Amelie Geens
My exhibition focuses on portraiture , specifically the distortion of people by presenting different angles and perspectives of a face . My aim was to not use technology to distort the images , but to instead use a variety of different methods to change them , including oil paints , clay and printing techniques . I wanted to explore portraiture because I was intrigued by how individuals present themselves differently in certain situations , so are therefore perceived differently , and I hoped to represent this idea by creating faces out of multiple different angles of the same person .
I started doing small-scale oil paintings and distorting them by cutting pieces out of the canvas and stitching other pieces on top . Once I realised that I wanted to improve my painting skills , I did a series of three paintings , each of them showcasing different perspectives of a face . My work then branched out into sculpture and printing , and I experimented with these processes to produce a range of outcomes , such as the series of black and white prints that become more distorted and haunting as the series continues . My process sometimes involved destroying my art , either by cutting up a canvas or dropping a clay bust I had sculpted , and the reassembly of the fragmented pieces altered the original outcome , distorting the face . After this break from oil painting , I decided I wanted to create much larger paintings , one of which I chose to focus on making colour stand out , and another where I went back to my original method of stitching pieces of canvas together to present the different sides of an individual .