Reflective Log: Nottingham Trip Gallery Visit

Nottingham Contemporary

• Canvas's with threads overlaid. This is a unique way of creating texture on a close up look, and yet from a distance it looks like a flat painting. 

• The metal used here is shaped like a frame. Although this is only a small part of the piece of art, it was the most inspiring part of the exhibition. The discolouration of the metal is also quite good here, it fades from black to a reddy tone, and these are tones that I am intrigued by for my own metal work. 

Nottingham Castle Gallery

Matthlieu Leger,

• Nottingham Castle's newest Exhibition, 'Reportrait' features bringing portraiture into the modern day.  Above  is a Glitch Portrait by Matthlieu Leger, which looks as though an old painting has been digitally manipulated, but it's actually just paintwork.

Maisie Broadhead, 2016

• Work coming off the canvas. These photographs look like paintings from hundreds of years ago, yet you can tell they are made in 2016 from little signs such as the facial expression, crisp quality of image. 

Jake Wood Evans

• Abstract painting. Details in the brush strokes. 

Antony Micallef, Oil and Beeswax on French Linen

• Here the materials stood out to me. Beeswax to be used as a paint thickener is something I am really interested to try as I love the look of thick paint, it's something that's always inspired me due to the details created by the brush strokes, and the sculptural look of the paint itself.  
• Further Research http://www.antonymicallef.com
• Micallef focuses on portraiture and in many of his paintings the face particularly is blurred out with heavy paint. 
• Since this was in the exhibition which focuses on bringing portraiture into the contemporary era, it suggests that there is more a focus now within art for textures and materials, rather than photorealistic paintings and art that was more common in the past. 

Glenn Brown, 2014

• Close-up detail of Glenn Brown's painting. Whats interesting is the contrast between this piece and Antony Micallef's piece above, and how Brown's work is a realistic painting of the details within paint. 
• Capturing the brush strokes like this there is emphasis on brightness and contrast and tones within the paint and attention to detail is high. It's quite an interesting thing to paint details of paint at such quality, yet also have a slightly impressionistic look. 

Surface Gallery

Ahmed Rahman

• Surface Gallery had an exhibition on about street art, and I found the piece of art above by Ahmed Rahman the most inspiring to my practice, due to the textural marbling affect. 
• Creating something similar to this - with the details within paint or metal, in my work is what I am working towards now.