my opinion on the crit
Feedback from my peers from the feedback sheets:
Descriptions of my work – paint on board, goats in pens, vibrant colour choice, textured scratched layers, varied size, small scale animal portraits, abstracted colour, cages in relation to ethics?, acrylic, animal portraits on wood, five boards bunched together, various sizes, some small farm animals in cages, one is an unrealistic colour to the others, not much space around the animals, varying sizes of mdf of farm animals but some in unusual colours – particularly the largest piece, all animals behind fences, theme is animals/farm animals, trapped, enclosed
Relating work to other things – research into Francs Marc for brightly coloured theme, research into Henry Moore and his focus on sheep in fields
Questions/thoughts about the work – why the choices of colour? Does this work relate to farming ethics? The emphasis of the bars of the cage/enclosure brings ethics to mind (especially the central painting), would make sense with the theme and lots of small paintings grouped together. Are the fences important in the portraits? Makes you think about animal welfare – meat and dairy industry. Why are some colours bright/saturated and some are more realistic? I like the irregular arrangement of pieces with the size. Interesting idea of lines throughout the paintings. Cages, colour palettes.
Verbal feedback from peers and tutors during discussion:
- Small scale animal portraits – acrylic on board
- Focusing on colour and subject matter as you see it – high relation to ethics – particularly in central painting with the bars
- High sense of “confined” – animals are confined in their enclosures, confined by scale of board too
- Raising ethical questions of farming and animal agriculture
- Interesting choices of colours, three are very realistic and the others a lot more unrealistic
- Goats are funny animals with demonic eyes, adds humour to the work, silly animals
- Abstracted colours have different outcomes but the theme remains the same, uses of colour could make the subject less serious – could represent how a lot of people don’t take it seriously, see it as a joke as if it doesn’t exist
- Sheep and goats are often tagged with randomised colours by farmers, could make that a link in my work
- Humour incorporated with serious topics to portray the irony
- Experiment with scale
- The uses of bright colours make the purple goat more animated
- Try to do a lot more variations of the paintings – stick with small scale but generate a lot of paintings at once (consider printmaking techniques to create a lot of prints at once), flock of paintings, incorporate different goats with the same confined/trapped ideas
- Goats have more markings than sheep, a flock of sheep in a field would look the same so see the animals as individuals grouped together in a flock of paintings
- Henry Moore sheep paintings research
- Farm animals are cute, not celebrated though and deemed as unimportant animals which a large amount of the population eats
- Goats feature in films during demonic sacrifices, spiritual meanings
- Do more singular paintings to create a herd of goats
- Uses of the same greens in different paintings make them seem linked – same field/grass/farm/location
- The barbed wire in the central painting crates more of a menacing look, isolated and kept alone. Isolation key part of paintings
- The use of an unnatural green makes the environments they are in look bad, adds to trapped in enclosure idea. The use of vibrant colour is a distraction, more fences = more senses of captivity
- Goats are looking at the audience with varying expressions. Asking for help? Looking at audience as if we are the ones in cages. On their hind legs to see if we have food. Friendly and domesticated animals. Goats look like and act like puppies, not dogs but another odd thing
- Andy Warhol research – serial cows imagery.