Asking "Why?" : The Human Form

Asking "why?" was a massive part of my project. As it is primarily based around people I decided to work with the human form. I wanted to see how we worked and why me moved and made decisions the way we do. I then began work on the human form, working with the patterns of the brain, the eye, folds of skin, the hands etc. I began to dissect them, recording their insides, how they work in my notebook and discovering how we all move and work. I began to focus in the ideas of the hand. Hands touch us all in every way; they often lend a helping hand, a means for stability and connected us all, physically. Couples hold hands to show perhaps affection and belonging, contentment. Parents hold their children’s hand as a means of protection. I wanted to explore this connection further; taking apart the human hand, using my influence from Cathy Prendergast and creating new forms. I cross-referenced works of Cathy Prendergast in relation with my own, to creation something new. I also picked some flowers form my garden, something so innocent and pure, a true reflection of beauty and crossed it with the hand of a human being. Hands, although as helpful as I said, can also be the cause of pain for so many, they can hit, scratch, claw, hurt the human, and this violence in particular can be seen more prominently in the urban environment. In this way, I hope to highlight such a problem.



I am working once again with the human form, working with textures and textiles that relate to the human form, using the idea of the muscles, the folds of the skin, the bones etc. Also, I am working with the conclusion to my main message of the destruction of beauty in relation to the urban environment I am doing a series of paintings to reflect the isolation I often feel while living in the urban environment and being succumbed to the ideology of “Commercial Beauty” and the effect it causes; destruction.

Burning Barbies



While I was designing and painting my big piece I was experimenting with Barbies in order to explore the concept of "destroyed beauty". In my mind, Barbie was almost the idolized product for beauty and was a “model" for perfection for everyday women; however this need for perfection and beauty often led to the woman’s own demise. This idea of “decay” and “destruction” of things beautiful can be reflected within the urban environment I see around me. How there were buildings, plant life, people who once were all beautiful have been destroyed and decayed over time.







Its Been A While.





 

After a severe personal shock I found myself lost in this project to be honest. I lost complete focus and direciton in my project. I find myself only really and truly coming out of this "funk" about two or three weeks ago. Now, I can see where my errors were in my project and link all my work I had previously done together and show my train of thought throughout the ast few months. This body of work now is a culmination of "The Destruction of Beauty" I wanted at the start of my project. Living in the country all of my life and moving to the city for the first time this September, this was something I personally noticed more. Walking down the streets and all over town there are billboards, posters, advertisements, and signs all around me bombarding me with products and methods to “make me beautiful”. At first I found it truly over-whelming as I was completely exposed and vulnerable to such severe advertising. I felt drowned by it. I wanted to show my reaction to all of this “commercial beauty” in relation to the urban environment and show how beauty can be ugly and often lead to destruction. I placed my mouldins of the faces aside while I took some references from the sketches I took of people around Limerick City and used them in a collage to create a big piece. I wanted to show the destruction of beauty from a series of pictures depicting the motions of the stuggle of women to "be beautiful". In this  sense I used an image of the mother and child taken from a sketch, to show the beginning, and natural beauty. The three other images that follow are a depiction of the struggle of women in an urban enviornment. The lower image on the page is taken from a sketch of a homeless woman, however I've made her naked in order to show her vunerablity and isolation.