30 March, Who was your first witch? Exhibition proposal and coercive control.

 This is how in defence of witches starts but it made me think about how we're introduced to the concept of witches as children in story books.

Mine were Grotbags, The worst witch and the witch from Hansel and Gretal. I think there's something in this... to explore in the future for an art project that engages the audience through their own nostalgic childhood books and tv shows.  Literally as soon as I opened the book, witches and contemporary experience of them were linked  in the same way as a fancy dress costume with a pointy hat is experienced as normal rite of passage through childhood. 

Interestingly, Grot bags is still an image that is used on cards and gifts, the worst witch has been remade into another tv series in recent years and Arthur Rackhams Hansel and Gretal witch is still printed on mass - so they're engrained into contemporary society and well loved. 

The art practice research question has been really helpful in terms of making it easier to make connections that may be really relevant to future artwork and projects. 

I'm also still really interested in the whole baby-eating thing associated with witches and would like to make work around how parents pretend to gobble a child up. 

  

Came across this article which is really interesting in terms of how art that is cited in proximity to churches is received if it is not in line with the same religious ideals.

Pulled some images and key moments together ready to start compiling my Portfolio. Need to check on how to structure this ahead of wading in.  Have a tutorial later and want to be as ready as possible so also reviewed this now that I have a better understanding of what to put in - Reflection - when I think I understand something - there's a good chance that I don't ! My first sheets objectives were about producing a targeted amount of paintings .. which is helpful but research feeds the painting feeds the research and I only had research question for the essay.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

Research Question/s   (What are you exploring)     *Maternal -relates to expectations of family and women and to nature	How does my artwork connect societal ideas around religion and the maternal* and what does this do?   ·      How do I engage a contemporary audience to discourse about historical societal impacts on modern life, specifically in relation to patriarchy, and its use of religion and ownership/productivity as social control tools
Aims (Statements of intent – the ‘what’ of your research)   The what = the impact of historical social events on modern society – in particular, women. (any women)	I aim to establish links by using visual language to make connections between contemporary life and historical references.   I aim to make people question if -what they think they know (or assume/ expect) to be true- is right.  Is it based on fact, experience, science ..or societal norms and values passed through a patriarchal system?   My aim is to educate myself in these areas to be fully able to talk about this and reflect it in my work – reflecting on personal and contemporary experience and looking at theories, and cultural, social and natural history to understand.	My aim is to …
Objectives (Specific outcomes that help you meet your aims – the ‘how’ of your research)	To achieve this aim, I will continue to research, discuss, I will then translate information into my artistic practice, which predominantly focuses on oil paintings but utilises mixed media and mechanisms to engage an audience.	To achieve this aim, I will …

This ones not complete but I've decided on Sway as the title. In reference to an imbalance and and also the noun which refers to rule /dominion.  Checked if I needed to edit the ethics form as image sourced from reel - all fine.

Had a tutorial and discussed the exhibition proposal - ACTIONS Things to consider:

• BETTER USE OF SPACE May be better to use choice B and pull Poppys studio space (corner wall) into that space to give enough room to create relationships and distances between works - especially as some are repeats and they may be overwhelming in a salon hang all together. 
• MD confirmed a HANDOUT is a good idea and this space would lend itself to it - Talked about the type of handouts that are produced at airspace - I'm looking to do a synopsis on each painting. 
• Change the FIXTURES from mirror plates to an alternative
• Consider your work and how it will be received by an AUDIENCE - I've taken a photo of something that relates to my own experiences of family, how will it be received as a painted image by an audience?
• PENDANT Checked if the apples could be considered a diptych  and MD advised that they're probably actually a pendant - Had a look into on Tate Online.
• MD is considering curating a collection of paintings in the main CORRIDOR - often the space isn't requested and this would use the space well. He was positive about my proposal but the order that there work would be curated would be difficult to tackle - the alternative space suggested would work much better. Consider if there is a painting that you could suggest for this space.
• Talked about allowable depth of carvings in the walls - MD confirmed that I can do what I need to create the APOTROPIAC MARKS as long as I can make good afterwards.
• Artist statement on proposal needs to be revised slightly - PARAGRAPH 2 - Lends itself more to the portfolio doc than the wall text = edit or reduce. 

Checked in on how to approach the Portfolio - Found for the examples on teams that I'd forgotten about. Aiming for critical & professional.

Worked on Jesus in a witch hat - keep bouncing back to this one. Kite had said she'd liked it and would like to buy it after the exhibition which kind of stopped me doing anything further with it - especially as it seems a bit contentious etc - which is daft, so I made her a print and have carried on working on it to figure it out. 

 

Softened the face so that it was less like a confused doll on the front of a Clintons card where the AI didn't understand the relevance of any of the visual language. 

- The face is more of a hybrid between the traditional reference and a contemporary small child.

At the time, whilst painting - I was happy with how the colour mixing was leading to being able to add highlights and create a skin tone that I was happy with but on refelection, I still feel that my colour mixing and pallet is just to 'clean' and there's an almost cartoon reading of them that I'm keen to drop.

I have done well (I feel) to leave the hands and clothing to a large extend as I liked the unperfected finish of it.

Something about the expression wasn't sitting right so I leaned into how I wanted the fancy dress costume to read. how I wanted it to feel emotionally -  like an coerced conformity. Not an overt protest or emotional crying point but that uncomfortable space where the outside is complying but the inside has questions. 

Led to me to think - that this is still very similar to the original reference and I didn't really acknowledge where its from - I did a good search ages ago when I started thinking about mixing visuals that don't generally interact - Found the original really easily as its prolifically marketed own posters and cushions etc. Its by a French Fine artist : Emile Munior who studied under Bouguereau. Makes sense that his version is so beautiful - I love Bouguereau. 

I guess this is now titled Young girl (after Munior.) This way, its potentially not offensive as I'm not claiming it to be Jesus, and its developed to be more about females carrying the weight of expectation and conformity whilst under pressure to behave 'appropriately'

 There's now a clear relationship between these two. which is interesting because I keep looking at the expression on the big witch and pondering about changing it to a similar visible behaviour.  ??

I never know which paintings will grow legs and which ones I'll discard (like the appropriation photo) but I'm tempted to do this again. bigger with better colour mixing and the expression that I think I'm after)

 original 

 Had a test of the black gesso.