Interior/Exterior

I was interested in depicting the fixation people had on dieting to maintain their appearance: within my work, I illustrated the struggle of achieving aesthetic goals whilst keeping positive emotions towards food. To show a clear observation on how dieting affected the mind and the body, I focused on the subject matter of food. As a starting point, I took photographs of foods that society has categorised into either ‘unhealthy’ or ‘healthy’. I included different fruits and vegetables (e.g., lettuce, carrots, blueberries, bananas, etc.), alongside images of popular indulgences: cake, cheese, confectionary, and pastries. I looked more closely at the different textures of both the interior and exterior of food, to make my work more interactive. Focusing on texture heightened the viewer’s senses of smell and taste, evoking their own emotions towards their diet and body image.

Oil Pastels

 

 I used oil pastels to draw from my own photo. Similar to the style of Vincent Van Gogh still life paintings, I did mark-making in different directions; the oil pastels added a dynamic with thick lines and saturated colours.

Ink and Bleach

This drawing of the cinnamon rolls looks similar to the style of Andy Warhol’s pop art; I created a strong dark outline which I filled in with smooth layers and solid colours.

Handmade Collage

 

Drawing inspiration from Henri Hayden’s use of geometric shapes, I painted an image of a kiwi with acrylics and then cut it into shapes. I rearranged these shapes to create an abstract collage. He had used quite dark tones and kept to a minimal colour palette of muddy tones. To achieve a similar effect, I put a wash of brown over my collage background of coloured paper. An abstract response would help with conveying emotions towards food; I thought about making an arrangement of different shapes to represent the complexity of people’s emotions towards dieting.

Acrylic Studies

I split up an A2 piece of card into 9 sections to make textured paintings. For these studies, I added either sand, gel medium, or modelling fluid to the paint to give them more realistic textures. Similar to both the works of Edie Nadelhaft and Joel Penkman, the realistic paintings initially appeared as an item of food as a whole, but the different colours broke down into layers and shapes the longer the viewer looks at it. As seen in Nadelhaft’s intimate paintings, which displayed the moisture inside the mouth, the gel medium recreated areas of transparency which adds to the lightness and clarity.