The portraiture of Elizabeth
Peyton is distinctive in style; focusing mainly on iconic celebrities; often
men. Her first well known series of portraits were of Kurt Cobain. Peyton is
interested in the cult of celebrity of her time; and collects images from
magazines to work from. Her work was very much inspired by the public domain.
The painting technique is lovingly rendered, as though she has a devotion to
her subjects. Peyton went on to paint political leaders, actors, and her
boyfriends in this same way; her admiration for them is evident through the way
that she paints them.
I am starting to look
into painting myself now, and my paintings of students have an element of
portraiture painting about them. Although my most recent work depicted students
being sick and acting drunkenly; feedback was that I had painted them in a
loving, caring way; as though I was obsessively drawing it from the original
photograph in places; similar to how Peyton does. I like this idea of painting
potentially negative scenes in an attractive way; so that they have the
aesthetic qualities of portraiture, but the content of something slightly more
negative and dystopian.
Peyton works with
images from public domain; working with collective imagery – in that the
subjects are iconic, as well as the original images; through being repeatedly
printed in magazines and posters. I also draw imagery from similar sources. I
have used journalist's images from newspaper articles in a lot of the Carnage
bar crawl work I have produced. I like mediating imagery that might have once
been familiar to an audience; they may have seen the original images in newspapers
that I have worked from. I have appropriated them so they may still seem
familiar, or other viewers may not realise. The 'carnage' t-shirt that features
in a lot of my recent work is an item of clothing that is identifiable to
students nationwide: it is the ticket itself to the biggest annual bar crawl,
and looks the same year-on-year. As I am interested in the shared experiences
of my student generation; I like that student viewers of my work will instantly
recognise which event the work is about, and most likely have their own
personal memories of it. Yet someone not in this collective; an older/younger
person might not be familiar with it, and would just associate the work with youth
generally from an outside perspective.
I want to experiment
more with painting; exploring how brush marks, light and focus can create an
atmosphere. This might help the viewer fill in the narrative, as I have started
to leave more of the image blank.
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