Studio11 - 

Year 1 : Term1

WEEK 1 20/09/2010 LZ102 STUDIO 11 

We were given a large piece of Fabriano oil pastels, charcoal and paints, a piece of rubbish and two random pictures from which we were asked to create the essence of the object and not to represent it in a literal way.

My object was a sachet of coffee and a copy of a Modigliani nude which I found very tempting to simply draw. I decided to let this superficial distraction go, for the moment, and concentrate on the sachet. It was vacuum sealed, small, sharp and plastic and my mind quite blank with searching.

It only came to life when I opened, smelt it and dunked it into a beaker of water using  the sticky paste and stiff sachet like a paintbrush. This initial ‘blankness’ came to life and turned into sweeping movements, bursts of sunlight and the green muddy coffee soaked Fabriano earth and my own blood as I cut my painting finger on a raised staple.

The incredible, rich, vibrant, intense smell of coffee was drawn into my senses. I realized quite quickly that there is nothing in the world quite like the smell of coffee and that it possesses power beyond its size, name, texture and that is what my picture captures.