Lauren Peebles: February 2012

New Silks

I am very excited to get my new silks back from the printer to start working on!

These images were collected in the Highlands in the Knocken Crag area in Assynt. This area has some of the oldest rocks in the UK which made it a perfect area to research my subject matter. The mountainous environment also meant the lichens I was photographing were very different in colour and shape from the coastal location photographs I had been taking previously.

These are some of the images I have recently got printed onto silk. The problem is when taking the photographs you lose a certain amount of that vibrancy and colour this is what I tried to add back to the photographs through photoshop while keeping the images as accurate to the original sources as possible.

These silks are now ready to be worked into. Each print is very different so the way I react and work on each piece is different as well. I will be working on top of these with a range of media, including inks, screen-prints, stitching, charcoal and graphite.

Fourth Year Statement/Brief

The focus of my work is the unnoticed. It concentrates on the natural world, the beauty of pattern and colours that are found in rocks and lichens and that often go unnoticed. The hues and vibrancy are a constant in the world around us and although they filter into our everyday lives we often fail to appreciate them.

I am intrigued by the surfaces I am looking at due to their vibrant colours and striking natural patterns. The work concentrates on converting hard lichen covered rock surfaces on to a soft, fluid surface by printing onto silk. The intention when printing onto silk is to add a level of luxury to the pieces. This is something that is not associated with the initial harsh subject matter. This juxtaposition leaves the viewer fascinated as to the relationship between the harsh natural object and the soft silk fabric.

Once completing the silks I intend to take them back to their original environment and to photograph them in this landscape. The contrast of these exaggerated natural soft images against the harsh landscape will demonstrate what the silks represent.

Sources of Inspiration

Continuing on with this initial interest I gathered other images that I found helpful to my practice, looking in many different sources including magazines, blogs and other artists. I was looking for something that was colourful and interesting and that had more to it than just being aesthetically pleasing.

The images I was interested in most were the ones that featured natural imagery in an interesting way. Patterns colours and vibrancy are really strong in these pieces. The Christopher Kane Galaxy prints were some of my favourite images I found, I then started looking at photographs of the Northern Lights and other natural occurrences for more inspiration. My subject matter is obviously very different to these images but I felt it was definitely transferable to bring across the aspects I found interesting in these to my own work.

Fourth Year

My initial starting points for my fourth year project carried on from the previous years work, looking at natural and geological surfaces.

I watched a television programme on BBC 2 in the summer called Britains Next Best Thing. One particular episode concentrated on Richard Weston and his silk scarves. Weston was a trained and well known architect but had developed this interesting range of scarves based on images of precious stones, fossils and minerals. I found the images to be absolutely beautiful and really interesting. There were definite similarities within my practice and work to these images and felt they were very inspirational.

Weston's work is interesting because he looks at something already beautiful like a precious stone or luxurious mineral and makes it even more beautiful and desirable by putting it onto silk. My work however concentrates on subject matter much less desirable and makes it more appealing. Since seeing the process Weston uses for his fabrics I became very interested with printing onto silk myself, fabric is always something I have used within my work but printing onto it in this manner and then working back on top of it I had never approached.