Wednesday 21 October 2015

Wednesday Inspirations & Obsessions

I’ve been struggling to find the motivation lately to start a new project or piece of art - I don’t have the physical energy to paint or the money to start an embroidery project - but there’s always excuses, right? Recently I’ve found inspiration through the beautiful, soft blurred edges of grainy film photography. If you’ve ever seen any of my work before you’ll know I’ve always been fascinated with people and the body (particularly my earlier paintings), and that the process photography plays in creating a painting is a huge focal point in what I do. This time, I’ve decided to focus more on the creation of the photography for now, and less about how it informs the painting. 

Although I’ve really been enjoying creating fashion posts and styling myself, there are moments when I catch myself and feel like I could be putting so much more into it. Even since my GCSE art work, I’ve loved styling photoshoots and coming up with unusual concepts for them and playing with props and strange back stories. Although I know when I work with fashion brands the focus is always on the clothing and creating a modern, perhaps more mainstream photo post to share a look with the audience and explore ways the clothing can be worn, I really want to bring this conceptual side of my work into my love for fashion some more. I’ve been struggling a lot over the last year or two, trying to decide what I want to do - my two main interested being art, and fashion. Whenever I work with one, I feel I’m neglecting the other. I flip flop between trying to work with fashion; working as a stylist, or a blogger, or even creating my own clothing/accessory brand, and getting back to my arty roots, spending time painting, trying to enter and arrange exhibitions, hiding away in my studio. I never seem to be able to balance the two, or indeed combine the two. But they don’t need to be exclusive, and they aren’t. Fashion essentially is art, art can be absolutely anything, really. 

These two thoughts are primarily what have fuelled my desire to start a new photography project - something more artistically based, but something which can still influence and inspire my work with fashion and love for style. Alongside this, there are three photographers I’ve recently discovered which have pretty much propelled my brain into gear, making me desperate to start experimenting. Petra Collins, Thomas Roust, and Dylan Forsberg. While their work is all very different, the focus is on intimacy, humans, and finding the beauty in the smallest or most unusual situations. This is something I’ve longed to explore through photography for a very long time - capturing the stark, raw moments that are perhaps often overlooked, unseen, or ignored - and exposing them in a way that can display natural beauty found even in the smallest of things.

I’m particularly obsessed with Petra Collins - also because she is the same age as me which makes me both love and hate her in equal measure (hatred only out of jealously of course). Using film, her soft, grainy, colourful images invite viewers in and create a connection between the subject and the audience. Whether she is photographing herself or a celebrity, there’s such a unique quality in her work that makes me just want to pick her brain.

I know how pretentious ‘art talk’ can sound, and I’m aware that maybe some of the readers of this blog will start thinking I’m an obnoxious twat (I really swear I’m not, I swear I swear!) I went to art school for three years - the majority is just bullshit, I know. But this is something that is starting a fire within me, and for the first time in months I feel truly excited about a project and I wanted to share this feeling, and more importantly record it for myself when in a few months time I’ll no doubt be feeling clueless and uninspired once more. Although I have a few ideas, for now the boundaries of this project are very vague - I simple know I want to capture beauty with a camera. And of course, beauty is different to everyone. For me right now, I want to capture everyday people, everyday things, and not turn it into something enjoyable to look at, but rather expose that element of things we see all the time but don’t necessarily look at. Of course, as you can tell I love colour and I’m sure that’s going to be an important part in composition and scenery, as well as the light, grainy detailing (which I’ve become completely obsessed with) that you can only get with film cameras. 


Aaaah, I did not expect such a long arty rant, but it feels nice that something is starting to come together. Of course I haven’t started it yet and won’t be able to until after my procedure and until I can afford some film, oh and of course I don’t have any solid ideas yet, but everything has got to start somewhere…

OH, and on that note - anyone want to model for me?? Expect a confused director and very experimental shoot...

Petra Collins
I. Am. OBSESSED.






















Dylan Forsberg











Thomas Rousett










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