Output details
36 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
Canterbury Christ Church University
Girl in a Turban II (2011)
Dimensions: 14.75 X 24 inches
Medium: oil on canvas
Exhibited: John Long - Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin, 21st February – 9th March 2013
This research investigates how modes of pictorial isolation contribute to the affective qualities of a painting. This piece examines the construction and composition of isolated painterly spaces that generate contemplative experiences for the spectator. When an isolated still life emerges out of the ordinary it can often serve as a means for intensifying the spectator’s perception and sensation of the fleeting moments of life that are submerged within the everyday. This painting elaborates an unnamed condensation of thought and feeling that lies dormant and forgotten within quotidian experience. As an art historical genre, still life attempts to capture the immanent vitality of inanimate objects. It does this by suspending their sensory beauty in an intimate scene, which is intensified by paint and colour. Fleeting and amorphous, this potential lives as a residue in the emergent assemblage of disparate forms and realms of life, be they art historical or natural. Yet it can become palpable as a physical trace in a painting, unifying these objects into one isolated pictorial space. This piece examines the extent to which this is potentially restorative, providing a reconnection between the temporal present, history and the timeless realm of the eternal.
Girl in a Turban II extends the investigation into creative strategies of isolation by developing the theme of figures in conjunction with a still life, in this instance referencing the work of Chardin (especially Still Life with Fruits, c.1763). The figure is bound to these historical affects of still life to elaborate a renewed and intensified sense of contemplative vitality. The piece achieves a close formal relationship of assonant pictorial repetition between the Chardin painting on the wall and the still life on the table that the posed model rests upon, and this isolating strategy is deliberately mobilised as a way of restricting pictorial depth.
