Carving out a picture - Research and Development Module

Summer inspiration - the summer was spent observing and drawing the wildlife garden I have created. And I begun The Green Path, a course in plant knowledge.

The message I want to communicate is that older, non industrial cultures had incredible knowledge of plants and their uses, out of necessity, I add though! As we are on the verge of ecological collapse, mainly through the loss of habitat, I wanted to try and create habitats rather than destroy them.

My influences are non capitalist societies, my own celtic heritage, earth memory and the 'stone people'

A celtic stone carving found in Banwen, Neath

Week 1 -

These ideas lead on from my project Celtic Imaginings - I would like to integrate symbols from a Celtic Culture with emphasis on plant knowledge.

My intention in this module is to develop my skills in composition and exploration of the materiality of paint. I would like to use earth paints but I'm still using oil and acrylic for experimentation. I've used collage to help with the placement of objects. Emerging from the image I can see a mask in the right-hand corner and I will begin to factor these serendipitous findings into other compositions.

Week 2

Here I am working with the natural earth paints and using just 3 colours, thinking this will help with achieving tone. I used collage to explore the placement of objects. The chair is a nod to the transference of knowledge from my celtic ancestors. The Self heal flower is in the top right hand corner but it is disguised with muted colours.

Week 3

Merging photographs of a micro self heal plant and a celtic stone engraved with spirals created an abstract image which I then used as inspiration for the painting. I did use acrylic paint for this as it was larger scale and I had to consider cost. I wanted to scale up as I had an urge to move my body more when painting.

I want to merge more photographs of celtic stone carvings and plants and use as inspiration for paintings.

Week 4

This is a similar principle of using a photoshop image of foxglove and celtic carved stone.

I would like the foxglove to be more obvious and think this could be developed more. I would like to obtain more depth and textural quality. I am thinking of a totem pole when thinking of layout as a symbol of reverence. Animist cultures have used totem poles to revere the natural world. I would like to recreate a totem of plants and stone to signify their importance. The plants I am using are considered by the occultists as magical.

Week 5

This is another example of merged images, I have used a plant called self heal and stone carvings found at a burial mound in North Wales. I have been using eco earth paints to convert these images into paintings. The vibrancy of the purple has been difficult to achieve with the non toxic paint so I will decide whether to include acrylic to get the desired effect.

Week 6

I converted an image of a foxglove overlaying a stone carving into black and white to try and pick up the tones a little more. This image lent itself to charcoal and I created a few small studies. I also wanted to paint this image and sourced found objects like old canvases from charity shops. The resulting images were quite abstract but the use of earth colours makes the viewer aware it is an organic form.

week 7

Wanting to push the idea of blending and incorporating

symbols and memory I started working straight onto canvas. It showed up that I needed to do more work on composition and layering of the paint.

Week 8

This is a cropped image of Odilon Redon's

'Opehlia in the Flowers' it is a pastel piece but it is the dreamy, ethereal and vibrant quality that inspires me, as well as the dark edges around the plants. I studied the whole picture for a full hour in The National Gallery which was very fulfilling, more so than trying to cram in 100's of paintings.

As part of the module we needed to exhibit some of our experimental work. I wanted to create something large scale in the totem rectangle I touched on earlier. This is 4 foot by 2 foot on canvas.

I used natural earth pigments and oil for the whole picture. The challenge was to get enough contrast because all the earth pigments are similar in tone.

The image is called Mullein, it is an abstracted flower layered onto a Celtic Stone.

I would like to sing the wildflower song

Unsung

Neglected

Built upon

It's value unknown

To those who trample

But they were here

Long before this modern mad species of man

They knew their place in the order of things

Symbiotic bee feeders.

The physicians of Myddfai recorded their worth

And the wise of the land knew always the mirth

A wildflower song they passed on at birth.

powers they hold,

hidden

from most,

No one to sing the Wildflower song,

faeries grow silent,

stories are gone.

Paula Richards