Artist Tara Donovan

DATES

Born 1969, New York, New York

Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

EDUCATION

1991, Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C., B.F.A.

1999, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, M.F.A. Sculpture

Tara Donovan (b. 1969, New York) creates large-scale installations and sculptures made from everyday objects. Known for her commitment to process, she has earned acclaim for her ability to discover the inherent physical characteristics of an object and transform it into art. Donovan’s many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award (2008); and first annual Calder Prize (2005), among others. For over a decade, numerous museums have mounted solo exhibitions of Donovan’s work including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007-2008), UCLA Hammer Museum (2004), and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1999-2000). Donovan’s first European presentation is currently on view at the Arp Museum Bahnhof, Rolandseck, Remagen, Germany, an exhibition that originated this past year at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. The artist joined Pace Gallery in 2005.

Michelle Griffiths

Michelle Griffiths is a professional artist/teacher, living and working in South Wales. She is the World Shibori Network representative for UK/Ireland.

Her work is on permanent exhibition in her gallery/studio at Model House Craft & Design Centre, Llantrisant, where she continues to develop the shibori study centre with its shibori workshop programme, textile collection, and reference library.

The World Shibori Network (WSN) was founded in 1992 in Nagoya, Japan, as a grass roots organization dedicated to the preservation of Japanese shibori and similar traditional techniques across the globe.

Her own work explores the natural rhythm of traditional shibori techniques in order to create contemporary three dimensional sculptures. Working predominantly in whites and creams Michelle records the actions found within shibori; stitching, binding, gathering, manipulating and folding - not through the expected dye process, but purely as texture and form.  

Artist

Louise Baldwin

Born

1956 in Walsall West Midlands UK

Region

Arts Council England London

Work Made

Wall Hangings

Materials Used

Mixed media - fabric paper paint

Methods Used

Hand and machine stitched collaged

Louise has exhibited her work throughout Britain, in America, Japan and Germany. Baldwin's recent pieces now incorporate found imagery colour and domestic packaging alongside fabric and simple stitch to produce rich small scale textiles that explore some of the complexities of contemporary life.

The most recent works are constructed mainly from the mundane waste of domestic packaging; biscuit wrappers, medication boxes, card form toys etc. It is collaged together and then machine stitched to just take it back a level before 'idyllic' or 'naive' imagery is hand stitched onto the surface. ‘I have become interested in the different levels at which humans operate on a day to day basis; the ordinary and the throwaway elements placed alongside our imagination, ambitions and desires; one forms the background for the other and realities become blurred.’

 

Artist

Alison Willoughby

Born

1977 in Truro Cornwall

Region

Arts Council England London

Work Made

Hand constructed skirts

Materials Used

Cotton, wool, silk, linen, taffeta, chiffon and print pigments

Methods Used

Printing, embroidery, cutwork

Alison Willoughby is a textile artist who designs and constructs individual hand made skirts. Her interest in skirts grew from researching the kilt and disrupting the tradition of the kilt how the kilt is constructed and how it is used in today's society. Her research was transferred into skirts and the idea of a skirt as a "canvas" for her textile knowledge and designs - with no darts just flat simple and plain. Alison combines new and salvaged materials with a number of techniques: print hand and machine embroidery fabric manipulation and appliqué. She is constantly collecting elements which are woven and sculpted in to her garments. Inspiration is taken from external locations and inner city environments. Through photography Alison captures the disintegration of layered fly posters. The mixture and juxtaposition of the printed image placement colour texture and shape that occur through the slow build up and break down of these surfaces are of particular interest to her. Alison has had her work selected by The Pure Living in Selfridges. Labour of Love Dialogue -between art and fashion Mint and Johnny Moke in London and Ysh in Tokyo have all sold her work. She recently completed solo shows in the British Council's window gallery in Prague and Urban Outfitters in London and Glasgow. Alison has been commissioned by Liberty and the Arts Council of England has designed for Oilily ZPM Susan Cianciolo Julian Roberts and Tait and Style Knitwear in Orkney and regularly undertakes private commissions.

Branded 1992

Jenny Saville

Branded  (1992)

Oil and mixed media on canvas

82½ x 70½in. (209.5 x 179cm.)

Artist Jenny Saville was born in Cambridge, England in 1970. She received her BA of Fine Art with Honors from the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. Her medium of choice is oil paint, and she uses this to layer the paint with thick brush strokes to give character and dimension to the skin of the bodies she paints.

Jenny Saville is one of the female artists of the late-20th century who has truly reinvented the self-portrait. “Her work is a textbook example of the way contemporary women artists have expanded the self-portrait tradition, in this case to raise questions about accepted ideals of beauty in fine art and life”. She challenges the male fantasy of the perfect body and opens doors to alternative notions of beauty.

Saville fights society’s ideal of the perfect body by showing her own enlarged and distorted body, which becomes the opposite of the skin and bones we see on the covers of magazines. In many paintings, she uses her own head and face and the body of an obese woman. "Jenny Saville has visualised her concern about the tyranny wielded over women by the fantasy of the perfect body in a series of larger-than-life-size nudes overlain with contour lines, words, and the kind of marks made by plastic surgeons in preparation for their cuts.

As well as addressing perfection, she also addresses imperfection.

Both of the following paintings are perfect examples of the freedom of the modern artist to explore the reality of the female body. No longer is the female body an object to view; it has become a vehicle to express ideas and emotions and to ignite introspection about the viewers own ideas and emotions surrounding body image. "Saville originally began making her large-scale painting of female nudes by using photographs of parts of her own body to explore the role of model and artist at the same time. Both seductive and disturbing, Saville's images present the female nude pushing out towards the viewer, rather than being safely contained within a frame" (Phelan and Reckitt 187).

"Branded" is one example of Saville using her own face on top of her enlarged body. Here, the obese body is raw and shows every imperfection. The body is inscribed with words such as "delicate," 'supportive,' 'irrational,' 'decorative,' and 'petite.'

Saville has used very raw colours, she uses these colours to show others how they see bigger bodies and scars, this means that when others see it they think its unattractive or ugly, so Saville uses the colours to create a dirty body and a dirty background, it takes a brave confident person to show their own body to everyone, Saville is saying to us how it doesn't matter if you're big or small or you have scars on your body, if you're confident with yourself and love your body then people are going to accept you for who you are, today's society/media tells us how they think we should look, when really we shouldn't look like anyone, we should be original, ourselves.

David with the Head of Goliath c1610

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio 29 September 1572 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595) and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, shining a spotlight directly one direction at the object. Had a formative influence on Baroque painting. 

Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism.

He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600 with the success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions, vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death warrant issued for him by the Pope.

David with the Head of Goliath is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio. David with the Head of Goliath is, according to art historians, a self-portrait of Caravaggio

The painting has been dated as early as 1605 and as late as 1609–1610

The immediate inspiration for Caravaggio is a work by a follower of Giorgione, c.1510.

The painting shows a young man, David, with his chest partially bared as though his shepherd’s tunic had fallen in disarray in the heat of the conflict. David’s left hand grips the hair from which the decapitated head of Goliath is suspended. Goliath’s mouth is partially open, as though the moment of death was mid-scream. His sightless eyes glare dazedly beneath hooded lids at nothing, as blood drips grotesquely from his detached head.

As David holds the head, he looks at it with a downcast expression that has been the subject of much conjecture. Some believe the look is pensive, compassionate, and filled with remorse. Others see a look of quiet triumph, exemplified by the brightness of his face in contrast with the rest of the painting.

The weapon in David’s hand is not the famous sling of the Biblical story, but Goliath’s own sword which was used by David against him. A close look at the sword shows the following inscription: “H-AS OS” which is believed to be an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “Humilitas occidit superbiam” (humility shall kill pride).

The colours used in this painting are dark and warm, the background is dark, it was painted black in order to make David and Goliath stand out, we can see that David is standing out the most, showing he is a hero for killing a giant, half of his right arm is shaded dark because of the spotlight shining directly at one spot which is mostly his arm holding Goliath's head and David's his chest. 

This painting is a realistic depiction, it has very real features and very realistic details on David's body and Goliath's head.

David with the head of Goliath's painting has a 3 dimensional feature, the fact that David and Goliath stand out from the dark background gives this image a 3 dimensional look but the canvas is a flat surface otherwise.

This Painting is very interesting, there is so much history behind it, I adore how the light shines only at one spot and giving that area so much details to look at, it truly is a great piece, Caravaggio had very realistic painting skills, he could paint a human with so much accurate details, showing every small part makes it stand out a lot from the dark background, 

Self Portrait With Thorn Necklace
1940

Oil on canvas
25" x 19 ½" 

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is known best for her self-portraits.

Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems, many caused by a traffic accident she survived as a teenager. Recovering from her injuries isolated her from other people, and this isolation influenced her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best'.

Kahlo faces the viewer with her head and shoulders taking up much of the space. She is surrounded by green leaves of similar size and shape with one yellow leaf behind her head. On the left side of the painting a spider monkey holds a piece of the thorns that encircle her neck. There are several drops of blood on her neck from the piercing thorns. A black cat looks over her other shoulder. A black hummingbird hangs from the thorns with its beak in the hollow of her throat. Her hair is piled with a purple textile into a figure eight-like design with two butterfly-like creatures with lace wings visible on either side. Two creatures fly above her head with a flower body and dragonfly wings. Kahlo's expression is solemn and appears to be patiently enduring pain. Her focus is inward and not engaging with the viewer.

A rounded arched shape is repeated throughout the composition. It is seen in the wings of the hummingbird, the shapes on the leaves, the mustache, the eyebrows, the hair braid, and in the wings of the insects. The portrait uses symmetrical balance with Kahlo placed in the center of the composition, the bird position, the eyebrows, the mustache, and the hair part all dividing the figure into two symmetrical halves. The environment is less symmetrical with two different creatures behind her shoulders and the more random placement of leaves and the contrast of the yellow leaf behind her head. The background uses mostly cool colors. The color on the figure is mostly warm with very pink cheeks and red lips. Her neck appears uncomfortably long. The repeated arched shape unifies the work by connecting the figure to the environment. The placement of the hummingbird is unusual and draws attention to Kahlo's facial expression.

The unusual creatures and placement of the figure in the environment suggest that Kahlo is not painting a purely realistic scene, but is arranging symbolic elements to communicate a feeling or idea. A bird often symbolizes freedom and a hummingbird is often thought to be colorful and hovering above a flower, yet this bird is black, lifeless, and tied to her necklace of thorns. Frida Kahlo spent much of her life in physical pain after a streetcar accident at age fifteen which resulted in thirty five operations to try to repair her body. In her recovery she was often confined to her bed. She could not have children, but she did have several pet monkeys that were her beloved companions. Kahlo painted many self-portraits often with animals surrounding her.

This painting makes me feel upset because it shows how much pain Frida Kahlo has suffered, even though it ended like that, Kahlo's seemed to be a very strong artists and whatever accident or reason Kahlo's had, art would not be given up, Kahlo's has been painting at home, in her own time.

This piece of work is very powerful, it is showing us a lot about Frida Kahlo's past and how Kahlo's lived, suffered a lot of pain from a divorce with Diego Rivera and couldn't seem to get over him, Kahlo's was also alone most of the time, hence why the art work Frida Kahlo's has painted was mostly self-portraits.