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ART & DESIGN AWARDS
Transparency allows for light to pass directly through an object. Transparent Souls is an exploration of our souls travelling through the journey and emotional turmoil of grief and loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Within this artwork I have explored this concept in relation to how emotions and feelings can not only have an effect on the physical human form, but go beyond this and impact the human mind and soul.
Through using acrylic spreading mediums, I was able to create layered figures and integrate a cohesive colour palette across all paintings. Through this layering, the audience peers into each stage, leaving them with a personal connection and understanding of grief. The smaller canvasses in my body of work signify the physical movement throughout this journey and how all of the emotions interconnect with complexity.
Jenny Saville inspired my art through her ability to express the form of the human body through painting and drawing, which is fundamental to the structure of my body of work.
Francis Bacon’s expressionistic style and conceptual ideals surrounding the emotions of isolation and tragedy after World War II have also heavily influenced my conceptual portrayal of emotions.
The sides of each composition are open to signify the ideal that life moves beyond and between these emotions and stages in life. The inclusion of landscapes heightens each emotion, through their ability to create a sense of emptiness within reality due to contrasting perspectives. This is seen in the forest, city and beach scenery.
Greg Becker’s soft tonal artworks, which focus on areas of light and dark, creating an eerie sense of space and time, also inspired me.
Overall these artistic elements convey and enforce the impact of emotions within the universal process of grief through the fundamental ideal of transparent souls.