a lost childhood Sketch and colour study.

Returning back to my paintings for childhood. I feel that I have made the beginnings of a decision. I have so many ideas for this one that I have forced myself to make a final decision otherwise I am never going to get anything done.

The idea for this piece has an environmental twist, I am thinking about the theme of lost childhood. The natural sense of wonder that a small child has, seems to disappear so quickly and so many children grow up in cities where green fields and flowers are only pictures in a book. This is so sad to have such a strong disconnect from nature and probably contributes to so many ills in society now. I want to capture that innocence and wonder of a child who is surrounded by such ugliness and concrete.

This sketch and colour study have been taken from a really early sketch that I had in my sketchbook and I have reworked them slightly. For the colour study I sketched some tower blocks in photoshop, printed them out and used image transfer. The image did not actually come out strong enough and did not make enough impact so I had to paint into it. I am also not particularly convinced about the positioning of the child as he is a little too central so it may be better if he is moved to the side a little .

Art:21 | Nancy Spero

Nancy Spero at the Serpentine Gallery.

Snapshot taken from Artemis, Acrobats,Divas and Dancers. Mosaic on 66th st New York (1999)

Torture in Chile
silkscreen 1975

Maypole Take no Prisoners 2008

I visited the Serpentine Gallery in London in order to see an exhibition by Nancy Spero. Her work has always interested me and is kind of loosely tied in with my final project. Her work tackles issues that were considered at the time to be controversial. The movements of the New Left during the 1960s led to the growth of the counter culture and the blossoming of the Anti War movements. It was here that Spero began producing images that were indeed shocking. She would play around with the sexuality of the war machinery, for instance there are images of huge exaggerated phallic bombs with dismembered heads sticking their tongues out and vomiting . The images are obscene deliberately as she considered war as obscene. They are not aesthetic and pretty to look at. Her use of plenty of white space is another interesting feature as there are no distractions in the image . The viewer is forced to look at the central image and contemplate what she is saying.

She has used pen, pencil, ink Gouache,stencils, printmaking, collage and the use of text place a major part in a lot of her work. This is another interesting aspect of her work. I am interested in incorporating mixed media into my paintings and I am always interested in looking at other artists who use similar techniques, its always good to have a variety of skills at hand .

Spero is considered a feminist artist and she was not afraid to tackle issues that concerned the abuse of women. She empathised with the French author Artaud whose works were considered the writings of a madman. He was an outsider and although he was considered violent in gesture and language , he is masochistic and passive, therefore playing the part of the female victim.(Spero 1989)

Torture of Women is the first piece that Spero considered to be implicitly feministic . Typewritten texts from Amnesty International that illustrate institutional violence against women are cut and collaged onto large panels of paper, they are joined alongside female figures from ancient art. Her later works that followed tended to depict women less as victims and more as heroic characters who are very much aware of themselves and their sexuality.

I feel her work is even more significant now with the amount of political unrest and wars around the world. Even her work on feminism is still relevant as the female artist still struggles to be recognised within the art world compared to the male artist.