Module 1

In Module 1, I began oil painting using an underpainting technique called Grisaille. This allowed me to focus on tonality with a minimised palette. The Fool (2024) takes its title from the Tarot and represents a state of joyous naiveté at the beginning of a journey.

The Fool (2024)

Module 2

In Module 2, I used observation techniques during live-model painting sessions, such as the Michelangelo Method and the Frank Reilly Method.

Thoughtstorm (2024) takes influence from Fauvism and Abstract Expressionism, and the contemporary work of Australian artist, Elisabeth Cummings. My intention was to integrate the figure into an abstract landscape to depict a busy mind, and contemplation. The absence of the figure’s eyes here indicates introspection and that her landscape is a depiction of the mind at work.

Thoughtstorm (2024)

Module 3

My resolved work is a disrupted realism portrait using abstract colour. The unnatural palette here in Gaslighter [Of My Dreams] (2024) supports the notion that not everything is as it may seem at first.

Gaslighter [Of My Dreams] (2024)

Module 4

In Module 4, I emulated a palette from one of Elisabeth Cummings’ paintings, and used similar mark making to integrate my subject into her surrounding landscape, The painting Nirvana (2024), represents a spiritual awakening and is a part of a collection of work including ceramic vessels and plates with similar marks or colours applied to the surface. The surface treatment of colour and marks that connects subject to landscape and extends out to surrounding vessels suggests the unity and wholeness that is attained through the realisation of Nirvana.

Nirvana (2024)

Below is a photograph of the body of work that is combined for Module 4.