To see the above photos in more details, click on the image above, to read about them click below, and in either case please follow me on the social media links to the right.
Top Image
“Decalcomania” image for my potential Fellowship panel. Composite, and rearrangement of self-portrait standing in front of my french windows (curtains recoloured) and image of Cliveden. As Magritte said:
“Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”
Other Images
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“Sunny Eye” and “Stormy Eye” (improved versions for the originals created on 3rd December 2023
Recreation of Magritte’s “Human Condition” series of paintings, “Phillips Auction House”, above; “Human Condition Landscape”, below left; “Human Condition Modern”, below right
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“Self-Portrait X”, right, replaces Magritte’s apple with a smartphone as the iconic object of the early 21st century
Now for something more conventional …
“Aurlandsfjord Triptych” shot on our trip to Finland and Norway in November/ December 2024
Finally, a couple of images created for the Amersham Beyond challenge “Primary Colours”
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Distinctions
Statement of Intent
Assessment booked for the 15th May
Technical Skills
27th December 2024: tips from the Virtual Photoshop Summit:
- Option Backspace to fill with Foreground colour
- Command Backspace to fill with Background colour
Refining. anti-alias (ing) part of a mask by:
- selecting the offensively jagged line with the rectangular marque tool
- burring, just enough to smooth it using gaussian blue
- resharpening using levels
later made into a Photoshop action
31st January: learning how to use Photoshop’s contact sheet creation feature
Art Knowledge
History of the definition of art:
- 12th Century, Oxford English Dictionary: art is “Skill at doing anything as a result of knowledge and practice”
- Charles Batteux:”Fine arts are fine or beautiful things which please’ of themselves, always ‘in imitation of nature’ and requiring genius” (1746 Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe)
- Duchamp’s Fountain and other Ready Mades defied the claim that art must be beautiful; instead they are art because:
- selecting an object is a creative act
- when an object’s practical function is removed, it becomes something else
- the act of presenting the object and giving it a title, introduces “a new thought,” thereby giving it a new meaning
New Artists & Philosophers
4th December: Paul Nash (1889-1946) both a leading British Surrealist and pastoral landscape artist – applauded by Desmond Morris, and lived in Iver Heath, only a few miles from where I live in Stoke Poges.
Rene Magritte said he was the “Master of the Object”
2nd January: Sir Terry Frost (1915-2003) – St Ives based abstract painter and one time assistant to Barbara Hepworth
16th January: Jacques Lacan (1901-1980) – the French Freud, but developed the concept of the ego with respect to its external influencers, and thus the roles of personal responsibility and autonomy in the context of social environment. Hence the fact that he is much quoted my the political left
18th January: André Kertés (1894-1985) – Hungarian photographer most famous for “Martinique” (blurry picture of man behind screen on a balcony, apparently often interpreted as a self-portrait in the same manner as Hopper’s “Rooms by the Sea“
28th February: Anthony McCall: (b. 1973) – light installations
Notes:
- Autumn 2024
- December 2024
- January 2025
- February 2025
- Spring 2025
Recent blog posts:
- “LAB Colour” first posted on 1st June 2020 – reviewed and updated on 2nd January when thinking about why the Northern Lights look better in photographs than they do when viewed directly
I really really (2x really) like this development of your Magritte project. It seems to me that this reimagining of key paintings in a modern context is both bold and original. Excellent 👍
Thank you Kevin.
Let’s hope the RPS assessors share your enthusiasm ….