18/01/2018 - WHITE TIGER EXHIBITION INSTALL 2

Returning to work the next day, I was glad I had gotten started on my work the day before curation began, as now the space was a hubbub of busy activity. I no longer needed my projector, which was thankful as it would certainly have been a trip hazard in the active environment. It was much easier to set up against the wall and simply work from my laptop to finish the rest of the painting.

I put earphones in which allowed me to tune out and not be distracted by everything going on around me. This really helped, and I was really feeling the benefits of painting on a wall on an art environment, inside. I had done lots of live, on the spot painting before at street art and live painting events, but always had to content with outdoor environments, unsteady terrain, weather and curious public, all of which were avoided in the gallery setting, surrounded by curators who wanted to support my working instead of ask questions and be entertained.

I was also glad I had done a test painting ahead of working on the wall, as it gave me a really good tonal understanding of the tiger and pillar forms. I found that I was able to represent the shapes and shading much more immediately and effectively than either the first painting or previous experience live painting. I kept working with watered down acrylics to allow me to build up soft gradual tones and, thanks to the grey scale nature of the image, was easily able to fully shade the body, then paint the stripes and features over top.

I chose to keep the entire image grey scale according to the plan I had tested in my first painting; "I imagine this piece displayed slightly above eye level, the tiger staring slightly beyond the eyes of the audience atop its alabaster pedestal like a kind of cynical achievement. Any barrier of a canvas edge would be constraining, and detract from the overexposed nature of the entire scene I wanted to construct. A very much manmade palette of sterility in the pursuit of beauty." However I did decide to paint the eyes in their original ice blue tone as I thought this would draw attention to the animal gaze and promote eye contact between the subject and audience. This eye contact can then be interpreted as superior due to the nature of the tiger as slightly above many people. (or me atleast, I am quite short...)

I knew this had been effective when one of the caretakers stopped me mid-painting, just to tell me that he thought the painting looked beautiful and it really had a strong graze which 'went straight through him'. This reaction was perfect for me on many levels, as not only did it highlight the fact that my attempts to draw attention to the identity and gaze, even potentially the opinion of the animal in question. But most essentially, because it strongly engaged with a passerby, most importantly a passerby from outside of a fine art context. I had no doubt that the caretaker had seen many many artworks on the walls of the galleries over the years, and undoubtedly he would not get very far about his job if he made a habit of stopping to look at the constant stream of new artworks regularly, so for the piece to engage with someone who was for all accounts focusing elsewhere on their day job was a very positive sign about the effectiveness of my image, in my opinion.

I was really pleased with how my painting came out when it was finished. As a small change I would have potentially liked to make it ever so slightly bigger, just to increase the imposition of the tiger's presence and make it more physically formidable. But on the day I was projecting to move the projector it was too light to move the projector any further away from the wall and therefore increase the size of the projection any further. Watering down the acrylics was the perfect way to build up tones gently against the well prepared surface of the gallery wall, although of course this would not be appropriate when painting on any other wall texture! It felt good to work big and onto a permanent surface once again, which I have always found preferable to flexible canvas.

Finally I was really happy with how my piece worked within it's environment. The framing by the doorway from down the facing corridor was absolutely perfect, and really gave the sense of a prescence waiting for you at the end of the line. My next step is certainly to get this design translated into a halftone, which I can then turn into pasteups to spread around Norwich!