Primary Research

I started with rough write ups and sketches detailing ‘tales’ of my time here:

I then started to fine tune these tales and refine the imagery I thought would best represent them. Just as ‘Cauldhoose’ is an interpretation of the name, so too are these short tales a dramatic interpretation of my time spent here:

1. The Great Escape – Escaping thieving, swinging hands and volatile tempers the wanderer finds themselves heading to Cauldhoose. But as the distance closes in the promised sanctuary crumbles into a crude reality. A bare house with no floors, nails and splinters littering the landscape, the absence of heating an encouragement for the damp and mould that race up the walls, the wanderer wonders if they’ve swapped one broken home for another.
2. Night sky for the first time – This town is a winter town, and with the all consuming cold comes an even more consuming darkness. Coming home and fumbling with the keys in the dark, you look up and see the night sky for the first time. Perhaps the heavens have added more stars to the sky to make up for the all consuming loneliness down here.
3. Life, but not as we know it – This place is one of cycles, Thrust into the new environment to escape turmoil, things start to settle – until the virus. And life as we knew it became the before, and we settled into this new life, waiting for the next turn in the cycle to strike.
4. A month of labour – The pandemic was felt everywhere, and in this place was felt in the form of want. When the shelves emptied we realised how vulnerable we were, and while one struggled to find work the other took it on for the both of them. 31 days of seemingly unending labour, wobbly legs, and constant exhaustion stared me in the face and asked if it was worth it
5. Climbing to see home – Lonely and contained in Cauldhoose, phone interactions did little to supress the desire to see them, and so our wanderer wandered up high into the hills every day, to stand upon the tallest hill, and to look out at the town of loved ones in the distance, wishing she could trade her town of cold and of darkness and of loneliness for a place of warmth.

I began writing these tales  inspired by the interpretive descriptions in Invisible Cities. For each one I describe a significant occurrence from my time living here.

I then decided I wanted to illustrate these tales as well, mainly to set an atmosphere but to also give a visual representation of my own perceptions.

Initially I was not sure what style of illustration I wanted to use and decided to create the imagery based on the imagery in my writing. I did however know that I wanted the illustrations to have a dark atmosphere as while they are ‘tales’ they also reflect the negative view I had of the place I lived, and their dark atmosphere reminded me of fairy tales such as those in the Brothers Grimm collections. This influenced my use of filters to achieve a grainy, drab, dark effect over the images, reflecting the mental state I was in when these events took place.

Secondary Research 

The idea to simply use the imagery of my environment to illustrate a story was also inspired from Tracey Emin’s 1998 ‘My Bed’, in which she displays her bed, messy and unkempt as it would be at her home. Often controversial, Emin’s ‘My Bed’ provides an un-filtered view of her life, and evokes a natural human curiosity in observing how others live. I felt this was an interesting aspect that I could explore in my work as it would provided a similar sort of view into my life, but instead filtered in the way I seen or felt different experiences.

 

 

Peter Howson’s work was also an influence, in particular ‘Just another bloody Saturday’ and ‘A Night that Never Ends’. I remember being shown these pieces a couple of years ago by an art teacher and they always stuck with me. I liked Howson’s dark yet colourful style, his caricatures of real life and the symbolism he includes in his work (e.g. note on the left hand side of just another bloody Saturday that the outreached arms of the football fans slowly progress into Nazi salutes and animal claws – symbolic of the barbaric nature at football games). Howson’s interpretations of life are clear in his work, his own ‘narrative’ of the world. The darker style of his work also reflects the darker side of life – this is something I have been considering for my own work.

Peter Howson, ‘Just another bloody Saturday’. Oil on canvas 1987.

‘A Night that Never Ends’, Peter Howson. Pastel chalk on paper, 65 x 50 cm, 1995./

Outcome:

While this was certainly an influence in my thinking I decided to begin just sketching out different areas of where I live in ways that would illustrate or highlight the points the tales were trying to make. I then added watercolour and sketched a rough outline in fine liner over these. Before I began these were meant to be just preliminary ideas but once I had finished I quite liked them. 

II then just edited them on my phone, initially so the photos would turn out well when I uploaded them and stumbled upon a cartoon filter. This made the features of each piece more pronounced, and also created quite a dark looking effect compared to the original image.

Then as a final decision to create an overall piece of work I added the text to the corresponding image.

Sources:

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/612/just-another-bloody-saturday

https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/167-peter-howson/

 

Nov 2, 2020