Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

 Auguste Renoir This painting by Renoir is a strong depiction of euro-centric female beauty standards of the era, with Venus-like red hair and 'fair' skin. Though the subject has the body of a mature woman, with a draping loose top to show this off, her face appears very juvenile with rosy cheeks and soft features, I think this is quite telling about men's ideas of the perfect woman at the time - submissive and innocent like a child, but with a sort of maternal quality. This is emphasised by the delicately painted flowers which symbolise fertility, and her hands look really small and dainty, suggesting Renoir has taken certain liberties with the anatomy according to his own ideas of beauty. This contemporary example of art about women is by the Guerrilla Girls, who challenge the norms of female representation in the art world. They create factual, graphic designs with block colour which have a straight forward message that is difficult to argue with, especially since they i

Richard Long's work is about the process of walking in the outdoors. He gathers and presents words relating to these journeys, rather than creating images of what he can see on the walk - the text provides us with fragmented information which we string together to form a unique image in our minds. I think the list format gives the work a balanced structure because it sets a pace to the way we read it, which is one step at a time, reflecting the walking process. The marks in the background create an organic pattern like waves or a flowing river, fingerprints in the mud or contours in the sand - it feels really earthly and contrasts with the font of the text which is not in a hand-written or natural style. Personally I don't feel very inspired by this work but I think it's still a good example of process art where the outcome is not what we would expect from the artist's journey. It also brings into question what difference it makes if he really did do the walk or made it

Ilya Kabakov collects large numbers of everyday objects and reconfigures them in groups. The way they are classified by type makes it seem informative and purposeful like a factual museum collection, showing how the context of objects can elevate or make them special; if the objects were displayed in the artists home or a domestic space they may be perceived as nothing extraordinary. This shot of his works reminds me of a car-boot sale or second hand shop, I think it questions where we draw the line between trash and treasure, and the way we like to hoard things throughout our lives - an everyday object might have personal meaning or memories attached but from anyone else's perspective it's just a lifeless thing.  Mike Kelley, More Love Hours Than Can be Repaid This piece by Mike Kelley is a collaged blanket made up of hand knitted toys and objects gathered from charity shops; I find this piece really powerful because each thing was once handmade as a gift to a loved one and ha

I'm quite interested in Lord Byron's relationship with animals and how this compares to the Taino Peoples beliefs that animals and the landscape are sacred entities inhabited by deities and ancestors. I drew lots of ideas for motifs depicting Byron's pet dogs and bear, as potential imagery to put on my ceramics or make into prints. I chose two designs that I liked best and tested them out as little Lino prints.   The face of this dog design is taken from a detail on the Taino gold figure pendant that I looked at in my research - In these next images, I have made rubbings of the Lino cuts that I made, including dog, bear and mahogany leaf motifs, which show all the marks made by cutting the Lino away at the edges. I noticed that they kind of looked like tiles and decided to do these pieces where I have made different arrangements of them and experimented with contrasting black and red. I like how you can see all the relief lines because they have a sense of energy and give t

  I love how the glaze turned out on my dug clay pot, there are so many earthy tones and the grittiness of the clay shows through really strongly, it has the raw, organic look that I was hoping for and I wasn't expecting it to have the green-ness that it does so that was a good surprise. the clay also has a nice gradient where it has 'toasted' from being fired twice and this is adds to the multi-tonality of the piece. I think it will stand out in Newstead Abbey because there is a lot of very eccentric pottery and china throughout the rooms, it's all very polished and flashy so my pieces contrast with this kind of maximalism associated with the rich and powerful. The glaze looks totally different on the white earthenware clay, it's really subtle and reminds me of vanilla ice cream with the little speckles and warm off-white colour. I don't think it is as effective as on the dug clay because it lacks contrast and doesn't really catch the eye because of how sub

To begin with I returned to the location where I dug my clay and gathered a bag full of fallen branches that appeared to be from the large oak tree that bridges the river. There wasn't enough time to let them dry out so it took a while to get the fire going, but eventually the wood stove got hot enough and they burnt really easily. Once the ashes cooled down I bagged them up and took them to college. In the ceramics room, we referred to the cone list and this book to find a suitable recipe for the glaze, and worked out the measurements. I had to sieve the ashes, first to remove the big chunks, then through a finer mesh to make a really clean powder, then all I had to do was measure out the other stuff and mix it together. It made a really nice grey glaze that dried out nicely after applying it to some earthenware test pieces and my clay bowl, but the colour it will be when it has been fired is a mystery which is really exciting.

I went to the ceramics room to test out my clay, and James threw this pot which worked really nicely and has lots of different tones running through it and I made a rough pinch pot. After they were fired they came out a light orange a bit like terracotta, and the thrown pot has lots of red streaks of iron which I think look really good and highlight the rawness of the material used to make it, as well as the gritty texture.   , 

One of the photos documenting my clay process was a picture of me holding two pieces of clay to show the colour comparison between a more iron-rich one and a greyer one. The lighting wasn't very good so we decided to re-shoot this at college in a few different locations from the basement rooms to outside the fire doors in front of a graffiti covered wall. The original photo In the ceramics room Outside I like the pictures that were taken outside because the lighting is colder and gives a natural representation of the clay as there is no artificial light, also creating a sharper image. I think the composition of the picture makes it look like I'm holding something really special even though it's just lumps of clay, it's like the viewer is being presented with an offering.