'Illuminate A Life'
Illuminate a life’ is a series of artworks that I have created to communicate with others the life which was my Nan’s. Growing up my dad was always meeting new people as there was always a spare seat at my nan’s table for anyone who just needed to sit down with a cup of tea and talk, this here is where the idea of the water coloured heart came to me. As she opened her house up to anybody who needed to be in a homely environment and always put others before herself.
When creating this series, I used an array of materials including, collage, photography, water colour, charcoal and fine liner, as I was wanting to create some dissimilarity between each piece. This was done by creating two or so artworks with the same style and so instead of there being a random style thrown in there, it flowed from one piece to the other. I added a black background against a bright colour or pure white to add some complexity to the pieces, this black also acted as some sort of frame-work which created a relationship between the white canvas behind, which carried through each piece.
A constant challenge which I had to overcome was not leaning towards painting as that was the easy way out, instead I aimed to challenge myself and think of new more technical ways of approaching this. I also wanted the audience to link the black paper behind each piece being the part which is “illuminated” as its intention was to appear as if the artwork is popping off the canvas, this is where the concept behind my pieces name came from.