’s my Pretty Houses Oil series…

Bristol Trip 15.11.2013

 

Bristol is such  a nice city, to everyone who is traveling in the South-West parts of England should definitely stop by and see it. Not only because of the beautiful hilltop scenery but also because of the quiet but fast pace that the people and cars somehow manage to keep at all times. Walking through the central and small side streets is a great experience during a sunny day since you never know what you will stumble upon when you turn the next corner, whether it is a meaningful graffiti high on a wall or a nice small cafe, or a vintage clothes and trinket shop; it might even be an amazing church or the Natural History Museum which resides right next to the university building (ти да видиш!).

The image below is from a gallery in town, next to the canal, where they had papers and markers left out on a table for the little kids to entertain themselves while their parents are looking at the photographs. Of course we had to go and draw (us, university students, skilled artists and responsible grown-ups)…

I decided to make a header page in my sketchbook for this trip and this here (below) is what I came up with. It was done quickly, quietly and secretly. No one really saw me sneaking a peek from across the hall in one of the galleries and that’s what i love most about it–that feeling of espionage that I had to go through was so exciting! I managed to draw everyone who was on the trip :) No one was left out – not even Chris!

Watershed was where we stopped for lunch. What I remember is that Chris ordered loads of wedges with garlic and mayo dip for everyone and those were so delicious my mouth is watering this very moment. i vaguely remember ordering some other food but I can’t focus on that with all that potato deliciousness still trying to take over. Anyway, the Watershed was a very big, very pleasant place for a stop before continuing our tour.