ART HOMEWORK
Chosen Artist: Agnes Cecile
Favourite painting: She Collapsed
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I like how the artist uses abstract styles and colours.
I like the exploding / outburst style of her paintings.
I love how her paintings are different to anything else I have seen.
I like how she uses animals (eg. birds and butterflies) in her portraits.
I like her emotional and expressive style which is out of the ordinary.
I love her use of watercolours.
I like how her use of colours changes the feel of her paintings.
DESCRIBE WHAT YOU SEE
I see how Agnes Cecile is a unique and expressive artist. My favourite painting is
called ‘She Collapsed’. It is a portrait of a girl which only shows part of her face. A
range of colours have been used from reds through to pinks, purples, turquoise,
blue, green and black. These are colours you wouldn’t find on a real person. I also
see that she has painted the persons hair to make it seem like it forms part of the
backdrop and foreground of the painting. In ‘She Collapsed’, the person’s hair forms
an explosion of colours. It also looks like the person painted is standing in a strong
wind as her hair is blowing across her face towards one side of the painting. I like
how this means that a large part of the canvas on the other side is blank.
When I look at some of Agnes Cecile’s other paintings I can see that she often uses
a similar palette of colours. She often uses large splashes and sprays of colour and
also uses a dripping paint effect in some of her paintings.
Some of her paintings, especially the ones that use a lot of colour, feel quite uplifting
or calming to me. The paintings where less colour is used have a much darker and
sometimes disturbing feel.
Although the people in her paintings don’t really seem to smile, Agnes Cecile seems
to manage to make them very expressive. In ‘She Collapsed’ the girl’s eye is where I
think emotion is captured.
WHAT DO I THINK IT’S BASED ON AND WHY DO I THINK THIS?
I think Agnes Cecile’s artwork is based on emotions and expression of emotions. As
she is a portrait artist she always has a form of a face in her work. The expression on
the face tells part of the picture. Agnes uses colour (some portrait artists don’t). I also
think the colours she uses tell a lot about how the person in the painting is feeling eg.
black =gloomy, blue=calm, red=anger or pain.
The paint effects she uses also add to the emotions and show what the story behind
the picture is e.g. dripping paint effects look a bit like tears so feels sad and dark, the
splat effect looks like confusion, the sprays of colour look like lots of mixed emotions.
In ‘She Collapsed’ mixed emotions are what I see. It’s like the girl has an explosion
of emotion bursting out from her head that is starting to take over. The one eye
showing looks quite sad and tired like she is struggling to see her way through. It
also looks like she is bringing her hand up towards her face. Maybe she wants to
clear the confusion.
WHAT MATERIALS HAS SHE USED?
Agnes mainly uses watercolours (my fave) but sometimes she also uses acrylic, ink,
oil and varnish. Personally I think it depends on what she wants the painting to show.
In ‘She Collapsed’ she seems to have used watercolours with maybe a bit of ink to
define areas of the mouth and eye.
CAN YOU SEE ANY TEXTURES? HOW DO YOU THINK THE SURFACE MIGHT
FEEL?
Do I see any textures? In a way yes but also no. It might sound a bit odd but I think
that the paint effects like dripping and splats create a visual texture but the surface of
the paining would be flat and smooth. It’s like you can feel the texture in your mind
but if you touch it with your hand it would just be smooth. I think this is a very clever
illusion.
WHAT DOES IT MAKE ME FEEL?
‘She Collapsed’ makes me feel a mix of emotions. I think this is because of the range
of colours used. Some of the colours such as the purples and blues feel quite
calming to me. The use of blue and the way in which the girl’s hair looks like it is
blowing across her face reminds me of the sea. The use of red though makes it look
like behind the calm there is pain and distress.
When I look at the girl’s eye it feels like she is looking at me. She looks exhausted
and worried but the fact that she is looking at me pulls me into the picture and
engages me. I want to know what is going on inside her head.
WHAT IS MY OPINION?
Personally I love Agnes Cecile’s work. She has a definite style of her own. I like the
way the colours stand out and the swirling effect which makes the girl look like she’s
standing in the wind. I also love the exploding colours she has used and how this
looks like a battle of emotions in the girl’s mind.
HOW CAN I LINK THIS TO MY ART WORK?
I could link Agnes Cecile’s work to my paintings by using a similar colour palette and
by being inventive and using bursts of colour with a watery effect. I could also
consider not drawing a person’s full face when I am doing a portrait. Instead I could
try a more abstract and individual style.