Oil on canvas board
2023

Approaching the final weeks of ‘Responding to images of the body’s at AAL we entered the personal project stage. It was now my chance to use what I had learned over the previous 8 weeks and combine it with my personal interests.

For a long time, I’ve had an interest in how people exist in public spaces. I’ve never been overly comfortable when surrounded by people, but it’s fascinating to me to see how people choose to present themselves, and simultaneously how they hold themselves.

Beard started as one of my usual late night metro sketches. I have a collection filling up various sketchbooks of people sitting, standing, sleeping, talking, and generally just existing. It shows a loosely painted figure against a swirling orange background.

I’d already cemented my interest in particular colour choices, cadmium red, french ultramarine, and a mix of white and cadmium yellow which was close to Naples yellow. But in Beard, I was interested in how charcoal might interact with oil paints. When over-painted but not sealed, it has a habit of smudging and muddying the colours. I attempted to butt my painting closely to the lines, to push the edge as far as I could without losing the figure.

This was an initial and uncertain experiment that continued into the final two weeks at AAL