A little trip down 2004 Visual Diary Memory Lane

Where to start?

I was having a look through some of my recent and much older visual diaries tonight and felt inspired to share some of my works with you.  A number of them are still works in progress and these are only progress shots.  They are also an indication of the type of themes that interest me as an artist.

So, let’s take a little tour…

When I was in art school back in 2004, I fell in love with Man Ray’s photographic works.  I loved the multiple exposures and creative effects he brought to the world through his photography and I wanted to honour that inspiration in my visual diary.  The image above was created with black indian ink, lace, ribbon and glue.

This image shows some cropped painting ideas that I put together for an art assignment way back in February 2004.  We were asked to take an image and hone in on a part of it and explore painting it.  I created the two paintings in my visual diary as a test to figure out if I liked the image enough to go from watercolour, to acrylics and into oils.  The truth is, I actually ended up choosing a very different image to crop for this assignment, however, I have always loved these two sketched up paintings.  They feature an unconscious African Elephant from a National Geographic magazine that I was drawn to at the time.  Inspiration for art can be found in all sorts of places.

This image shows a page from my 2004 visual diary where I spent many hours observing eyes, human and animal.  I was and still am fascinated by the depth of expression and emotion that eyes can convey through art.  This sketch formed the bases for some other creative artworks that came along.  I always meant to fill up each square but never quite got around to finishing it…

This has to be one of my absolute favourite piece of art play from my 2004 visual diary.  The reason I love it so much is that it explores the concepts of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory in life through images that I cut from magazines that came in the male.

I have many notes written in my visual diary next to this mixed media art play as we were challenged by our art teacher to explore our concepts of the culture we lived in and the context it has in our lives.  As I was cutting this out and gluing it into my visual diary, I was contemplating how people think and wondering things such as: does the level of your bank balance and physically acquired items determine your personal happiness?  Or is there more to life than the physical items we surround ourselves with?

I considered a concept that some people can find themselves feeling numb and unable to relate to life unless they are actively shopping and acquiring items… I considered the animals we take for granted and was particularly drawn to the cow hide in the original image.  I thought a lot about the concepts… Do our earthly actions affect us in the afterlife?  Is there really an afterlife?

To me, I am open to that concept, but not all people are.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyways, that’s my trip down my 2004 visual diary memory lane.

More creative art is still yet to appear on this blog.  Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and feel free to share the arty creativity.