Ciao ciao Marseille!!

So the end has come. My evaluation was a few days ago, which went alright. It basically consisted of a casual discussion about my work, art in general, art in the modern world in England (they obviously picked on me being English to ask me what I thought about Damien Hirst..of course) etc with two official people from the art school. It did end up in one of the critics saying my work was dated, which I thought was a bit of a silly thing to say. Apparently I need to be more 'modern' and am 'too inspired by artists of the past' and not of the present, which peeved me off a bit. But you have to take criticism and I realised I shouldn't always take it so seriously, in art everything is so subjective and it's all just an opinion really, everyone has theirs.
I spent the last few days after my evaluation just strolling around the city, the weather has been fantastic (i've probably taken the weather here for granted i will be a big moaning minnie when I return to London I can sense it already). I went to Aix-en-Provence today, just a 30 min bus ride away, to walk around the market, bought myself some beaufort cheese (the best cheese in the world), apricot jam, honey, herbs de provence, lots of french chocolate and of course, wine!! So i nicely broke my bank account and am stocked up with tasty french delights for the next year. My mum is coming tomorrow, I need to pack up my room and monday morning we start our two day drive back to London town, stopping off in the city of Dijon for a night on the way.
All in all I am looking forward to being back in London. I feel four months here was the perfect time. I know that many other erasmus students have extended their stay to a whole year because they've had 'the best time ever'. I've had a great experience here but it wasn't always the best time ever.
What have I taken out of this exchange?
My french has definitely improved! I am lucky to be fluent in the first place, having been to a french school, but my french had deteriorated a lot over the years and now I have had to speak french to every one, every day, including my four french flatmates who yap in french slag like there's no end.
Marseille is definitely a city to visit! Yes it is grotty, dirty and a bit on the dodgy side, but you realise that's part of it's charm. It doesn't even feel like you're in France, it is so multi-cultural and there's a huge vibrant north african commmunity, sometimes it feels you're walking the streets of Alger (..perhaps not quite..). I feel I have discovered a whole new city and its stunning surrounding (the Calanques are definitely one of the wonders of France, and I highly reccommend any one to come here just to go for a walk along the Calanques coast line and witness literally breath taking views!!)
I found it very interesting experiencing a french art school system! I have to say, the art school in Marseille has made me appreciate Camberwell much more for merely having an online time table, and being more organised and structured and having tutors that do come in on a regular basis to check up on your work and progress..something which is rather limited at the art school in Marseille.
Even though I have produced some interesting work here, I do feel that this exchange has made me more motivated to produce lots of work in the Camberwell studios, I can feel ideas coming and now appreciate the space to work in the studios as well.

I would definitely recommend this exchange to every one! Any study placement abroad makes you so much more independent and it's great to have the possibility in the middle of a long dragging

degree to be able to step out of your routine and be plonked in a completely different one! You come back more motivated with whole new experiences up your sleeve and ready to finish your degree with more determination and ideas! Go for erasmus, go for it!!

Painting la Santa Maria: the swirl factor!!

Here are some photos of my continued studies of my dad’s Santa Maria boat model. In the studio, I started a very large painting on canvas focusing on a fragment of the boat. I am painting it in a particular way, which will take time, but I am choosing very carefully what will be detailed and what will be more abstract. I am using oil paint, and starting off by focusing on the sails of the boat (my favourite part!) .
I am enhancing the ‘swirl factor’, when I look at the actual sails of the boat I am just fascinated by all the little shapes, it is like staring at the sky for hours on end and noticing all sorts of little weird bizarre images and little imaginary figures. So when painting the sails, I got lost in my own little world of swirls , like I often do, creating all sorts of shapes that I wish to see (forgetting what the actual sails looks like).
I have only painted two of the sails so far, one of them almost looks like a leopard print or some other sort of animal skin. The other one, slightly more faded has a sort of breadcrumby and fish scale thing going on.. I painted even smaller more detailed swirls on this sail, using a specific blending technique: The brush is only very slightly dipped in colour, the key is that the brush should be very dry and a bit bristly with hardly any paint of liquid on it. I then use a swirly round motion to blend colours of black white yellow and brown together , making sure the brush is very very dry in order to create that slightly rough looking fady fish scale texture.

La Santa Maria

This little boat is very VERY old! It used to be in my dad’s bedroom when he was a young child and has been around for decades. I fished it out from our attic back in London, brought it to France with me as a memory as it has sentimental value. I also found it fascinating and very beautiful, despite being so old and wrinkly! If you look on the right sail it says very roughly ‘Santa Maria’, so it is clearly The Santa Maria, one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage!
Most of the time in my work I base paintings and drawings on still lives, interesting looking objects or things I find around the place. So when I saw this boat I instantly knew I wanted to study it, not because of the fact it’s a boat because boats are not really my passion or even interest but simply because of all the detail around it. The sails are so so old and wrinkly you can see little swirls and forms everywhere, and the wood is really old and rustic looking.
What I decided to do was take multiple photographs of the Santa Maria model, from various angles, and then fragment them even more on my computer, along with some editing to create interesting effects. Just pressing the ‘contrast’ button on iphotos made the sails look like gold, and you can really see all sorts of patterns come out of them. If I zoomed in on the middle of the boat it doesn’t even look like a boat, it looks like some sort of zig zag climbing frame or surreal image!
I did a few quick sketches of the boat, in a cubist way which was interesting, and one large drawing of the boat, on a large scale, keeping my eye on all the details. I really wanted to capture how old the boat was but I added my own touches here and there which I think made it looks more new. I am still working on a background for this drawing, but I’m not rushing anything, for now, it doesn’t need a background as far as I’m concerned, I don’t want any distractions from the subject matter.. it is just a boat.

drunken sailor

Some sketchbook work

I got back into drawing when I was in Marseille, this is the first portrait I have done in years it is meely from a photogaph but i added the scarf to try and add something a bit different?

My first painting in Pitura studio

Looking back at my work in Marseille, it is clear I was still in a similar mindset than when I was at Camberwell, my work isn't that far off from what it was like before. My first painting in Pictura studio, I bought myself a canvas, and all I knew is that I wanted to paint green swirls, maybe it was the fact I was surrounded by green swirly mountains? I just felt like painting with that particular colour. The work is based on a landscape but obviously ended up much more abstract and illusionary. I've always been very inspired by Joan Miro and the surrealists, and after having been to that exhibition in St.Remy on works of patients at the hospital, it put me in a very expressive mood when it came to painting. I enjoyed painting without really knowing what I was doing, what it was going to be, if it would make sense, I like to explore the paint and have fun in making sudden changes and spontaneous decisions to what I am doing. It was totally last minute to add four purple metamorphic 'faces' or circles to the painting. I like to leave this painting to the audience's imagination, many people have told me it looks 'creepy' or very drug infused which is quite amusing. I still consider it a landscape, immersed in an other worldy language/space

.

Exhibition on Art Therapy at St Rémy de Provence

I am uploading these photos rather late, but bettwe late than never as they are very relevant to the work I have been doing recently. I went to St Rémy de Provence where a small exhibition featuring 40 works by clients at the St-Paul asylum. The whole exhibition was very moving and the works were fascinating, they really documented art's capacity as a language for expressing one's emotions, thoughts, feelings, moods etc.

My studio : Pictura

ESBAM

This is ESBAM, the art school where I have been spending the last few months. It is a world away from Camberwell College of Arts in Peckham. At first glance, it may look like ESBAM would be the obvious preferred choice to study painting, it is in an idyllic location; a stones throw from the famous Calanques, the stunning coast line. Pine Trees surround the art school and it is layed out completely differently to Camberwell.
The original building was in fact designed to be an art school by regional artists in 1874 so studio blocks are dotted around in square building form, with each block acting as a studio for painting, drawing, sculpture, graphics etc.
It is a very old and dishevelled art school. You enter a painting studio and it looks like a tornado hit it twenty years ago, there are flying canvases all over the place and very old easles in bits on the floor. Camberwell seems extremely organized and structured compared to ESBAM. There is no blackboard site in Marseille you have to rely on word of mouth and the occasional email you receive from the Erasmus coordinator. It is infernal to find a tutor. They do not come in everyday or even every week, they only decided to put their times up on studio the wall in November, and so I then found out they only come in a couple of times a month. So you realize as a student at Esbam you really have to motivate yourself to work, find the will within you and try and hunt for a tutor in order to get any help or advice. II suppose the whole stereotypical south of France blazé arty atmosphere is part of Esbam’s charm, the students stroll in at 4 and leave at 6, smoke joints in boiler suits in front of really over sized abstract canvases. The school is absolutely mental but still great!