The Clone Stamp

I like the way that Photoshop has icons that look like objects from a typical old fashioned office.
The clone stamp, which i have found invaluable, is designed like an old rubber stamp with a rounded wooden handle.
One of my friends on the M.A course showed me how to use this tool to close gaps between sections in my symmetrical images. Sometimes I get lazy and even after I have flattened the image, there are still visible little white lines where I have not got the added section to exactly the right angle. Before I used to just delete these in frustration, wasting a great deal of my hard work. But now I can correct my mistakes. I have to make sure I am not lazy though and think it doesn't matter if it is not perfect as I can clone stamp it. I try to make myself strive for perfection from the start.

Here is an example of an image that has 'fault lines' in it.

You can see where I didn't fit the sections together carefully enough, leaving a white line.


First I select the clone stamp and choose the brush style, size and opacity.



In this image there is a very large vertical  fault, to the right, but I will focus on one that is easier to fix, running horizontally, to the left of the centre, in the beige background. (A sandstone wall)

Then, with alt and click, I pick a little disk from as close to beside the fault line as I can.
I go right into the image so I can see the individual  pixels. Using the selected clone disc I run up the line and it is magically filled in!

I love this tool! 

My friend also showed me how to increase or decrease the size of the little disc you select with the clone tool, so you can be even more accurate. If you hold down the space bar then use the left or right bracket key, you can go smaller or larger.

Beautifully Repulsive

I am reading about the Abject in art which is concerned with 'disgusting' 'repellent' or 'unsuitable'  subject matter that pushes the boundaries of 'Manners' and 'Good Taste' that we set ourselves as a society. The Abject reminds us that we are human, organic beings that will die and rot away. This is an unpalatable truth.

Nicole Duennebier exhibited in the New Britain Museum of American Art in 2010. she is an artist whose paintings are not what they first seem, on first look they are beautifully detailed subjects emerging from a very black background. They remind me of the Dutch Masters' bowls of fruit and flowers with bright details of colour, the glint on a vase or reflection in glass, all set against a velvety black backdrop. This contrast draws your eyes to the delicately painted…rotting organisms which drip fluids!
Duennebier also painted a series ‘Cordycepssinesis’ (2007) based on the fungi Cordyceps which attacks insects, then feeds and grows on the corpse, engulfing it. The image below shows a dead caterpillar with the frilly white fungus blooming from it like an Elizabethan lace ruff.

                                                   Duennebier Cordycepssinesis(2007)

Duennebier describes how she sees the subjects in her work  ‘...as fruiting bodies, malignant growths that take on a lavish formation’ she goes on to say that they have an ‘...indication of ‘festering’ in the form of sodden underbellies and noxious fumes that rise into the air’(NBMAA, 2010) This is a form of abject representation, but presented in a beautiful, intricate way. If you could smell as well as see the painting it would add to the sensual experience.

 Her work has the seduction that draws the viewer in, followed by the jolt of repulsion that I am seeking to create in my work.

http://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/nicole-duennebier-beautifully-repulsive/

Inspired by this work, I took some images of mould and fungi growing on tree stumps in the woods.

The forms and colours are beautiful and remind me of encrusted jewels. 
I then manipulated sections of the images to produce some 'multicomposites'.

Coles Mould I (2014)

Unfortunately, unlike Duennebier I was unable to add the dripping oozing liquids that create a sense of the grotesque, decomposing substances. I do not think that many people find tree mould nasty enough to be seen as 'Abject' There is a nice 'wetness to the image above, but the composition makes it look like embroidery or jewelled embellishment or delicate carving.  I like these images but they are not achieving my aim of creating something that draws you in with its seductive initial appearance, then repels you when you see the subject matter.

                                                      Coles Mould IV (2014)
This image is more successful at creating a sense of unease, with the dark hole in the centre and the feeling of being drawn into it. The longer you study the image, shapes and patterns emerge and your eye is drawn down lines of symmetry. (I had to reduce Mould IV to a very small file in order to import it, so the quality is not as good as the original) But if the viewer realises that the subject matter is mould, I still don't think there would be a frisson of shock or disgust...

Modern Butcher's Stall

The Great Western Buffet

                         Christian van Minnen The Great Western Buffet (2013) Oil on canvas

Van Minnen has produced an interpretation of the original Butcher’s Stall in this piece. In an interview he said that he admires the composition of the Renaissance and Dutch Golden age as evidenced in the original and how it tells a story or deliver meaning. His work is strangely mutated and distorted and causes the viewer to study all the small details in order to grasp the whole meaning. Because his painting style is almost classical in its vibrancy and beautiful detail but the subject matter is so grotesque and ambiguous, a contrast and contradiction is created.

Van Minnen seems to be making a comment on the grotesque abundance of Western consumption:
How we have the luxury of leaving food to rot until it is unrecognisable.
I need to consider if I am making a sufficient statement or raising contemplative questions with my own work.

http://www.dozecollective.com/this-is-christian-rex-van-minnen/#sthash.C6F0n6Lu.dpuf

Death and Flesh

Continuing with the symbolism in 16^th and 17^th Century painting, slaughtered animals were commonly used as a symbol for the death of a believer. Perhaps there were allusions to the ‘weak flesh’ (Mathew 16:41)

These associations may have been made with ‘Butcher’s Stall’ by Pieter Aertsen.

Aertsen (1551) The Butcher's Stall Antwerp University Art collection Uppsala University, Sweden.

In the foreground there is an abundance of shapes and stages of animal products. Some of the parts on show are not often consumed by Westerners today, like intestines, lard or trotters. (Although many chefs are trying to bring these parts back onto our tables) Further back, in the centre there is a carcass of a pig hung up. I chose to study this painting as Aertsen visually stuns us with the hyper-real meat fish and bird display in the foreground. Then as we tear our eyes away and study the painting more closely we can see other subjects-people eating, drinking and celebrating in the background. There is also a little vignette of the holy family with Mary reaching down to give something to a child.
There is so much in this painting, it almost give the viewer visual over load. I would like to create the same effect on the senses with my work!

 http://artforbreakfast.org/

 

Decomposing Food

Irene Westerbeek curates the website 'The cool Collector' She has written an article about the latest work from Klaus Pichler.http://thecoolcollector.net/sustainability-2/6468/

 ‘The One Third Project’ (2012) is a series of beautifully composed still-life photographs of food by Austrian artist,  Klaus Pichler.

                                              Pichler (2012) from 'One Third Project'

                                             Pichler (2012) from The One Third Project

                                                     Pichler (2012) from 'The One Third Project'

In many of his images, like the one above, arranges the food in a style similar to the Dutch Masters’ still life paintings. In a similar way to those masters, Pichler draws the viewer in with the softly lit, brightly coloured and detailes shots. Then as you look closer, you realise that all the food is at stages of decomposition. Some have turned greem with mould without changing shape, whilst others have folded in on themselves, leaking dark liquids. The Dutch Masters used the more subtle jolt of insects or skulls to relay a message. But Pichler is commenting on the amount of food that is wasted globally-One Third. I like the clash of seductive and disgusting captured in his images.

vines and hair

Continuing with the sense of the gothic and attempting to create a mysterious and unsettling mood, I took some images of a Victorian style lock of hair tied with red thread with a background of leaves that had been turned into lace by being nibbled by worms. They were wet and muddy.
The manipulated hair images do not convey the mouldy, rotting state of the leaves. Rather they are quite intricate, ornate and Baroque in style.

Helen Chadwick created a photographic image by combining a scain of twisted golden hair with a rope of glossy pig's intestines. The contrast of the golden hair, representing purity and innocence, against the slippery intestines from inside a dead animal create a surge of disgust and contradiction which feels unsettling.

  Chadwick (1991) Loop my Loop

I need to push my work from the fairytale into the nightmare.

Rotting Meat

Decomposing food is one of the key international triggers of disgust according to Doctor Hertz(
As with the snake, the theory is that we were taught to avoid anything that could cause us harm.
The limitation with this shoot was the inability to relay the sense of smell! I felt extremely nauseous as I was setting up this unpalatable platter!

I added some insects to increase the sense of disgust, in response and with reference to Hurst's 'A Thousand Years' http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review

and Klaus Pichler's  'One Third Project'

With several different food choices, I made up different platters placing them on different coloured backgrounds. The orchids represented beauty as a foil to the ugliness of the rotten food. The crocheted lace doily adds a sense of irony.

Meat, Bones, blood, hair and orchids.

Rotten Meat, bones, blood, moulding juices, insects and orchid.

The white paper doilly gives a crisp pure backdrop.

A pink backdrop and a starter -sized selection including a lock of blonde hair in response to Helen Chadwick's image where she combined blonde, innocent 'Goldilocks Hair' with a long twisted coil of pig's intestines. The orchid looks almost animal with the bone-like curving parts in the centre of the petals.

 

Chadwick 'Loop my Loop'

Although the manipulated image above has moved away from the original as you cannot see the whole picture, I think there is still a bloody meat and gore recognisable at the centre of the image.

The high definition of these images enable a closer examination of the layers of flesh and fat, blood and fine tendrils of mould. I am getting closer to what I am trying to create-that sensual element and composition that draws the viewer closer, followed by the jolt of recognition and disgust.