One to One project 2 evaluation with Prof. Steve Swindells

Following my assessment on Tuesday earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to provide Prof Stephen Swindells with an overview of the work that I had carried out for the second project.

I discussed my desire to try to study the great Masters works and at any opportunity to try to copy those works.  Prof Swindell explained that whilst of this approach may be laudable in a classical training sense, is view is that anybody could be trained to provide and create classical art by copying.  However this process can take many many years.  He recommended that I continue to practice figure drawing as my portraiture is good.  I need to practice drawing and painting people at any opportunity.

With regards to how I spend the rest of this new semester and the following 12 weeks, he recommended that I started to draw on a much larger scale, and create more gestural and flowing and dynamic images stop Prof Swindell suggested that I research the works of Stephen Campbell, (I recall some of his work that I saw in the Scottish national Gallery in Edinburgh some time ago), together with the works of John Bellamy.

I focus should also be to develop my own language of drawing, try to work less illustratively, whilst at the same time improving my draughtsmanship.  He recommended that I still have lots of inhibitions and anxieties about my work and recommended that I should create more vibrant and potentially colourful works on a much larger scale.

Learning to paint from the great Masters takes years.  I need to put my existing strands together to develop my own signature and recognise ability, but at the same time to make it easier for myself especially as I have less than 18 months of this degree.  If I continued to purely study the great Masters without developing my own signature and my own personal in expression, it is unlikely that I would get a good degree studying contemporary fine art at this university.  Nevertheless if I carry on with the pursuit of learning, or trying to learn, a technical and classical type of painting from the great Masters I may eventually get to a level that I'm happy with that I will not have expressed my true inner creativity.  I therefore need to reconsider my approach to this self-directed project for the next 12 weeks

In my own words I need to keep developing my own draughtsmanship, but before I can try to run I first need to learn to walk.

I also need to think about my eventual career post degree stop in order for me to be in a position to commence training other people, I must have become a freestanding art practitioner or at least a few years before the outside authorities and agencies would employ me.  In other words I need to stand on my own 2 feet for a few years at least.