Painting three - What we did on Holiday

The inspiration behind this painting arose fromt the idea of the holiday being a time to do things you might not usually do. I came across this photo on the internet and was struck by its strangness and humour. The three smartly dress older women next to a couple of strange space people. It seemed to me like these women, on some sort of day trip or vacation, spotted these two and thought 'oh look this'll be fun lets get a photo done', so they could look back on it in time to come with fond memories of a special moment. In reality this moment was probably quite dull, just posing for a quick snap and then on to the next sight. It reminded of a quote I read from John Hinde about the Butlin Holiday Park postcards "pictures should always convey a positive, good feeling, something which makes people happy, which makes them smile, which makes them appreciate some tenderness." This picture does make you smile. Hinde also believed that postcards should look like idealised memories, not how it was necessarily, but how people would remeber it. I think thats what holiday snaps are, you look at them and you remember an idealised version of that moment, because you will never be able to recreate the feeling you had at the exact moment the photo was taken.

Painting two - In the Backyard

This was painted from an old family photo of me and my sister playing in the backyard. I was looking at the idea of family leisure time spent together. I showed this painting for my critique in week 5, and the general feeling I got from the feedback was that this is quite a dark/ sinster depiction of fun in the sun, an idea which has been used a lot so I didn't really like this reading. The use of a lot of black is probably what contributed the most to this reading, so in the painting I am working on now I have eliminated using black to see if this changes things.

Painting one - Swimming Boys

This painting was done very quickly from an advertisement in an old national geographic magazine, the colours were like they are in the painting because of the era. I like how simple it is, yet there is a great feeling of a moment in time captured, the details aren't necessary to depict what kind of scene this is. It was painted with only one layer of paint, which I find quite liberating in contrast to the work I was doing last semester, and the texture of the paint has a nice fluid quality to it which I would like to develop further.