Artist Statement

I see my interest in film as stemming largely from my love of writing and an inherent desire to tell stories. The editing of images in a film and the control granted to the artist to take the viewer on a particular journey are not dissimilar to the work process of a poet as they change the structure of their writing to alter the effect of its sentences.

Though I do not consider my art to be ecological, I am greatly inspired by nature in art, the Romantics and the environmental art movement. I am also influenced in all aspects of my life by human attitudes and motivations; the contrast between these and the natural world – particularly human existence in relation to the natural – often becomes a strong source of imagery in my work. It is the job of a poem to build an original and concrete image for the reader; it is important the reader can use the images provided to take something of their own from the piece. Ultimately, I see film as fulfilling the same purpose.

Final Piece

This film is less busy than my previous ones. I think this is important as it hasn't involved too much editing to say what I want to say, which would have been 'unnatural' and even hypocritical in many ways. I have looped the films to create a sense of cycle, such as that of evaporation. In this way, I hope it summarises the formulae shown at the beginning as the product itself remains unchanged as it goes through the process.

As far as presentation goes I feel I have uploaded each of these films onto youtube as art is about audience and it seems the most appropriate way of getting digital art seen. In a gallery space I suggest it need only be shown looped on a large screen. Originally I was going to project this onto a white wall. The problem with this is that a projection always loses some of the clarification in an image, and as the details needs to be very fine, it would have ruined the effect of the film.

The sound on the film has come from the actual recording. As I set the video camera up to record this, the sounds that it collected are the environmental sounds around it. It picked up quite a lot of digital sounds as I worked on the computer which when speeded up on the film sound a lot like the cracking of the ice. I didn't feel music was necessary as music is a piece of art in itself and is not related to what I am trying to show in this project.

Drawings

Collage drawing: The idea for this drawing was based around the process concept of my project. I used the paper as the palette and incorporated food dye, pencil, coffee, paint, pen, ink, newspaper, canvas and charcoal to create the finished piece. I also tried to mix a variety of techniques from rough sketches to more detailed objective drawing.



Line Drawing: Here I used detailed cross hatching to created the tone of the rim of a jar. It was difficult finding a finishing point with this, but I felt that there needed to be some white or it would look too busy.



Tonal Drawing: This is a close up of a plate photograph. What interested me here was the different shapes the human mind pick out from a mixture of forms, such as faces and hearts.

Prep

Some of the prep filming done earlier in the project.

Plate

Stills of plates with porridge oats and food dye on. This was early experimental filming early on in the project, when I was interested in the very close up.

Plate

Lipid experiment

This was based on a basic lipid experiment, in which you use food dye as an indicator of the process of the break down of fats. This produced some interesting film.