Workshop with Gareth Proskourine-Barnett

We were given a task to create a visual about our research, however touching upon a different perspective. It was really difficult at first because I wasn't too sure on what direction to go as I felt that I have explored my research quite thoroughly. However, after talking to Gareth , I realised that I was overlooking possibly the most interesting phrase in my research,

"The Language of Flowers". I began by looking at typefaces and how I can incorporate letters into my flower paintings and decided to do this piece.

I was happy with the way it turned out , how the letter flowed and how delicate the letter came out. I also really liked how the letter is partially concealed by the plants surrounding it. I wanted the letter to be partially hidden as the meaning of flowers have become a tradition forgotten in time therefore unless the person actively looks up the meaning of the flower, the meaning usually won't be brought up in conversation. However, due to not planning on making a letter from the plants when I first started the painting therefore I did not feel like the composition worked well. The painting, due to the letter being closer to the left edge, looked unbalanced and inorganic therefore I decided to create another one. Furthermore, I also wanted to see what the difference was if I were to indeed make the letter very obvious with only negative space surrounding it.

After completing this letter, I am really happy that now I get to compare both layouts side to side and I felt that in this context, this way of displaying the letters have to potential to lend itself very well to my work as it combines both letters and plants. However, like the last one, due to trying too hard to construct a letter with plants, the plants ended up looking inorganic.

Even after the workshop ended, I still wanted to try and combine the things I have learnt through trial and error and create a letter that I felt was just right and I think I have finally done it. I decided to place the letter towards the centre this time and without trying too hard, slowly try and built a letter from placing and layering plants of different sizes. I also noticed that in previous pieces, due to trying to make the letter come out symmetrical , often I will forget and paint plants slanted or at an angle witch causes them to look inorganic therefore in this piece, I try to think of the letter less and try harder to draw the stems vertical. I also decided to surround the letter with plants in order to sort of blend it in with the background and not have it too obvious.

This was a very beneficial exercise for me as I tend to look over small details that may potentially be very important and focus on the general narrative and so this exercise has taught me too look deeper into the context and find some narratives that I, may not think is important, but may be very interesting .