Sam Gilliam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciN6ZPDMJV4
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sam-gilliam-1170
https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/sam-gilliam-exhibition
Sam Gilliam is a colour field painter and a lyrical abstract artist. He has tested the boundaries of colour, form, texture, abstraction, and the canvas itself. Gilliam has explored how painting can be interrogated and redefined while maintaining certain formal constraints. The artist used both methods to transition his two-dimensional painting away from the flatness traditionally associated with the medium and toward three-dimensional space.
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I love the use of colour within his work. I admire that composition of colour, and it is clear that he has a perfect understanding of them. His work is unique as he moves outside of thinking that paintings are only for flat surfaces. Taking the two-dimensional aspect of painting makes it difficult as you have to work with the shape and space it to show the colours that he wants to be displayed. Gilliam's work makes me want to further think about my work coming off from a flat surface, I didn't do it in this project, but I want my experiments to head in a direction where I'm thinking about the whole space.
George Blacklock
George Blacklock paints in an abstract style but doesn’t see himself entirely as an abstract painter. By looking closely at the curved shapes that dominate his paintings, we could interpret these as narratives for complex relationships that exist in his primary source of inspiration which is life. He finds inspiration in various fields such as music, religion, or simply observing his peers from the Renaissance to Willem de Kooning.
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Blacklock's work intrigued me with his use of colour and composition within his piece. I feel the colour that he chooses is what speaks for the piece. Using colour correctly can be very powerful and can make a significant impact. The harmony in colour within his pieces is something that I want to create in my work. It was great to see all the colour combinations of his pieces and colours that I have never seen together appear in his work. I want to attempt something similar, which will be challenging.
Artist Research
Lynda Benglis
Bengils' work intrigues me as it's something that I've been wanting to explore. The idea of something that minimalism pieces can be interpreted with feeling only through the use of form, texture and colour.
I use her work as inspiration throughout my project as there is a strong connection to nature. Manipulating her materials to create something is the opposite to what it could be associated with such as metal formed to look like water. Her work also inspires me to go bigger with my pieces whether is it a textured painting or a sculpture I agree that space and how you use that space affects the piece.
Benglis is inspired by nature. During the start of her making pop art and minimalism were the art wave to which she naturally reacted. She was not interested in taking art to a final conclusion instead of finding a closed deductive reaction as to what art might be. She wanted art to be much more excessive, she is not depicting something but making a feeling or a form. She started with painting because she felt that painting was about surface and form. Form and texture create the mood of the work.
She still considers herself as a painter, painting with liquids but making objects that are dimensional that have a sense of their own space but demands to be walked around.
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https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lynda-benglis-7290
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7VkLUhY18
https://www.cheimread.com/artists/lynda-benglis
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Sam Francis
Sam Francis has a very lyrical hand. He configured, deconstructed and reconstructed colour, form and space in muscular expansions and contractions. To him, white space, whether painted or left, was never an afterthought or a mere background to this painter. White space assumes every bit the primacy of the area floating within it to give the forms room to breathe and offers a footpath for the eye to stride through the composition.
I take inspiration in the way he places down this paint. The composition of his pieces is something that I've never seen any other artist do successfully. Where his work looks unplanned but has intention and is intricate in design. I also use a lot of circles and curve shapes as it draws nearer to organic figures. Even Francis flick of straight lines seems organic and dynamic showing a hint of movement.
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What I find pleasing with Francis work is also his use of colour. I observed that he is more drawn to using blue, where most colours within pieces are different shades of blue, which is similar to my work in that I always start with the primary colours of blue, red and yellow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRbQxyk74uc&t=18s
Phillida Barlow
From observing Barlow's work, I can tell that she likes to challenge space. Her sculptures' scale or the way it is placed challenge the audience's movement going through the piece. Her bright choice of colour has a need to push her work in the faces of the audience. I like her use of used things, the idea of reusing something and turning it into something new, and I want to take that idea into my art. Anything can be used to create some new.
During childhood, Barlow made doll furniture out of discarded matchboxes. Everything in the home was within resourcing it in the house. This mindset is the basis of her work. In art school, there were ideas of right and wrong. Specific crafts like knitting or seeing were considered taboo, and traditional techniques such as sculpture were fundamental to learning. She took these taboo ideas and challenged them. She was using used items in sculpture. She uses space dimensions as a starting point, how sculpture explores space, looking up beyond the eye level and what retains memory—using the inspiration of her surroundings which resonate with emotional intensity and the urgency of their creation.
