Franz Kline Analysis

Franz Kline born 1910, died 1962 was an American painter born in Pennsylvania. Famous for being associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940's and 1950's. In 1948, Willem de Kooning advised an artistically frustrated Kline to project a sketch onto the wall of his studio, using a Bell-Opticon projector Kline described the projection as such:

"A four by five inch black drawing of a rocking chair...loomed in gigantic black strokes which eradicated any image, the strokes expanding as entities in themselves, unrelated to any entity but that of their own existence."

As Elaine de Kooning suggests, it was then that Kline dedicated himself to large-scale, abstract works. However, even though Willem de Kooning recalls that Kline delved into abstraction "all of a sudden, he plunged into it", he also concedes that it took considerable time, stating that "Franz had a vision of something and sometimes it takes quite a while to work it out." Over the next two years, Kline's brushstrokes became completely non-representative, fluid, and dynamic. It was also at this time that Kline began only painting in black and white. He explains how his monochrome palette is meant to depict negative and positive space by saying, "I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important." His use of black and white is very similar to paintings made by de Kooning andPollock during the 1940s. There also seem to be references to Japanese calligraphy in Kline's black and white paintings, although he always denied that connection.

Japanese Calligraphy is something I decided to look further into in my studies as I particularly liked the artistic nature of the Kanji alphabet, after exploring this and the marks made using this language. I then wanted to explore the nature of the ancient way of writing and how elegant and free flowing it is in comparison with modern Japan and the clean cut, neon lights, futuristic city that is presented in modern media today.

Nel Ten Wolde Analysis

Nel Ten Wolde is an Australian based artist who combines collage and drawings to elongate or change the landscapes she has photographed. Wolde particularly likes the elements of light, colour and the ever-changing time of day or season and how this affects her photographs as well as the landscape itself.

To describe her style, she combines collages of photographs she has taken on her walks around the Australian wildlife and rural parts of Spain and an illustrative style of drawing to carry on the most prominent parts of the photographs such as a colour or a shape/structure. When studying her work I want to focus on the movement of a landscape and the colour as these are elements I am strong at, to push myself I might experiment with her illustrative style of drawing however I don’t want it to become the focal points. Wolde’s use of watercolour combined with complex traceries of line subtly demand our attention.

What inspires me the most about Wolde is she is an artist in an unconditional sense, similar to me, she doesn’t carry and always have to hand these phenomenal pieces of equipment she is active about her art, very much spiritual and breaking the stereotype that all artists have a shed at the bottom of the garden where they do their work. I like this idea as this is something I explored when using parts of nature in my first year exam which I enjoyed doing and want to explore more.

Cornelia Parker Analysis

Cornelia Parker, an artist most famous for the piece, Cold Dark Matter (An Exploded View.) Parker was born in 1956 and studied at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1974–75) and Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975–78). She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982 and honorary doctorates from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000, the University of Birmingham (2005) and the University of Gloucestershire (2008). In 1997, Cornelia Parker was shortlisted for the Turner Prize along with Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch, and Gillian Wearing the latter of three then went on to winning the prize. Parker is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) first shown at the Chisenhale Gallery in Bow, East London in which she had a garden shed blown up by the British Army and suspended the fragments as if freezing the explosion process in time. In the center was a light which cast the shadows of the wood onto the walls of the room. Parker main inspiration for doing such pieces as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View could possibly have come from the fact that her mother was German and was in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, and was then a prisoner of war for a couple of years after the war. Her British grandfather also fought in the trenches in the First World War so this may lead some insight into pieces such as the one I am going to be looking at.

This piece is a mixed media piece containing mainly a shed a some personal effects to Parker. I love the idea of that by hanging the bits of the shed and placing a light in the middle of the room to make it cast all these shadows on the wall makes it like a snapshot of time, but at the same time it is also quite a distorted snapshot of time and that means this piece is not easy to replicate which means it’d be unique every time again similar to the fact that nobody’s mental illness is the same as someone else who also suffers with it and I think this would be a fantastic element to include into my work and I plan on doing this at least once and maybe develop it even further.

I particularly want to explore what she was saying when she said 'she wanted to rob the shed of its pathos' with pathos being an appeal to emotion, and is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response, and this is what I want to create in my work.

Rune Guneriussen Analysis

Rune Guneriussen, born 1977 in Norway. Studied at the Education from Surrey Institute of Art & Design in England. He lives and works in eastern Norway, he is an artist working in the transition between installation and photography. As a conceptual artist he works site specific, primarily in nature.The work on objects started in 2005, and has been photographed on locations all over Norway.

It is not as much photography as it is about sculpture and installation. The long and large amount of work involved on an large scale installation is a process that triggers the artistic genome. This process involves the object, story, space and most important the time it is made within. It is an approach to the balance between nature and human culture, and all the sub-levels of our own existence. The work is made solely on site, and the photographs represents the reality of the installation itself.

As an artist he believes strongly that art itself should be questioning and bewildering as opposed to patronising and restricting. As opposed to the current fashion he does not want to dictate a way to the understanding of his art, but rather indicate a path to understanding a story.

Valerie Hegarty Analysis

Valerie Hegarty born 1967 is an American artist known for paintings, sculptures and installations that critically engage with art history, evoking specific canonical works and artists or violating the sanctity of the modernist gallery and divisions between artistic mediums. Her trompe-L'oeil style realistically imagines the impact of natural and man-made disasters on treasured cultural objects as a way of considering the darker side of American society and the damages wrought throughout its history. In producing these works, Hegarty uses painterly techniques and carving to mimic fire, water, guns, and a variety of natural forces such as earthquakes and woodpeckers to distress her carefully constructed fictitious objects.

Simon Birch Analysis

Simon Birch was born in the UK and is now a permanent resident of Hong Kong, China. I like his use of colour and how he tries to show the movement of his subjects using sharp movements of paint, I shall take this idea and try to present the same movement, using my own photos and the limitations of an iPhone camera. I manipulated the camera to blur the photos I used by using bursts of photos and panorama's, and interpret the movement in the photographs into similar movements with the paint. Birch also uses colour to highlight not only facial features but also different tones in the skin of the figures and I found this idea interesting to play around with in producing work myself.

I have however taken the inspiration I have gained from Birch and applied it to my own style of art, incorporating the elements of sewing and mixed media similar to my artist I was studying while producing work for the mural brief, Hinke Schreuders. In the photos I have used as well I orginally started off showing movement but to make it fit in with the brief the sports staff for the mural I decided to start using props and playing sports and taking photographs during them to capture the movement of the players and the sport itself.

The Sports Brief

Our brief is to create a piece that complements to activities and ideologies of students that use the sports gym at King Edwards VI College. After a meeting with some of the sports staff, I was able to gather vital information as to what they want to see in the space.


Interview with Sports Staff;


Q- Could we interview and photograph  some of the sports and staff members for our research?
A- Yes, of course you can, along as you get prior permission


Q- Do you want us to stick to the Banksy silhouettes?
A- We want minimal colour and a simple design to avoid any distractions during exam period and regular lessons.


Q- Would it be okay to have quotes/writing on the wall?
A- Yes, we'd prefer it to be student quotes.
Q- Any idea of a budget at the current time?
A- The students would need to come up with a few ideas and how much they would predict it'd cost to create.
Q- Will we have to book the gym at certain times to create the mural?
A- You can have as much time as required to create the mural.
Q- Paint or spray paint?
A- The most durable paint with crisp outlines and is clean looking with minimal streak marks.
Q- Any ideas of a colour scheme?
A- We'd prefer basic colours such as primary colours or colours that match the stripes on the floor marking out playing areas.
Q- What are the college sports so we can incorporate them into the design
A- Football, netball, rugby and archery
Q- How big do you want it to be in terms of scale? Full wall or half?
A- Yes we would like a completely 2D piece that stretches across the 19m wall and we like the idea od varying heights, positions and genders.