Emma Gannon

I feel like it’s definitely not finished or there’s something missing but I like certain parts of it!

Julião Sarmento, Mehr Licht 1985.

While researching Juliao Sarmento i found this specific painting really interesting - a collage of 6 connecting images.

The main image of a man holding a woman's neck is particularly ambiguous. It is unclear whether it is a gesture of affection or violence.

Its hard to say whether these images have any connection but the artist invites us to think about it.

Juliao Sarmento  (born 1948 in Lisbon)

Sarmento works across different mediums (painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, performance, and film). The graphite drawings emerge from a thick impasto.

Sarmento’s drawings are supposed to make you think, although, i find some of his work hard to connect with.

Women shown with their heads or other body parts missing have featured in many of Sarmento’s paintings. Sarmento said there “was no meaning behind” this but it feels poignant somehow. A lot of Sarmento’s work is ambigous and maybe and is a main theme a lot of the time.

  “ I am interested in open rather than closed images ...  After all, to be human is to desire, to constantly imagine or create what we cannot see or experience.”-(Sarmento in Neri and Sarmento 2003, pp.119–20.)

Taking inspiration from Julio Sarmento and Henri Matisse’S red studio. Not finished just yet.

Henri Matisse The Red StudioIssy-les-Moulineaux, fall 1911

ref : https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78389

Seems simple at first glace due to the overall red colours. But is definitely more complex, due to objects he decides to highlight with colour.

Matisse highlights his painting, sculptures and some other details in the room. Perhaps to display there importance and therefor the rooms lack off importance.

I find the space  and perspective of the studio interesting. There is a corner in the back that seems to be missing and creating a strange illusion but really it is just an unnecessary line - or imaginations fill it in for us. 

Some more on Don Bachardy

I really liked Bachardys black ink drawings but i found his coloured paintings really interesting. it some Bachardy balances his colourful flesh colours with neutral or black contrasts. He still keeps that loose effect. i love the contrast of think and line lines and how he fills in some areas and purposefully leaves the rest uncoloured. 

Don Bachardy

1.Untitled VIII, 12 December 1985 2.  Untitled 1II, 2 January 1986 3.Untitled II, August 19 1985

Don Bachardy is known as a portrait artist. These 3 portraits are of Bacharys life long partner Christopher Isherwood, that lasted until Isherwood’s death in 1986. 

Some studies of our family table which I think responds to the theme of connections I’m exploring. There was also a poem by Seamus Heaney called sunlight/ mossbawn I thought connected to these drawings.

“And here is love

Like a tinsmiths scoop

Sunk past it’s gleam

Walter Sickert 1860–1942 - Contextual

Ennui ,h60 x w44in. oil on canvas

The title Ennui means ‘boredom’ in french. Sickert specialised in painting portrayals of daily life. Use of somber colours and rough dark tones.

Sickert suggests the disconnected relationship between the figures by their lack of communication and their surroundings. despite being close in physicality the couple face opposite directions and stare into space. 

Sickert creates a suffocating atmosphere of boredom. There is no connection between this pair.

Edward Hopper - Contextual

Automat 1927 ,Oil on canvas ,71.4 x 91.4 cm  

Stairway at 48 rue de Lille, Paris 1906 ,Oil on wood ,33 x 23.5 cm

Hopper is considered to be one of America's greatest modern painters. He responses to the human condition. His goal was to reveal the ‘truth about the  everyday and the interior life of ordinary people.’ 

Using light (beams of sun or moonlight) he exposes an isolated figure. common portraits of aloneness, the figure lost in thought and detached from their surroundings. and society.

most of hoppers work deals with the theme of isolation and a certain detachment from society which is very prominent to our society today in current situations.

Alberto Giacometti - Contextual

(10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and print maker.

Giacometti’s studied the the human condition and focused on heads that seem to ‘emerge from nothingness, appearing alone and isolated in space.’ - darkened and skull like - these figures where often painted at night in artificial light. he’s also known for his reduced colour palette.

Giacometti often used the familiar face of his brother Diego. this study, and continuous reworking of the image became an ‘object of investigation and discovery for the artist, who commented ‘When he poses for me I don’t recognise him’.’ ( it is strange and interesting how the familiar can transform into something completely unfamiliar.)

There seems to be a distinct lack of connection in his paintings, the subject looks far away and isolated.

“The poetic mood of the studio''s space is replaced by a forthright confrontation with a presence that dominates the space in front of the canvas.'' - David Sylvester

“I have often felt in front of living beings, above all in front of human heads, the sense of a space-atmosphere which immediately surrounds these beings, penetrates them, is already the being itself.” - Giacometti(Quoted in Sylvester 1994, p.34.) 

Some more hands - just really for the purpose of showing connection and touch.

Some quick drawings focusing on hands