In recent months I have been working on a large painting, Ovum Nymphs, which proved to be a challenge. It had been hung a prominent spot in my studio where it was easily viewed but ultimately was over contemplated. Yesterday I realised that its presence had started to sicken me, so I placed it in storage with the hope that it will give me the head space that I need to focus on my other pieces.
180 x 90cm, oil on canvas.
The studio feels refreshed without the painting’s door-sized presence. My struggles with this canvas were partly due to not being comfortable working on this large scale. The sheer amount of paint used makes it discouraging to rework once applied — the background alone is made up of two large tubes of white. After using up all that paint before thinking that maybe it would be better a different shade, my relationship with this painting soured. Giving myself distance from this painting will allow me time to lay aside any negative feelings I have for it. In due course I will be able to rework this painting with a fresh mind. Although I do not dislike this painting in its current state, I have not brought it to a satisfactory conclusion and, I am unable to understand how I can improve it at the moment.
I am happy to share that The Banquet has been accepted into the Vacant Museum‘s virtual exhibition, Cravings.
oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm.
Curb your cravings! Feast your eyes on the delectable female figure laid out for your sole enjoyment. On-the-bone sumptuously plump idea of emaciated perfection. Starve yourself no more!
That was my response to the exhibition brief What do we want, now? What fuels the viscous cycle of wanting and wasting that defines our modern world?
A closer look at the works accepted into the Agored 2021 exhibition by Galeri Caernarfon.
(04.12.21 – 15.01.22)
Mynediad, Von Restorff, and Nascene of Nostalgia.
All are oil paintings on aluminium panel
Janus
Air-drying clay
I am very grateful to of have this opportunity. Below is my artist statement for the show.
Dottie-may Aston is a painter and sculptor based in Anglesey. She has an idiosyncratic fascination with objects. Interested in how we impose sentiment onto otherwise everyday items, she created delicate personalities within the light-hearted motif of seashells. The paintings and sculptures convey how a memory can become the object itself.
At the start of this term me and Jonathan sat in on a horse dissection. To begin with it was horrid! After the initial shock of the situation and the overpowering smell, I was put at ease to be told that the animals had been ethically sourced. That is, they died from natural causes and their bodies used for educating future vets for them to better care for the animals. This information helped me get over the fact I was watching students cut open an animal. I was then able to focus on my sketches. The environment was no different from that of a painting workshop, people chatting about mundane subjects, giving the class a fairly normal vibe.
Attending these dissections over several weeks had improved both my paintings and drawing ability. Drawing something that I have never seen before in person was an exciting challenge and it has changed my perception completely. After the first class my eyes had started to see differently, making me more conscious of what’s under the skin, and how movements are made in mammals.As the dissection is a continual process, the whole composition could change in an instant. This has forced me to look even harder than I would normally. I’ve found that it has made my abilities with mark making as well as my drawing skills from life and imagination have both noticeably improved.
The studies are all from my A5 sketchbook. To see all of them visit my sketchbook gallery. Most were done standing up which was somewhat intense, although I am used to standing up for art workshops. It is difficult to drawing without an easel, not to mention arriving at the dissection tiers due to it being a long steep walk to the campus. Like the smell, I slowly got used to this. I hope you found this interesting! Your welcome to share your thoughts in the comments, thank you.
At the start of the lockdown, I struggled a little bit moving out of the studio, not having classes or seeing my tutors. But when it settled down a bit I had a creative run! I was doing so much painting each day that was until, I realized I was behind on my art history assessment. This as usual paralysed my practical work because when I painted I was in fear of not getting my art history done. When doing my art history I was completely blank because I was stressing, it was gastaly! I decided that to keep myself claim, I should do some sculptural work.
It may appear that for me sculpting can sometimes be a form of procrastination. These are the sculptures that I have been distracting myself with. They are taking a long time to complete, because they are not part of my degree, making me work on them intermittently. I usually like to slowly build up the clay. Consistently working over dry layers that will gradually form the figure..
The picture on the left was taken July 1,2019. When she was in her early stages. The photo to the right is of another sculpture from June 26,2019. I had only just started sculpting this lady, as you can see I was working from a sketch. I think this is the first piece of sculptural work that I had made a physical plan for. Usually, I would just visualise ideas before picking up my clay, pondering on them as I work.
As you can see she has changed a lot from the beginning layer, and the original plan, but this is all part of the process. The only reason I noted this plan down as a drawing was because I wasn’t in the position to sculpt, when the idea struck.
Although she may look like she’s close to completion, I still have a lot more work ahead of me. Next I need to sculpt the ends of her fingers witch I will do individually so that I don’t accidentally destroy them – this cold take days. I also need to sand her and possibly carve some of her away as I think her knees need to be reworked. When the sculpting bit is done I will proceed to prime her with several layers of gesso. Then I will finally paint her, something that I’m both excited and scared to do.
I don’t normally share pictures of my work when it’s in-progress, nor do I share my sculptural work online, so I hope you like this post and share your thoughts.
“You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself.”
I’ve always been a fan of this print; The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife by Hokusai, the image was first published in 1814. Although I wasn’t thinking of Hokusai at the time of painting the first few of these images, after I noticed this visual link I decided to look into these prints further. Turns out that The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife is part of the ukiyo-e movement that sought to express an idealisation of contemporary urban life and appeal to the new chōnin class. It was also Shunga, a Japanese term for erotic art, that was enjoyed by all social groups in the Edo period.
I then came across something called Ero Guro or the English-Japanese highbred name, Wasei-eigo, ero from “ero(tic)”, Guro from “gro(tesque)”, and nansensu from “nonsense”. The “grotesqueness” implied in the term refers to things that are malformed, unnatural, or horrific. I think this unique name could be applied to the majority of my work.
This led me to continue with this painting series as a contemporary Shunga/Ero guro series. Looking deeper into the human fixation with making erotic connections with cephalopods, in a somewhat Surrealist style.
I decided to name these paintings after Japanese folklore, mythology and, other intriguing stories that I have always found fascinating. The ones I’ve done so far are titled, Amabie’s Kiss, Gigolo, Ameonna, and Ameotoko. I plan to repaint some of these at some point and continue more paintings relating to this recent research.
I named this painting, Amabie’s Kiss. Amabie originating from a Japanese legend of a mermaid or merman who has three legs, and allegedly emerges from the sea prophesying either an abundant harvest or an epidemic. The figure to the left I have painted as Amabie, who is spreading the epidemic in the form of a kiss to the jellyfish.
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“I have drawn things since I was six. All that I made before the age of sixty-five is not worth counting. At seventy-three I began to understand the true construction of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. At ninety I will enter into the secret of things. At a hundred and ten, everything–every dot, every dash–will live”
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 