My blue period is a series of paintings where I have used the human body to express personal traumatic experiences featuring things that are otherwise sensitive for me to describe…
But because I decided to use the human figure and not random shapes, my tutor’s disregarded these paintings as “college art” and not “real art”. I found these comments difficult but I know there is truth to these words, so after their feedback, I have decided to let go and lose all care of if the future viewers understand my work. I will be posting these blue paintings regardless, explaining the concepts.
In the second term of my first year, I was given an assignment for interdisciplinary practice that entailed doing something five times a day for fifteen days. At the end of the fifteen days we presented our work to each other, explaining what we did and why. For my project, I painted five portraits a day, for fifteen days. I will unfortunately never get the opportunity to meet each person I painted because they all past away one day before I painted them.. to elaborate I did this by simply doing an online search every day for people who had passed away the day before, and worked with what images I found. I also kept a book with the pictures, documenting the names and the courses of death (if available) of the people I painted.
At the beginning of my interdisciplinary lectures I was struggling to take any of the information in. I still haven’t taken in the horrible reality that my dear friend Adam had passed away while he was walking along the shoreline the weekend before. It seemed that everything was continuously triggering me, from the opening poem to the walking artists. While everyone left that lecture feel inspired by the artists shown, I left in a daze. Fogged filled death accompanied by the vivid images and scenarios crafted by my imagination of Adam’s death. Instead of pretending this had not happened, I decided to embrace this dark fog and mold it into art. I refer to it as a fog because that’s the best way to describe how I felt whilst painting these portraits. I wasn’t thinking too much because if I did then I would have fallen into my whirlpool of tears…. but never tell your tutor that art is therapy.
I’m currently in my second year, proudly studying an undergraduate BA degree at Aberystwyth School of Art. Born in the Forest of Dean, to a mother of Gypsy heritage, I moved around a lot growing up. Home-education seemed to be the best option for me as I struggle to write due to having severe Dyslexia and Dyspraxia. Practical work comes more naturally, although that too is also often met with additional challenges. Speaking about my work has also posed further problems, as the concepts are usually personal – focusing on sensitive issues. I am often confused with being a shy person. My quietness is confused with insecurity but that is not the case. There is of course elements of insecurity in everyone but my primary method of communication is through visual signage and not through vocal discharge! Sometimes people misread these images as being ‘too obvious’ but they have fallen victim to their shallowness, rejecting the invitation to look deeper.
Recently someone asked why I spoke quietly. Being unaware that I was, made me go inwards making my quietness worse. On the outside, I am usually perceived as a calm gentle person, but under the surface, there is a creative potential stocked by there fires of inadequacy. Born into an artistic family, I have always compared my talents to theirs something that always hurt when I had made something and thought it was good to then look at my sister’s work and I felt utterly useless. My artist Mother, although incredibly supportive, has also unintentionally made me feel useless in comparison. Today I look at artists that I know I don’t have the same skill set as, and I will keep doing this because it is the way I’ve taught myself so far.
A lot of people I know have said “oh! I don’t think I’ve seen any of your art” this is because of other artists in my family, I feel I’m in the giant shadow of there superior talent. I don’t like to flaunt my work at people after they’re shown me theirs. I’m frightened of casting my little shadow on another, particularly my younger brother who doesn’t want to show me his drawings because he thinks they’re not good. Having said all this, my blog is intended to be a depository of perfectly collected thoughts and observations, surrounding my passion for the visual arts, topped off with perfect grammar and punctuation of course!
Dottie-may Aston 