Module pieces - emotions and colour

Squiggly frantic lines can represent feelings of uneasiness, such as the colour red can indicate an overwhelming sense of anger, or black can symbolise death and mystery among the viewers, as well as white symbolising life and purity. Blue can represent sadness whereas yellow represents happiness. There is an effect on some viewers and how they see colour as about 4% of the population could potentially have the rare sensory trait called synesthesia, where people "see" or associate letters and numbers with specific colours. The most common form of this is called grapheme-colour synesthesia.

At the start of this project, I experimented with how emotion and colour can determine how a piece of art is made, solely thinking of how the colours can portray emotions. In the psychology of art, the relationship between art and emotion has newly been the subject of extensive study thanks to the intervention of esteemed art historian Alexander Nemerov.

(Munch in an undated photo)

Inspiration for these works has come from Edvard Munch with his best know work, The Scream, created in 1893. Impressionism inspired Munch from a young age, and in 1881, he enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design of Kristiania, one of whose founders was his distant relative Jacob Munch. His teachers were Julius Middelthun, a sculptor, and naturalistic painter Christian Krohg. Munch demonstrated the quick absorption of his figure training at the academy in his first portraits, including one of his father and his first self-portrait. In 1883, Munch took part in his first public exhibition and shared a studio with other students. 

Munch used the ideas of the French Impressionists, painting the streets of Paris and his hometown of Oslo (then Kristiania). In Berlin he discovered the possibilities of printmaking, teaching himself various techniques, such as woodcut, lithography and etching.

The swirling lines in The Scream create a sense of movement, much like Vincent Van Gogh did in The Starry Night. Swirling lines were used for the surrounding nature and also the distorted figure.

(The Scream)

(Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh)

To spark some ideas for my own works, I researched art in emotion and made a non-exact copy of the image inspired by a student's example. With my version of this image, I kept the same shapes and colours, the only difference is the shades of colours, I also replicated it onto canvas, but if I was to do this again, I would do it again with different materials. The simplicity of this image still conveys the contrasting emotion of sadness or happiness, the face of this figure is yellow, which represents happiness or hope, whereas the red eyes can represent the anger of the artist or the emotion they are trying to convey.

 

(the student's example)

(my copy of the example)

The difference between my copy and the original student's example is the roughness and use of different materials, as I have used acrylic paints and the student's example looks to have been created with oil pastels for the bold and solid colours, just like how Munch created The Scream with the lines, and watercolour for the least solid parts, but my copy's shapes are more defined and more smooth, whereas the student's copy is loose. The use of the red watercolour in the student's example can represent emotion as the eyes get more filled with water when upset before spilling into tears, as shown.

To explore and experiment with how emotion and colours work together to make art, I thought about how I felt some days and tried to translate it into art. Such as one is the blue ocean waves, which can represent calmness and serenity, and another is how one was to feel on an evening on one day of the week. Like small areas of green as it can represent new beginnings and growth at the end to the start of a new day. The oil pastel blends together and transitions to another shade on the wave just like how some parts of The Scream. I haven't used the top part of the page because it makes the wave the centre of the piece so the viewer focuses on it.

If I were to replicate these pieces I made again, I would not write the title on the actual work or perhaps use a different material, because it feels as if it takes the atmosphere away and ruins the actual image.

(close-up of the textures)

However, whilst creating these, I came to the conclusion that creating pieces this way did not convey feeling or meaning some time later, even if I did feel such emotions whilst in its creation. I tried to copy some techniques from Munch, such as the loose lines yet curvy, yet it didn't fully work, so I attempted the same techniques on something else.

So I took inspiration from the last project, Time, and made it into a physical thing; a clock. So I painted it calming yet eye-catching. White represents purity, green means new beginnings and yellow meaning positivity, all of this on the clock with the time stamp of something important: a birth. Time is also represented by skulls and flowers, life and death, thus showing the passing of time.

A skull purely represents the loss of life with pure death, and I decided to combine them together thus making a floral-like grave with flowers growing around them. The darkness of the charcoal pencils can emphasise the feeling and make the skull stand out to the viewer, as it is already the centre of the image and gives more depth, as well as how the skull was centred and flowers were put around it so that it doesn't cover the whole image, thus the viewers' vision is centred on one thing.

(close-ups to see the textures)

To broaden the horizon of materials used, I used chalk on a canvas so that it would be easier to present to the viewer, but the problem I encountered was that the chalk would not stick onto the canvas, thus not being able to create the luminosity the other version had, I used a paint pen to layer the image so that the chalk would be able to stick, but another problem with this is that it began to consume more time as it was being created.

Whereas on paper, it felt easier as it was easier to shade and give it a third-dimensional effect. I felt influenced by Munch and Van Gogh whilst working on this because of how simple it is with the curved lines yet looks complex with how the shading is reflected throughout. 

(close-up of the textures)

My own ambition as an artist is to be able to show my passion for art to the viewers. Since a young age, I have been influenced by other artists that I have seen in passing, and my family has always appreciated my art and encouraged me to create more of my own as I created art with my influences in mind. My active imagination can help me imagine images and translate them onto different media’s with different materials. As an active imagination is when a person engages with the ideas in their imagination, using it as a mental strategy to communicate with the subconscious mind, people can use this for multiple reasons, like how I use it for art.

Final evaluation

All together, I think that this project went really well, especially the exhibition. Mainly because of how it was presented, as my pieces of art were sat opposite each other as people viewing the show walked in. Just the two of them with all the detail shows the simplicity of it and shows how something simple yet intricate can be art.