Traditional Works
A collection of multimedia works
exploring the themes of 'Vanitas'
(2016)
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Development Process
'Vanitas' is the Latin word for vanity and is a genre of art that uses symbolism within its subject matter to show the impermanence of life, futility in seeking pleasure
and the certainty of death
In researching 'Vanitas' style paintings I was immediately excited by the presence of skulls as I find them facinating to look at and draw
I knew at a very early stage I wanted to have a skull present in my final piece, so I drew a variety of animal skulls to get more comfortable with the subject and experimented with different materials like oil pastel, fine liner, ball point pen, etc
Mostly human skulls are present within a lot of 'Vanitas' paintings as they are usually symbolic the vices of 'man'
While understanding this reading I wished to have my piece stand out in some way, rather than simply be entirely derrivative, so I opted to continue with animal skulls at this time
My idea being that the hunting and claiming of these skulls could be interpereted as a senseless display of decay for greed's sake
After my experimentation I focused on pen and pencil as I they were able to capture the right feeling I was looking for within my final
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Surrealism
At this stage I was still unhappy with my development outcome and felt it to be very heavily traditional, I had done a lot of experimental work with mediums
but not yet with style
I went back to research, looking at popular surrealist artists like Pablo Picasso & Salvidor Dali. Taking inspiration from the abstract shapes and cut out looking subjects of their works, I had an idea to incorporate this kind of style in my piece
I started thinking about the inner workings of the body, the fibers and mesh of nerves that build our muscle structures - weaving and intertwining around our bones
After watching Hayao Miyazaki's 'Princess Mononoke' I was inspired by the visulisation of corruption and depiction of a supernatural 'infection'
This lead to the above experimentation and gave me the right edge I was looking to bring into my final piece
I continued to work on the development of this style as well as getting more comfortable with human forms and skulls
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Final Piece
My final piece features a simple structure, some fabric, a candle resting on a lump of dried out wood and a skull in the foreground
I had originally crammed in as much as I could to my thumbnail sketches but found this to be the most effective way to showcase my development into surrealism and properly pull focus into the skull
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