It has to be one of the best decisions I made all year to have this tutorial with Yuen. Although I have had to keep moving the tutorial, because of illness or the Nottingham trip I have finally got to see him. Yuen's perception of my drawing and conceptual input has pulled up so many useful points. First of all, my nude self portrait we discussed how my fiancee wanting the paper to cover the genitals has drawn attention to it making the piece even more sexual. He then ask me what if you move the paper over the hand? and when I did I immediately wanted to know what I was holding although I knew it was nothing...weird. Second I have left off my scars and earring and other distinctive marks, for which I had know answer, apart from it must have been completely subconscious I hadn't done it intentionally and I hadn't noticed. Maybe there was a possibility that because I was searching for male perfection in contemporary society I tried to perfect myself, this also would then mean that these distinctive marks on my body I perceive as imperfections. And it questions wether there piece is a self portrait or if these marks define who I am or where I've been, my history. All I know is as soon as I got home I made this piece, (right) highlighting the imperfections I missed on my self portrait. I couldn't stop myself if I tried. |
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I tried to look into influences from my life that may have unconsciously formed the sort of man I am and others around me are. While I was looking it was amazing to see how these social constructs appear to start from as soon as you are born. And I was most shocked by the lyricist some Disney songs describing what it takes to be a man almost providing children with an inferiority complex as the characters they describe are almost impossible to match up to. They also very much teach a young boy like religion of his dominance over women, and enforce a subservient woman to be the object of a man.
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Michelangelo's David Both historic, meteoric figures of the art world from the Italian Renaissance have separately been fascinated by male perfection. They both tackled it in there own individual ways da Vinci to draw, Michelangelo to sculpt. But, both depict a man they believe to be in his prime. I only ask how does an average man measure up to these giants of perfection. An yes these men were representing perfection hundreds of years ago. So how is the contemporary male different does he still need everything that the men of the past needed.
The beginning of the crit began with the group talking about the children & drug abuse pieces. Although, the actually references to drug abuse were rarely spotted leading me to believe that maybe they are just a little to ambiguous. The
After hours of scouring the internet; while probably making my google search history look very suspicious. I have formed a small collection of images that I feel have some sort of quality that either jumps out at me, or that I could emphasise to corresponding to some form of drug use or addiction. It is from the foundation of these images that I plan adapting and manipulating there context before I intend to draw them.
Sometimes the beginning can be one of the hardest places to start. The prospect of starting an entirely new project can be quite daunting, considering that when you could do anything, what do you actually do? It seems to me like I have so much choice that it's too much to even decide. So with that in mind, I have chosen to go back to an old project which will hopefully get myself back into the working mind frame.
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Richard CassidyEmerging artist from Derby, England. Currently a student at Sheffield Hallam University. Archives
May 2015
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