Tabby Peters
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by people; through writing stories, reading, or creating art, I have tried to capture intrinsic emotive depth that lies beneath physical appearances. During the IB, I have scrutinised this notion in my Philosophy course, trying to underpin what it is that make us human. Therefore, my immediate objective upon starting IB Art was to capture people and through doing so, portray something beyond empiricism: human phenomenological significance.
During the process, I have had the opportunity to experiment with many different mediums, such as sculpture and etchings. I was intrigued by how I could use different techniques to experiment with texture, believing texture holds the potential for reflecting poignant conceptual depth. For instance, one of my oil paintings features a woman gazing vacantly out of her portrait. She appears lost in her own world, pining for something that once was. I used strips of fabric and fabric hardener to make sections of her shirt and hair jut out of the canvas. Additionally, I used spontaneous strokes of colour throughout. These irregularities of texture contribute towards a broader understanding of the woman’ s internal emotional depth.
Throughout the process, I focused on the theme of memory, communicating this through the phantom-like convergence between the figure and the backdrop, particularly inspired by the eerie photography of Francesca Woodman. I emphasised the background in several works to suggest how much sentimental value a place holds for memory, particularly the memory of a loved one. I captured people of different ages to demonstrate the strain on a person’ s physical appearance time asserts in comparison to the perpetual emotional quality that lies beneath.