Michael Craig Martin

After visiting Manchester City Gallery, me, Becca and Alex have chosen to do our summer project on Michael Craig Martin's Inhale (yellow). Medium is acryllic on canvas 243.8 x 182.8 cm.

This image stood out to our group for its attention grabbing colour. I like the distortion of scale, it reminds me of a fantasy land or something you would dream up as a child and this sems to be the recurring theme in this piece. It has a simplicity about it where Martin has recreated a scene he probably has sat out in front of him. It amazes me how so many colours can still have a strong relationship without being over crowded.

It reminds me of the Pop Art era but much later, his collection from 2000 onwards (http://www.michaelcraigmartin.co.uk/) is very bold and has a graphical edge. I like the idea of making larger works and more public displays, however I imagine that they would be very time consuming and require a huge amount of patience.

This particular image was created in 2002. I don't believe that it is actually painted. He clearly manipulates his tools well, the lines are so definitive and strong. Craig-Martin poduced this as part of his conceptual art collection where the idea (concept) over rules the traditional aesthetic and a lot of conceptual art appears as installations, which looking at his website, he is involved in quite a bit.

For my personal sketchbook part of this project I would like to do some photography work incoroprating installations. I will continue with my collage/montage technique which I was developing at the end of the last acadmic year and will do some preliminary sketches to work from. Making some stencils to create a more graphic effect will probably give a similar finish. I would like to work in the same media as Craig-Martin (acryllic) but do not feel overly confident in my abilty to work it as well.