7. Addition to second head

(12/4/23)

Today marks yet another day painting at home. After looking at the second head / face painting I had done I began to dislike how it was looking, so I decided to spray the background to the head with silver spray paint, this covered up everything I had previously done to the background, streaks and all. I liked how bright the silver spray looked and the king of light and live it gave to the painting, but I still felt somethijg was missing. Out of frustration and an attempt to make the head stand out more from the silver I outlined the head with a line of black paint applied with a brush and then brought a through line from the skull painting with not only the mouth but the black bar over the eyes. I feel this adds an element of mystery as the face is to an extent anonymised and there is a pained expression to the face with its teeth out (that i newly added to add an extra element to the piece)  and it’s mouth as if it is screaming in pain, either physically or mentally. An air of suffering is translated to me through this painting, and in many ways I wanted to convey this through personal issues in my own life. I feel the starkness of the black paint does a great job of not only representing darkness in its pigment but also in the emotional connotations of the colour. After the black paint had dried I decided to obscure parts of the painting by rolling on white emulsion paint. This was in an attempt to add another layer but also push myself to not worry about painting over things. This stuck in my mind from a conversation I had with one of my tutors Julian, who expressed the sentiment of not being afraid to just paint over things partially or completely and then attempt to re paint whatever has been painted over or abandoning it completely. There are times I have to push myself to detach from work I have created as I feel petrified to add more on fears of ruining the piece I have creating up to a point. This kind of advice really goes a long way in my process based painting as I do a lot of thinking while painting and this ideas make their way into my mind and it informs how I move forwards with my work. 

Below are pictures of the progress on this piece of work. 

Ultimately I feel adding rolled on paint to obscure the painting adds a crucial layer on how the plaintiff communicates because it objects an element of either hiding or fading away gradually, which is what the face is seemingly wanting to do by the eyes being obscured and the mouth being in such visual pain. Also a continuation of the gestural marks of black paint mixed with the more cubic rolled on paint makes a nice juxtaposition. 

As I was working on this painting, particularly the mouth and teeth and lips, i was reminded of the paintings of Francis Bacon. The horror and torment that them paintings exude and the expression on the mouth in some of his paintings. Specifically the middle painting in the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures At The Base Of a Crucifixtion. It is the way his paintings feel simultaneously complete and incomplete at the same time that draws me in and his Brush work that is detailed but also uses the illusion of detail as you get closer to the painting. I will picture the triptych and a close up of the middle painting below.

The brush stroaks in this painting that seem ghostly and to fade into one another are amazing and how raw the paint looks on the surface that is it a great textural element. I very much like that the mouth seems to be darker with darker shades of red and almost like the mouth is bleeding and chewing itself. It is this violence and anguish I take inspiration from, but clearly not applying the detail but more the shape and raw elements of the ideas to my work. 

More Later 

Lots Of Love 

John Hancock X