The application of mark making, in both drawing and painting fabricates the tone of a piece. During my analyse of the Old Italian masters when in Italy and Rome earlier this year, I became infatuated with the posing and aesthetic tonal choices of Da Vinci and Raphael, I attended oil paint workshops to expand my practice from acrylic based application. When delving into research of the Renaissance era, I investigated both the portrayal of women within Biblical art and their methods of painting. Inquiring into their use of darker backgrounds with vignettes, as well as the position and posing of women within singular portraits, I incorporated these styles within my own work by laying glazes of acrylic paint and then blocking in the subject with oil paint on top. I realised the stories I wanted to create in my work couldn’t be narrated with Renaissance painting techniques. Moving away from using pre-staged photoshoots as references for paintings, I decided to look for inspiration in a primary, raw form.

The contemporary critique and abstract figuration of Basquiat was exposed to me during a visit to the Moco museum. The work spoke volumes on not just the dichotomies and social commentary, but also on the subconscious gendered politics within two-dimensional art. Though our practices are not stylistically similar, this stimulated me to explore further. My practice is heavily influenced by gender, this originated in an overt and conscious figurative portrayal. However, throughout my created body of work, this transforms into a subliminal tone within both portrait and eventually landscape painting.

After being challenged in my studio as an artist who solely painted portraits, I had began inquiring into the formation of landscapes, finding similarity in both the human form and the terrains of nature. What linked these structures of painting was the unrealistic colour palette I could bring to both, finding over-emphasised pigment in places nature wouldn't usually show it, created a complete merge of the two subjects, until they became interchangeable.

Though historically disordered, pointillism exacerbated my interest in oil painting, and visiting the Musée d'Orsay commenced my later infatuation with the impressionist movement. The ability of neo impressionism to take inspiration from a scene, rather than attempting image replication captivated me. Artistic resemblance without reproduction. However, the repetitive nature of these oil paint marks was what progressed my interest back in time to the impressionists.

These repeated brush strokes lacked invigoration when implemented into my own work. Though aesthetically pleasing, my creations lacked life and I found myself seeking inspiration from the disparate brush strokes of Van Gogh.

Exploring expressive, gestural marks, I found myself experimenting with attempting to create scenes rather than capturing a moment through inventing movement in a painting. Having experimented with different materials for my artwork; collaboratively handmaking coloured textured paper as well as building my own canvases. I settled on taut calico stretched over wood as this was the sturdiest for my impulsive and harsh mark marking, which was becoming increasingly gestural and expanding materialistically to oil pastels layered on acrylic with oil paint.

Energised by the world around me, I practiced an exaggerated colour palette, exploring femininity in the unspoken sense of landscapes. My paintings had begun to diverge. Some possessed solid underpaintings of vibrant colour, with landmarks built in with emphasised colour but left untouched in places. Others started with a warm faint background, with multiple layers structured on top to bring outline and figuration. Whether the initial vibrancy emerged from background or foreground, all my paintings began to have feature thick expressive impasto marks.

During the collaborative degree show, in which I was placed in a group of other expressive painters, I decided to select only my most recent paintings on canvas in addiction to two landscapes on board, which could be backed up with MDF to be the same width. This decision came from the realisation that I  desired for my paintings to be an experience, rather than a viewing. My creations hold a likeness of an object rather than a surface, due to the textural qualities, so changing the depth felt of great importance.