This artist was recommended to me by a fellow student on my art course. I love her work, she is mainly a painter, working with oils on a linen canvas. Her work relates very closely to my practice, her subject is things that she sees or experiences on a regular basis. She lives in a metropolitan city, and what she sees most of its crowds of people.
In her early works she did cityscapes in muted colours, a single human figure often present in the paintings, reflecting the loneliness of people living in big cities. She was inspired by many contemporary Chinese artists, she started experimenting more with vibrant colours in her still frame series. Rather than placing human figures in urban landscape settings, she has kept the contextual details of the background to a minimal, so that viewers can concentrate on the choreographic patterns formed by the crowds. This links very closely to my practice as I focus on people rather than the detail of the background.
The figures in her latest series ‘Human Planet’ have shrunk in size, yet they have more detail. She has introduced the use of shadow to enhance the elements of space, light and time. Her style has changed quite a lot over the years, yet one thing that ties her together is the presence of human figures, and the choice of palette reflects her emotion at the time. She would like to experiment with different mediums, going bigger to enhance the texture of colours and the 3D element of painting.
She wants to experiment with photography, prints and video to introduce movement to her work. This is very interesting as I want to experiment with these mediums to capture a moment in time. One thing I particularly like about her work is the perspective, this is something I try to achieve, however my work sometimes looks quite flat. Often I just draw people the same size, rather than how I actually see them.
She paints from photographs, usually what’s there, and sometimes she choreographs the picture, every person is carefully composed on the canvas. I like that in her paintings she achieves carefully what every person is doing, some standing, some deep in thought, some waiting and some taking a break.
Beth May Daniels 