Guernsey Students Prize 2021

This is my first experience of life drawing. I was immediately captured by the beauty of the forms of the female body, which I had been so used to seeing in an idealised and/or sexualized way. I found joy in looking at a woman’s body as it is and appreciating it as a piece of art. The middle piece is more calm and still, while the other two have a lot more energy and movement. This is partly because I did them on different weeks, and at the session where I used the white emulsion, my tic disorder was very active, so I was flicking paint and ink everywhere. I had to relinquish a certain degree of control and just keep painting.

During lockdown we started thinking about our final coursework project. I was thinking of looking at Fruit and Vegetables, so produced this piece of work to see if I liked the theme.

This acrylic painting is of an abandoned building near Ronez Quarry. The building is being reclaimed slowly by nature and parts of it are decaying. Part of my research was on artists and photographers such as Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Windisch. These helped me understand how to represent decay and abandonment and inspired me to attempt to paint a detailed image. I decided the abandoned building with its bright blue door and ivy would be an interesting challenge. I am really pleased with the result.

This is a portrait from a project exploring colour and emotion. Olivia drew her portraits and then used watercolour to pick out the part of the face where emotion was being communicated.

My artwork is about the need to look closer to really understand people and be able to empathise with them. When you look at people from a distance and don’t pay close attention you can never really understand them as human beings. If people are hiding mental health issues, then understanding their individual elements is essential if you are to have any understanding of the whole. My painting works in the same way: when you glance at it from a far everything seems cohesive and clear but the closer you get the more you begin to understand what is really going on and how each pixel has its own individual quality, its own individual flaws.

As part of our Y10 coursework, we studied lino-printing and were asked to plan and print a reduction print. I decided to challenge myself with a portrait of my Granddad who is an Artist. I looked at Steve Bennett’s lino-prints for inspiration and technique. Bennett often uses the contrast of orange and blues in his prints which I enjoyed recreating in my print.

I was inspired by the works of the Dutch Masters, in particular Vermeer. I wanted to make a technically competent oil portrait, using similar posing and composition to that which Vermeer used. For example, I decided to depict my subject writing as several of Vermeer’s portraits depict women writing. I also attempted to make the portrait accurate to Vermeer’s time by adding period details such as the jewellery, writing equipment and painting in the background. I paid particular attention to the tones of the skin and the textures within the painting, such as the shirt. My goal was to make the painting look as realistic as possible.

Inspired by the beauty of ordinary moments in everyday life, I’ve painted three portraits of people in my family, trying to convey a sense of serenity and familiarity. To illustrate this, I used cool colours for the backgrounds, spreading the paint with a palette knife to create texture.

A portrait of a great lady I know. I look upon the piece fondly due to having spent an extended period contemplating the piece before finishing it. Thus this piece shows a progression of my treatment of art: being bolder and more decisive with later changes. This is something I hope to continue with in the future.

Morrisons’ mirror: a typical, and rather unassuming supermarket beverage cooler. My aim was to focus and highlight the distorted shapes and changeable colours that can be seen when items, such as bottles, are reflected. These reflections are hugely dismissed through the blind eye yet with a closer look the twisted shapes, colours and indistinguishable printed text can be depicted and my aim for this piece was to emphasize these amazing, deformed features. Under artificial lighting the pigmentation and highlights are emphasized, thus making the bottles more appealing.

I wanted to create an artwork that showed the contrast in colours within the environment and the differing textures between humans and animals.

This is a painting that depicts a struggle between good and bad; wanting to leave bit needing to stay; sexuality and religion.

I created this self-portrait in order to try and communicate the overwhelming feelings of anxiety. I linked this feeling to the physical reality of drowning in order to try and convey the way in which it is all consuming; but also in order to represent the more physical aspects, such as loss of breath. The print is meant to try and represent the desperate feeling of trying to “stay afloat” in day to day life when your mind feels as though it is flooding.

I started by mixing acrylic paint with bubble solution and using the mixture to create ‘bubble prints’ on paper. During the process I took plenty of photos to document the method I used for my coursework, and I unknowingly ended up taking the reference picture for this painting. To pay homage to the way I stumbled upon this reference photo, I used this method in my piece on the top corners to create additional texture and detail created by the bubbles themselves. I have explored the creation of contrast using focus rather than colour. The process of picking apart the reference photo while I painted also allowed me to consider how the bubbles reflected shapes and colours.

As part of my exploration behind the idea of the concept of ‘Power’ I wanted to create a piece depicting a person who holds a great deal of it. Barrack Obama is a well-recognized politician and has a well-known face, so I it is easy for the viewer to recognize him through my use of hyper-realistic drawing. Through being the first person of colour to be the President of the United States of America, Barrack faced a lot of challenges in terms of gaining his own political power, but he also illustrated a change in American politics through his own political decisions. He helped those who lack power be it due to their economic status, race, social class, gender, religion, or sexuality.

This artwork is a response to the GCSE course theme “Identity.” I created a set of dry pointed etchings to capture the pure beauty of the iconic Guernsey coastline. The dark and mysterious tones of the rocks were the mains focus, and I wanted to show how they were so solitary in the vast, wide-open sea. These etchings are of the rocky outcrops of Port Soif and the jagged flats of Moulin Huet, which are places of enjoyment for me. Rolled into this though is the dark and depressing emotions of the Lockdown period, represented by the ominous, lingering clouds in the skies.

My drawing realistically and accurately captures the beautiful character of St Peter Port, through its picturesque physical landscape and building structures. By using only black pigment liners, I have provided an honest and detailed representation. My drawing enhances the idea of regularity which is shown through the buildings and in particular the windows. Inspired by my geography A-level, in which we study the concept of ‘changing places’ and our attachment to places, my piece evokes a strong ‘sense of place’ which is present in the area.

My aim was to show the way the ocean interacts with the coast and rocks that scatter the shoreline. I was inspired by artists like Kurt Jackson and Maggi Hambling, who are British artists who have dedicated time to studying the way in which water moves. I too was captured by this and wanted to try and convey this as a painting. I have also been inspired by the countless movements against pollution especially that of plastics in our ocean and so added pieces of discarded fishing nets and rope (which I found on the same part of the coast as the subject of my painting) to the edges of my canvas encroaching onto the rocks and overflowing from the painting.

I wanted to show the environment that my subject lives in. I did this through looking at where they came from. I discovered that they lived amongst these types of wildlife and so I merged them together. I like the idea of living amongst nature.