Its SELF INITIATION from now on....

So its a new term, new project, the difference being we have no Brief!! At first I was nervous about the idea of having to conjure up my own ideas and concepts but once I set down and thought about it I knew pretty much from the offset what I wanted to do....Memory, Nostalgia and Landscape. I know this subject matter is used day in day out by artists but everyones memories are different and I believe we can all relate to each others memories in some shape or form. For me its a personal exploration and also something I just had to do...almost get it out of my system. My Granddad died 2 years ago and he played a massive part in the latter part of my life. He is the reason I am where I am and doing what Im doing. My project is based on his homeplace and the memories it holds for me. I want to pay homage to him whilst capturing the essence of his existence.

My initial Artists Statement was a follows:

PROPOSAL TITLE

Memory/Nostalgia and Landscape

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK/SUBJECT MATTER

A personal exploration of memory and how our immediate environment (place and landscape) and objects in our lives can hold these memories and capture the essence of the past.

Through time places can change but still hold marks and traces of the past as do personal emblems we collect through our lives. 

Emotional inner stirrings can arise from accumulated memories of childhood days.

I aim to use memory as the armature for creating a body of work - to define a sense of self.

It is important for me to do this project because my past has made me who I am today and also because I have an emotional and personal connectedness with the land I grew up on. It is based on an experimental depiction of memories and place.

PRINT PROCESS AND PRINT MAKING STRATEGIES

My objective is to use imagery from my home place and my past and through sketching, photography, photoshop and traditional print create a body of work that represents my idea. I aim to keep my work quite abstract and not hugely literal, suggestive rather then explicit and use childhood and life experiences and landscape as a source.

Color, collage, chine colle, rubbings, shape and texture will feature in my work.

I will start by using photographic imagery and from this create mono prints, etchings and woodblocks. I aim to experiment  a lot more in Screen Print and learn and use Coligraph.

I began busing Photography as my initial medium to capture images of the interior and exterior of the house. I wanted to create a sense of location and incapsulate a feeling of nostalgia-time passing. I used different functions on the camera. I experimented with Depth of Field and Shutter Speed. I also incorporated the use of a Diana + Lomography Camera and an old Polaroid to create some double exposures. The old Polaroid ones were a great success and really captured the essence of my theme!! 

Here are some of my pics

After careful consideration and studying the images I choose one that represented a clear vivid memory of my childhood whilst also having a good compositon and interesting subject matter. This image was to be the basis for my woodblock. I spent a lot of my childhood climbing trees and we used to hang old tires from the branches and use them as swings.....something Im sure a lot of people can relate to....!!! So this was an obvious choice for me and one which I wanted to do right. I wanted to evoke the essence of the memory. Woodblock would be one of my first preferences in printmaking techniques to use. I love the rawness of the wood and the process of carefully carving out the image. Using the marks to build the composition.