Wangechi Mutu and her disturbing surreal collages.

The problem with any kind of artistic pursuit is that when you're feeling down you tend to block yourself creatively. Suddenly whatever artistic thing you are engaged in seems stupid and pointless because you feel stupid and pointless. Why paint pictures when other people are better artists than you? What's the point of writing a blog when there are people who are actually paid to write blogs and research their subject matter all day? 

This year I've struggled with these doubts. But I'm happy to say that the fog has lifted. I feel happier than I have done in years. I'm starting to feel creative again. And what better way to start thinking of new and interesting things than to look at a weird and wonderful artist. 

Wangechi Mutu is an african artist who works in New York. Whilst she also does sculpture and moving image, her most famous pieces are her collages. Her images often focus on a disturbed image of the female figure - sometimes with monstrous spikes, plant-like growths, mechanical cyborg elements and animal features. The result is of women who look grotesque and disturbing but yet still beautiful. It makes me think of the nature of women in the world today - told to embrace our sexual instincts, obsessed with technology which has become an extension of ourselves and constantly trying to refigure our own images - through surgery, Facebook selfies and makeup. 

The collages are built from magazine cut outs (images of female beauty cut out of context), from sculpted and painted surfaces and found materials. The collage helps to portray Mutu's idea that: "Females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body."

Here are some of my favourite pieces of her art: 

For more on Wangechi Mutu check out this Guardian's article:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/25/wangechi-mutu-artist-interview-africa-snakes-mermaids

Beautiful lies

So we all tell lies. 
Well Dailydishonesty at http://homsweethom.com makes them beautiful. 
Here I've picked the ones which feature the lies I told in the last three months. Probably shouldn't admit to this really...

I came across these because I was looking for a typographical style to paint something that was said to me recently by a lovely friend. He said: "for what it's worth, I think you're a super hero wonder star. With rainbows and unicorns attached!" I am going to paint those words on a canvas and put them by my door to remind myself every day.

Painting Addiction

Decorating isn't everyone's cup of tea. But I like to get stuck in. I can paint all day - even if its just painting a second coat of white emulsion. But I find that it's like an addiction. Once you start you are itching to paint more, and more, GOD DAMN IT I WANT TO PAINT MY ENTIRE HOUSE RIGHT NOW!!!!

Ok sorry, I'm under control again. Because I can't get on with the painting without pulling up the carpets first (that...not so fun - who knows what I'll find! Insects, dust, uneven floorboards, rotten floorboards - I am scared), I have decided to finish a canvas that I started a while back. It is a painting that I created from different found images - some from rock album posters, some from the beautiful pictures on the Guardian Eyewitness app.

It's a work in progress at the mo. I need to refine the face, I might add patterning in the hair, I'm not sure. I may even add flecks of gold in the leaves. And the blue and white fields need a lot of work too. But hey here it is anyway. I don't know what the picture is trying to say. To my boyfriend it's about spirituality. And maybe that's true. It's got happy colours but it does seem kind of still and almost sad. It seems to be about time stopping at different points. About thought, about nature and religion. When I've finished, maybe it will mean something else. 

Brushes Paintings - Portraits

I once flattered myself with the thought that I was an artist. That was until I left art college and joined the world of advertising. Being an artist is a solitary pursuit. It didn't fit with having a boyfriend, or a demanding job, or friends I needed to keep up with. Nor did it fit with exhaustion and watching X Factor. But one of the wonderful things I have found about having an iPad is that drawing in the "in-between" times - on trains, on shoots when I'm not needed - has become a lot easier.

Here are a couple of sketches and paintings I have done on the app "Brushes" on the iPad.

These two are of Fiancé on a train reading.

This is a self portrait done by looking at the reflection of myself in a train window when it was dark outside. Look at my concentration!

 This is the gorgeous Drew or Drewby as we call him. He is my lovely cousin Ellie's son and he loves cars and trucks. I drew him from a picture on my iPhone.

Charles Matton's exhibition - one of the best I've ever seen

If you haven't heard of Charles Matton don't worry, you're not retarded, he is little known, especially when you consider how talented he really was. A French sculptor, painter, photographer, model maker and many other things, his work has been mostly hidden away and only come to light in the few years since his death in 2008. Perhaps he was knocked back and lacked confidence, perhaps he hated self-promotion, perhaps he felt like fame would damage his art, either way I feel it is a shame that the world can only now see these masterpieces.

Charles Matton's exhibition in "All Visual Arts" in Kings Cross is free and contains over 36 of his pieces. In themselves they look like a lifetime's work. First there are the beautifully intricate miniature rooms - every detail constructed with such painstaking care that each book looks readable, each newspaper perfectly printed, each duvet creased and dirtied as if they had been lived in. Matton uses mirrors to create rooms that have depth and space outside his construction. They allow you to pear into adjoining corridors, to believe that the libraries in a single box actually sprawl on forever. The mirrors also play tricks on you. Sometimes you struggle to work out where they are. Sometimes they appear to be in one place when actually it's just wire and symmetrical object arrangements. But the best thing about his rooms is they seem to tell stories. stories of absences, stories of sad lives, stories of decay and neglect as well as collection and even, in one disturbing room - masochism. Even the light is included, lightboxes creating shadows in rooms and light falling from fake windows making patterns on carpets.

Matton's efforts to keep his art works original meant he would produce large paintings only in order to reduce them and hang them in his tiny microcosms. So to produce one piece of model making he's have already created 12 pieces of separate art. In another piece he depicts the room of a sculptor of the human form and fills his room with tiny handmade sculptures.

But that wasn't the end of the process. After all this work he would then photograph or make paintings of the scenes he had created. Each capturing scenes that seem hyper-real.

Here are some of my pictures of the exhibition but the true effect and the feeling of discovery and exploration that you get as you walk around can only be appreciated when you see the exhibition. Do not miss it.

And these are the pictures he took of the models.

For this work matton had to paint every picture in the collector's bedroom. The full sized pictures he painted for this piece are displayed alongside the model. He then reduced them down to use.

This painting was made from one of his bathroom models.

His most disturbing piece is this attic scene from the house of a masochist. He posed for all the degrading images on the wall too. In this and in the bedroom scenes in particular you get the sense of a whole story being told.

This is the most Francis Bacon piece to my mind. His sculpture explores human shapes and forms and their movement and distortion.

Theo Altenberg - colourful fluid oil paintings

I'm not entirely sure how Theo Altenberg manages to achieve the affect that he does on cardboard but it's certainly beautiful. Looking at his paintings is like looking at clouds - you see forms that might represent mountains, fire, human bodies, caves in the sea dripping reflected light and emotional states appearing but whether they are seen by the artist himself as he paints is a mystery. See what you can see in these expressive paintings.

http://www.theoaltenberg.com/wp/