Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 1, The Brief

The current project i am working on is the first of my second year projects at university entitled, Zabriskie Point.

Our task was to draw themes and concept ideas that we could develop further and base our projects on by watching Antonioni's film "Zabriskie Point".
The film was made in the 1960's and is very much a reflection upon the social climate and movement at that time. The film features unique and experimental camera work aswell a unique and equally experimental soundtrack which gives the film a heavily artistic feel and quality. Overall the storyline is pretty much none existant and is the weakest point of the whole film, to which the director was heavily slated for. However, the film has become somewhat of a cult hit and has been able to find a unique fan base within social circles today.

The whole class was asked to watch the fim and make notes of areas and themes of interest that we could take onto further study.
When i watched the film, i was at first very confused and unsure of what it was i had just seen but i was able to draw many themes from it that were of ineterest. Within the first week on the project i cycled through these themes attempting to find the one that i connected with the most to take forward in my work.

After negating the themes of consumerism, environmentalism and so on i eventually settled on the idea of repetition. When watching the film i noticed that certain scenes, camera angles and particularly the end sequence, seemed to repeat themselves. The repetitive car journeys throughout, the constant featuring of billboards and commercial signs, the repeating explosion at the end sequence.

So i decided that i would base my project on the idea of repetition.

First Year Work, March 2009. " I Think Therfore I Am"

This painting is the result of my first year project on the body within which i eventually chose to look at my brother as the focus of the whole project. My brother suffers from a high degree of autism and is unable to properly communicate with the world around and with the people that surround him. It is imposible to say how much he fully understands of his environment and of his own existance as a person, and yet despite this he still has a personality and intellect that is more unique and special than any other we see from day to day.

With a mind no greater then that of a 4 year old and the body of a 22 year old you can imagine that life for those around him may be difficult and at times hard to cope with. But through all this comes from a different perspective and it came to my attention that the only perspective that matters is his and thus i decided to look at the idea of what it is that we consider normal. what is normality? who is different? how do we define this difference?

So the aim of this project was to capture not just the likenes of my brother but to also comment on the fact that to me, he is normal, he is the essence of this normality that society seems to operate around. To the viewer this is just a simple portrait of a young man, but within the painting i left simple hints such as the gaze of the eyes for example to give the impression that there is more to him then meets the eye.

Initially this was designed to be a series of paintings however due to time constraints within the project deadline they were unable to be created, but this is an ongoing project for me as an artist and plans are already in motion to continue the series of portraits as originally intended.

First Year Work, March 2009. Hidden Place

Within this project I wanted to explore the place inside each and every one of us that seeks more than just materialistic gratification.

Whether we are aware that it exists or not, it is there, a deep burning desire to understand one’s place in the world and to ultimately understand the nature and reason for life itself.
And by our trying to reach this knowledge, uncovering who we are and what it means to be human.

My piece of work entitled: How Can I Change?-‘Essence in a jar’ is my attempt to conceptualise this concept.

I tried to keep an aura of ambiguity with this piece because I don’t like creating pieces of work that are too literal and tell the viewer what they are seeing in front of them. I want the viewer to be able to take as little or as much as they wish from this work as long as they take a second to stop and take in work.
With this piece it is not my intention to try and tell people how they should think or act but rather to provoke thought within the viewer and hopefully make them want to become better versions of the people they are already.

First Year Work, November 2008. Vanitas Paintings

These are a collection of three painting that were done as part of a collaborative group project within my first year of study at Huddersfield University. In this project me and my peers were asked to each create a series of paintings reflecting upon the conept of Vanitas and Memento mori for an exhibition themed around the concept of Paradise and Revolution.

Our group wanted to put a contemporary twist on this very classic and iconic theme within painting and almos re-invent it for a contemporary audience. With my series of paintings i wanted to look at the idea of deconstruction and how therough the process of revolution, things are lost and distorted.
We all painted the same set of objects and then worked over them in whatever way we saw fit, each of us tackling the same idea of Vanitas with regards to the theme of Paradise and Revolution.

The final result was that we all had several paintings each, all representing out own interpretations of Vanitas paintings which when all displayed together created a powerful and interesting body of work.


"Buried Skull" Arcylic and Emulsion paint on canvas.


"Universal Flag" Arylic and Emulsion paint on canvas

Foundation Work From March 2008

This was an original self portrait study which became the basis of my final major project within my foundation degree. With this work i wanted to take an abstract way of looking at oneself and forgetting about tone variations and any form of texture or detail. Essentially breaking down the portrait to its basic structure, keeping the mark making very simple using single bold lines attempting to keep the portrait as honest as possible. Ths first study of myself was used as a template for further works to which i played around with block colour variations and eventually ended with the series of work being taken forward to exhibition at my college and then being requested for exhibition at Doncaster museum and Art gallery in August/September of 2008.