1/5/13 Artist Influence

Rembrant's self portraits have taught me a lot about posture, facial expressions and facial detail within the portrait of a person, the young self portrait on the left shadows over the face with haunting empty eye sockets showed me the different ways of showing eyes in a different way to create a different narrative to the image. The swirls within his hair looks like Rembrant scraped the paint back with the end of his paintbrush from the image creating scuffed harsh lines. His background is murky with different shades forming an illusion of shadow and light.

The self portrait on the right shows a great example of the interpretation by the viewer of the portrait of Rembrant before them, Rembrant has portrayed himself in an almost arrogant manor by his position of his arm leaving comfortably over the side facing the viewer by looking them in the eye confidently. He has created a lightly coloured haze illuminating himself infront of a darkened background.

When painting my own portraits I realised that the background of the portraits are really important in the creation of a painting rather than creating an image. The background can influence the mood, meaning and form of the painting.

Roger Van Der Weyden portrays a woman on a black background, by doing this he pushes the image of the woman forward enabling the viewer to have one focus point within the image. I have been inspired by the way Weyden portrays the woman's eyes gazing down, there is something very interesting about a portrait gazing towards an unseen point in an image.

Richard Wathen creates complex portraits that at once look historical and contemporary, his work I find relates greatly to my own as I have been inspired by many historical painters more so than contemporary portrait artists. The concept of his work that relates to himself has similarity to my own, he also used animals within his work alike my own, I enjoy visually the bond between human and animal and find the imagery rewarding. The background of his images is similar to my original idea to keep my canvases neutral with a the original half chalked beige background. However I found that it was Rembrant that inspired me the most when completing the last of my paintings.

Alex Katz work has been interesting to look at because I have been looking at so many historical portraits so it was interesting to see a contemporary artists way of portraying a person, whilst on a trip to London I learnt the size of Katz's portraits and they are of a large scale, his colours are very bold with little mix of other shades when painting the portrayed person. He uses very bright backgrounds, for me I find that the bright colours are quite garish and I don't think that his style would relate well to myself as his portraits even though visibly they are unmistakeable as a portrait but they are also abstracted rather than the realism style I have began to form.

John Currin's painting titles have been interesting to look at in relation to his paintings and titles, they somewhat point out parts of the image to be able to enable the viewer to have an understanding of the portrait eg. Left painting 'Heartless'. Currins painting style even thought a contemporary artist he also has a similar style to Roger Van Der Weyden in his use of black background pushing forward the portrait of the women, the figures of the women he portrays in the above right image has a historical stereotypical body shape, with a petite shoulder and upper body frame combined with large stomach and bottom similar to Jan Van Eyck's image below of Adam and Eve, where as woman within John Currin's era have a range of different shapes and forms, it is interesting to see that a lot of contemporary artists still use historical artists ways of portraying and painting styles.

Jan Van Eyck's painting of Adam and Eve were paintings within a cathedral, I find that Eyck has portrayed the male and female body's within the stereotypical way of his own era. This painting is also not on a canvas, it is within a cathedral which I find to be quite inspiring for future paintings being able to use materials or buildings around you to paint onto rather than the traditional canvas.

Exhibition Influence

I have been influenced from our university symposium which involved Rhys Coren taking part in and talking about his experience and work. I went on his website and found a range of different contemporary artists and I was able to see the different ways of exhibiting art work.