Projects 2 transcription + response

 

Transportation: 

Lisa Milroy is an Anglo-Canadian artist known for her still life paintings of everyday objects. She documents her household objects, frequently arranged in rows or patterns on top of the plain backgrounds. She also produces a lot of different paintings like portraits, landscapes and buildings but in her recent work, most notably her series of objects Milroy finds inspiration for her works in cinematography, particularly in the soap opera genre and this romanticism conveys a sense of mood and tenderness. This can be traced in her works, from the application of materials to the colours that she chooses. Her ideology is that “What surrounds you is yourself” and in the objects that she chooses, she shows herself as a person through her work. 

Lisa Milroy’s drawings are generally in acrylic and watercolour paint. After seeing her art it is easy to notice the lack of background colour. She prefers to give attention entirely to the physical object so as not to distract the viewer. Also I want to mention the size of her work, they are usually 17,6 × 22,65 cm (unframed). The interesting part of the process of producing her works is that the artist seeming intent on documenting (takes a photo or draws a sketch) every object around her and chooses the ones she likes the most and the lowest in spirit, only after that she produces a drawing. Often, chosen objects have a simple form. 

Her style of drawing reminds me some pop art motives namely, over lining an item with black paint / marker. The lines of her drawing are flexible, curved, controlled and a perfect combination of thin and thick. 

To bring a more realistic look to her drawings she uses a variation of colours and tones. In 2004 she gave an interview to Tate Modern where she said that she prefers to add her own view to the painting and often changes the colours of the objects or adding extra ones, because she feels it seems more complicated what I am admiring. She tends to use tertiary, complementary colours and tones of muted colours. 

In my opinion each of Lisa Milroy’s work is unique and each of them has a particular meaning and mood. I can see how it is important for the artist not to lose the sense of form and not to lose volume of the object, but she doesn’t show any sense of texture perhaps disguised by adding highlights. The light source achieves a realistic look which can be seen in the piece above. 

Response: 

For my response to Lisa Milroy’s work, I took a photo of the stapler with the “collection” of pins because it relates to my theme of everyday objects which surround me, this matches Milroy's inspiration for her work. I used 3 mediums to make the response quite realistic and have a specific mood which is important when you are responding to the work artist like Lisa Milory. The style in which I produced my piece shows my interpretation inspired by the artist work. 

I brought my work to life with a variety of tones and colours linking to Milroy as she has used a wide palette of colours and tones within her work. This helps to create a particular mood within the drawing. I used acrylic paint as Lisa Milroy did in her works. To outline relevant parts of the objects and at the same time add volume to it and give my drawings a sense of shape. I experimented with the black marker. Highlights on the objects was added to my pice to further connect to the style of the artist giving it a more realistic look.