Memory

For the latest project. the title given was 'Mood and Memory'- A competition brief. After some consideration, I decided to depart from the original brief in order produce something I felt worked, rather than attempt to enter the competition with some kind of compromise. It asked us to produce work reflecting the music of Gustav Holst's 'The Planets', while relating to memory- which I found to be seperately viable concepts, but too disparate to combine in a way that worked. I decided instead to simply focus on the memory aspect, a theme I have worked with for the previous two briefs and have found to be interesting

My first idea was to work with the concept of 'Biological Memory', how the Earth 'remembers' its past through such means as fossils, or how a creature's anatomy retains similarities to long-gone ancestors. To start with, I created this piece:

This piece of course reflects the evolutionary origins of modern birds. The dinosaur was painted in ink, and applied to a photo of mine. I had hoped to continue this theme with further photogrphy-illustration hybrids, but I realised this route became very limited due to my lack of relevant photo resources.

After reaching a logistical dead-end, it become obvious I had to once again alter plans. Instead of this idea, I thought about reflecting the memory of people, and how it may live on through creative legacies; art, music and literature. Each time a book is read for example, the memories, thoughts and feelings of an individual are relived by another. In this sense, a mortal may become eternal. As a subject, I chose to depict American poet and author Edgar Allan Poe. I felt he was a good choice for the emotive potency of many of his works, with their dark themes appealing personally- Additionally, I feel his portraits reflect a melancholic and tortured man, almost as if he was a character invented around his works. The portrait-photo is dated from 1848-

http://literature.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

The following are the pieces i created-

I decided to paint with ink again, rather than draw with pen or pencil, as I felt this would yield the most appropriate, dark and grungey aesthetic- and of course, the connotations of flowing, Raven-black ink. I started with his portrait, attempting an expressive and free style, painting water over the ink while wet to allow bleed. 

From this I deccided i could create individual elements that could be combined, in the style of my Age UK work. The next pieces reflect this-

And then Poe once more:

I then proceeded to combine and arrange the paintings digitally. Here are the results:

 

With each piece, I wanted to portray the idea of the man behind the words manifesting- a living memory, each time they are heard and read. The textured paper and sepia tones helped to give the appropriate aged feel, while the ink marks contributed a sense of darkness and mood.  I was pleased with the resulting images, particularly the last. Given more time, i feel the project could be greatly explored using this format, with a range of authors, musicians, artists...etc.