VIDEO OF IMAGES OVERLAYED WITH TRACING PAPER AND FIGURES FROM MY PHOTOGRAPHS

During my feedback tutorial, In terms of consolidating and linking all of my work together, the tutor felt that to amalgamate the elements of experimentation within my project, I should consider combining my paintings with my tracing paper and photo-manipulation experiments. We talked about the idea of “The Transient City” and how the people around you change and are only around for a short time. There is no time to build conversation or relationships with others in the city. We discussed how this can add to the feeling of loneliness and how the city around you can become overwhelming and a blur. When thinking about the city being a blur, I thought about my tracing paper experiments and how the paper blurs out the background of a photograph. We came to the conclusion that more focus should be put on the figures and how combining tracing paper with my paintings could produce a foggy effect. When thick fog descends on a city, you cannot see anything or anyone else and you feel isolated and alone within a misty atmosphere. I came to the conclusion that combining tracing paper with my paintings would undoubtedly add to the feeling of loneliness within them.

I started experimenting but felt that the figures were lost behind the milky paper. I decided to heighten the feeling of loneliness further, I would stick people from my photographs on top of the tracing paper and match them up with the white silhouettes in my paintings. It seemed fitting that I incorporate figure overlays for all of the figures but one. I thought that leaving the coloured figure that is already isolated in my paintings without an overlay would add to the aesthetic of them being singled out and feeling alone amongst a sea of passers by. After experimenting with these ideas, I decided to photograph the result and incorporate the pictures into a faded video.

I feel that this clip brings together everything I have learnt and experimented with into a conclusion portraying the fact that it is a sad affair that in the city, people can come into contact with and see others every day but feel out of their comfort zone, lonely and isolated. I think this piece shows how to you things around you might as well be foggy and hazy and to others you might as well be invisible as you go unnoticed and unappreciated. The ideas and concepts at work here emphasise the hidden loneliness of City life and therefore I feel that I have successfully portrayed the concept that I set out to depict and adhered to the brief I was given. I am incredibly happy with the body of work I have managed to create, working with figures was highly out of my comfort zone and showing the feeling of loneliness was very challenging to me. I have really pushed myself this term and I feel that is what undertaking a degree is all about.