Before I started A new painting which I could then create Into a Sculpture, I decided to go back and see what I could do with one of my previous paintings I had created. I wasn’t too pleased with the shapes that were beginning to be formed, so After this little practice I decided to move on.
I created a Painting Based on my previous art practices looking at my drawings and paintings based on my sound waves, and also looking at the sound waves themselves. one thing that came to mind was how will people know that this is a ‘Casper’ work? what makes this different to any other artists out there? how can I bring something different to the Art world? so I thought about one thing that makes me different to many in this world, my culture.
I got the Idea to somehow portray aspects of my culture through my work, although I have little knowledge about it perhaps I could find something within it that can be incorporated into my work that I feel is relevant to my understanding of it. So in this painting practice I decided to mainly focus on the brush strokes to be ‘wavy’, taking the Symbols from the flag of Kiribati (the waves) and introducing it throughout the painting.
I felt that this brought ‘ME’ into the art work, as I feel that the flag from where my ancestors reside is unique. Yes, I know it’s obvious that all flags are unique as they have to be in order to represent different countries, but I feel that the people of Kiribati chose not to stick to a boring old flag that consisted of stars, squares and vertical stripes and such but chose to create a simple image instead of an arrangement of symbols.
Yes some might find it tacky as it just looks like a sunset on the sea and a bird flying above it, but who said a flag couldn’t be created just as a picture? What’s wrong with doing something different to everyone else? It still has meaning behind it and to me I felt it took guts to come up with this style of flag,I love the idea of ‘going against the grain’ therefore explains why I chose to incorporate it within my painting.
The Initial painting was going to create a single form based on the sound waves representing the ‘whales song’, the idea was to find out exactly what the whale was singing about. I could of come up with some random subject that could play off peoples emotions but I myself felt like I still had no clue what the whale in the original video was trying to say, and then came up with the idea to paint “NOTHING.”
A representation of my understanding of the whale at this point of my creative process and also bringing up The idea of ‘Eternal Nothingness.’ I myself believe that my spirit will move on to another place, not really heaven or hell but some new world of some sort just because I believe that there has to be something out there beyond this life that I live. I believe that our spirits live forever, so I guess I’m more of a spiritual person. The reason that this information about myself is relevant is because In this painting practice I was trying to get into the mind of an atheist, I’m not sure if thats the right name for the type of person I was trying to portray but I was merely meaning someone who thinks ‘when your dead your dead, and nothing more. no heaven no hell, no living in darkness, just lost in absolute nothingness.’
The reason I chose to paint eternal nothingness to relate to atheists and to express how terrifying this idea is (and how much that would suck), I could of painted my work just completely black or completely white to represent nothing but people could identify the black or white painting as a painting that was painted Black or White, (I hope that makes sense) what Im trying to say is that people can identify the painting as ‘something’ for it is a ‘black’ or ‘White’ square as the painted on material becomes the subject matter. My painting is supposed to be unrecognisable not being identified as anything, but I found that there is a bit of a contradiction with what I just said previously as my painting can be identified as a bunch of squiggly colours but, It still is something that you can’t recognise and the way that I have painted it pulls away from the focus of the shape of the material its been painted on becoming its own form, becoming the ‘Not-shape’ as I like to call it.
The reason I focussed on atheists is because they believe in eternal nothingness, so they believe when whales die they are brought to eternal nothingness. And they are being sent there at an alarming rate, and it is quite possible that they will become extinct and become ‘nothing’ in our living world, and thats heartbreaking. so this painting is just emphasising just how precious life is, if you believe that there is no ‘next life’ you would know just how important life is for whales and every living being on this earth. whales aren’t harming the earth, we humans are so why do we need to kill whales for? like its understandable that humans need to eat meat to survive and so do other carnivores, but theres so much other kinds of animals we can use to feed ourselves.
Thats the things that were going through my head whilst painting this image, maybe theres intelligent reasons why they need to get wiped of the face of the earth, but I’m a simple guy and understanding how important whales are to this world seemed simple enough.
I based the shapes of new clay Maquette’s from the ‘Eternal Nothingness’ painting, and also from my previous works (paintings, drawings, Maquette’s etc. anything based on the sound waves of the whale). After I had made these clay forms I wasn’t too sure what to do next, I couldn’t fire them as they had bits of plaster in them as I was using recycled clay and would explode inside the kiln, and the last thing I wanted to happen is all my hard work just blow up in my face (wink wink) and have to start again. So I did a bit of research and found a New Zealand artist by the name of Jeff Thomson, who created sculptures out of corrugated Iron. What interested me was that he painted some of his sculptures so that gave me the Idea to paint my Marquette’s.
I was incorporating elements of my painting into the shape of my Maquette’s so I got the idea to bring the actual painting into the Maquette’s also. One thing that I found interesting was That since The Maquette’s I created were already wavy, the brush strokes I used on my Maquette’s could stay straight as possible as this would bring the idea of how the painting can change shape as it is morphed and manipulated.
I got the Idea to create a representation of taking a snapshot of my mind turning my ‘Eternal Nothingness’ painting into a 3D object. I had the Idea that its like I’ve physically pulled the paint off the wall and then allowed it to stand and then got me to thinking of a new idea. This time the viewer of the piece will be picturing themselves as an artist, who’s been so successful with every idea they’ve come up with and art work they’ve produced and then they’ve come up with a new idea that they think is important to share but its not accepted and shunned from the art world. The usage of a shape thats been pulled off the wall represents the idea of an artists artwork being ripped out of a gallery, to an artist this can be a painful process and is quite possible for one to lose motivation to continue making art. To an Artist making art is your living, so its like you’ve lost motivation for ‘living’, which is an over exaggeration of this idea of rejection but what I’m trying to say is my Marquette’s are trying to symbolise pain.
what else feels pain? what else has been feeling rejected? whales, for goodness sake!! they are being ripped out of the sea and killed to be eaten or even just for sport. And they mean no harm they are just trying to live their lives just like an artist who is just trying to create,I’m trying to make people empathise with the whales putting them in situations that they can relate to. I also am trying to express the Idea that humans aren’t humans and whales aren’t animals, they are both the same thing humans and whales are living beings that should treat each other fairly.
Originally I thought that my clay Maquette’s where going to be standing from the ground up, but after painting them and getting the ideas from painting the sculpture made me think that it could be presented on the wall since its a representing of a morphed ‘painting’ which is usually presented on a wall.
So after all these random ideas came to mind I found that these works are about a whale describing ‘the feeling of eternal nothingness’ in the form of a song. I enjoyed this experiment very much so I think the next step is having another go And see what Ideas I can come up with.
Cass Get Da Muneez 