John Virtue Artist Research
John Virtue is a contemporary British artist who specialises in producing monochromatic drawings and paintings. These paintings are usually impressions of places he has seen, these places include: London, Venice and the seascapes around Norfolk.
To produce his large scale and expressive paintings, John Virtue often uses a mixture of shellac and ink, which creates an atmospheric and dramatic interpretation of the landscape . Moreover, to further heighten the atmosphere of his paintings, he experiments extensively with negative space, producing work that primarily uses different shades of black and white. To create the different effects within his paintings, John Virtue uses non-standard techniques, such as dripping and smearing the ink and paint. As influences to his work, John Virtue has cited JMW Turner and abstract expressionist Frans Cline.
The reason for my decision to study John Virtue is because of the atmosphere he creates from his larges scale and dramatic paintings. His application of the paint is done in an expressive motion resulting in a frenzied and hectic depiction of the landscape. I think that the spontaneous and uncontrolled painting technique creates an effect similar to how air pollution corrupts a landscape. Since similarly to John Virtue's paintings, smog and smoke also vigorously engulf an environment in a negative way.
To present my own attitudes towards air pollution, I think that John Virtue's methods of paint application will be the most effective for demonstrating the negative impacts air pollution has on the environment. Therefore I will be producing a series of paintings and other mixed media creations, of landscapes that i have seen, to depict what that environment would look like when afflicted by the devastating effects of air pollution.
The paintings and drawings I did in response to my artist research on John virtue can be seen below.
To the left, is an attempt at recreating one of John Virtue's paintings using graphite. I drew this to understand how John Virtue structures his paintings and contrasts light and dark areas to create a bleak atmosphere. Using graphite was a successful way for structuring the drawing, but it did not give the drawing the spontaneous and dynamic movement that the ink in John Virtue's work does.
This was a painting I made after being inspired by John Virtue's monochromatic style. I used watercolour as that gave the painting a looseness that was lacking in the previous graphite experiment. It is a painting of a primary source photograph that i had taken and i used this photo in particular because of the dramatic positioning of the clouds. During this painting i also experimented with paint application, using palette knives to create the hills and sponges to form the clouds. I found using these different techniques helped develop particular textures and enhance the overall painting.
Experimenting with Salt:
Here is my first experiment with mixing salt into my paintings. I did these experiments to see how it would affect the texture and colouring of the paint. I applied salt to each part of the painting, however it was particularly concentrated in the smoke. The result of this is that the smoke had more depth to it as well as a more jagged surface. This is especially evident when touching the painting physically, where you can feel all of the textures. I wanted the smoke to be particularly coarse to emphasise the physical damage it can cause people. Moreover i used a primary source photograph of a field and a secondary source photograph of a power plant to highlight the significant difference in landscapes. To emphasise the negative difference between the two i kept the natural environment colourful whilst the industrial photo monochromatic. The salt overall helped create particular textures that effectively present air pollution, therefore i will use this technique for future creations.
This is a A1 drawing that i made using chalk and charcoal. After experimenting with watercolour paint and graphite, i wanted to see what other materials would provide that monochromatic style similar to John Virtue and how these materials would enhance particular textures and aspects of the drawings. This drawing depicts a part of London that i saw, representing how air pollution is a local issue. I found that the charcoal gave the drawing a texture that is comparable to ash, therefore this piece both visually and physically connoted how air pollution is able to cover environments.
