Catherine McCaw-Aldworth

Following on from my last post another artist who I was asked to research was Jenny Saville. I'm not sure how I feel about her work, I'm torn between liking it and being disturb by it. I love her use of colour and the way she makes the skin appear but there is also something about her work that I don't understand and I'm not even sure what that is.  Inspired by her "squashed" style paintings i started researching and experimenting, playing around with scanography to gain the same type of effect.    I have chosen to concentrate on the distortion and deformity of the human form and after experimenting have decided to stick with the technique of scanography and further adapting to different mediums.  Below are a few examples of what I've been working on so far, over the next few weeks there will be more to follow. 

As part of my foundation Art and Design course we were asked to research a Canadian artist called Andrew Salgado. His work is in simpler words, absolutely incredible. Recently I went to London on a college trip and we were able to go to Canada House Gallery where some of Salgado's paintings were displayed in his own Solo Exhibition. I realised while I was in the gallery that art work that is seen through a computer screen, book or even a phone is never, not even remotely similar to the actual piece. I researched Salgado's work a month or so before seeing it in person and I liked it, but when I saw it in person and had it right in front of me I fell in love. There is so much life, pain, hope and also sadness in his paintings. I could feel his presence in the brushstrokes and vibrancy in the colours. He passed his pain onto me, in a good way because it made me experience a small portion of his emotions and his life. I stood in the room in complete awe, looking at every pain...