Giselle Knolly

The original aim of my project was to explore painting in an abstract style, aiming to loosen my technique and create work that was less tightly controlled and flat than the paintings I was producing at the beginning of the year. I enjoyed exploring more expressive, experimental mark making becoming bolder and more abstract, however I thought it became baseless and without reason behind it, so I incorporated a figurative style back into my project - using old photographs to take away the control of the composition. 

Gerhard Richter’s paintings have influenced the development of the style of my own work, the process in which he creates interesting marks using a squeegee, and his overpainted photographs lead me to use my own old photographs as a basis for my final paintings. Maggi Hambling’s dynamic mark making and balance of negative space and textural paint use further influenced me when improving my own work, limiting my color palette and avoiding my painting from becoming too overwhelming.

Throughout the year I have aimed to consider fresh ways to create art by really thinking about what I want to achieve in each painting, challenging myself by exploring different ways of working, like limiting myself to only using huge brushes, or a squeegee or a big piece of mdf wood in order to keep with the freedom of expressive mark making. Learning to generate ideas quickly has been an important aspect of the foundation for me and making decisions about the direction of my work and what to focus on is an area I have really had to develop. These processes are probably the biggest challenges throughout my project, but I found that by constantly trying new ideas and listening to feedback from tutors I have overcome them.