Self directed - research

When using gouache to paint over photos I have been interested in the colours and have started blocking out sections e.g. houses in large blocks of colours. This reminds me of the way houses and buildings were painted , the ancient greeks painted their buildings in red, blue and white colours, I also investigated camouflage painting of buildings during WW2 . During this research I bought a book in the National Gallery called The World in Colour in 1900 - it shows a huge variety of early photochrome pictures taken in the early 1900s - beautiful colours, I remember a lot of the colours from magazines when I was growing up - strong vibrant colours.
Another area of interest when in the National Gallery I saw the Louis Le Brocquy 1916 painting of a family all done in pastels mostly browns and creams - a very unsettling image and poignant image, the monotone colours interest me.

Self directed

I have been taking photographs which have been enlarged on photocopy paper, I originally used matt photograph paper but the inks ran a lot when painting over in gouache and caused difficulty in controlling the colours. Due to budget constraints I could only afford to have large prints on photocopy paper and I have been experimenting with different views.
As part of this personal project I went to the farm where my dad was born and took photos of the lake on the property, I had this enlarged in black and white A2 size after I had altered the print by creating a lot of black and white tones in photoshop before I got the image printed. That way the print was not too dark and the colours would be softer and more subtle.
I was happy with the way the painting turned out, due to it being photographed in February 2010 the predominant colour in the photograph was dark green, its great that by painting I can choose any colours I want and give a distinct and unusual look.

The next photograph I am painting is taken above the village of Newbliss and shows a beautiful tree in a field and in the background the family church belonging to the Kilmurray Family, the church is very old and has beautiful architecture. I have worked on some photos using photoshop to experiment with what the scene could look like.

Self directed - painting experiments

The reason for the trip to Newbliss in February 2010 was to take a new batch of photographs and compare them with the photos I took in 1981.The main focus for me was the main street where my Aunties house used to be, there is a petrol station at the spot , the house was knocked down in the 1990s and for years there was a large empty plot.
I bought a second hand film camera and took photos with it as well as a digital back up, just in case, I have had some disappointments in the past when using film and the opportunity to have a digital copy as well was wonderful.

Self directed painting workshop

The painting workshop was very interesting, lots of help and guidance. I decided to use a photo of myself as a child in Newbliss and to use acrylic paint to make a painting of it. I also then hand tinted a black and white photograph, the inks on the photograph were not absorbed due to the etching paper I used and a lot of blue came out of the photograph, it was challenging to get the colours, I just kept adding colour and seeing what worked, it took a lot of layers to create the effect I ended up with.

Some other photos are of paintings I did for the painting workshop, I enjoy painting but have a lot to learn, apparently it can take several decades to get proficient at painting, like life its the journey and not the destination that matters.

self directed photos Newbliss February 2010

Self directed - hand painted photos

Some photos which I hand painted, the two in the street are A2 size, the other is A3 and is of the church which belonged to what used to be the Murrayker Estate , Newbliss was an estate town in the past. The last of the Murrayker family died in the 1950s. Their estate house used to be at the top of the hill in the photos, all that was left in the 1980 was some ruins.
I visited Newbliss in February 2010 as part of this project and took some photos using Digital as well as Film media, the estate house ruins are gone, the stones were used to build other houses.

self directed - Marion Post Wolcott

The book a photographic journey shows photos taken by Marion Post Wolcott during 1930 and 1940 in America, the people on the cover are affluent, the car hints at the journey taken by the photographer, she photographed rich and poor showing the contracts of their lifestyles.

Marion Post Wolcott worked for the Farm Security Administration from 1938 to 1941.
Some of the photographs in this book are of people working in the fields, others show the wealthy and their world.The contrast is disturbing.

Self directed research - Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean deals with memory and time in this image, trying to capture the elusiveness of memory and the moment.

Self directed - research Victor Sloan

I discovered Victor Sloan paints on photographs and makes striking images using everyday photographs and then making them look surreal and strange. As I am hand painting photographs I was interested to discover Victors work, it is very unsettling.

Self directed - experiment and research

I was at an antique fair and bought a postcard of Dun Laoghaire taken in 1903, very interesting photograph showing Victoria Parade and the Royal Yacht Club with the pier just visible in the distance. I decided to recreate that very photograph by taking a photograph of the very same scene today 100 years later.
It was fascinating trying to get the line of sight correct and to take the photograph with todays traffic , I got fairly close to the original spot as can be seen from the new photographs, I decided to print one of the photos in black and white to see if that made a difference.
This was a test to see if a local experiment would work out. I am arranging a trip to Newbliss and will try to recreate photos from the same viewpoint as the original 1980 ones.

Self directed

I decided to make black and white prints of Newbliss old photos and to paint them in gouache, an experiment to see how colour can change an ordinary photograph, I always like seeing houses painted particularly in mediterranean countries they look so interesting not just dull grey or red stone or cement. Colour makes them so bright and cheerful. ~These photos are just A4 size very small, need to print larger photos and try different papers.

Self directed old photos of Newbliss

The work of early photographers remind me of my early years in the village of Newbliss in County Monaghan where I lived as a young child. I have wonderful memories of the village and the garden of the house where I lived was a wonderful place for a young child with orchards rockeries and even a well which used to terrify me particularly when my Auntie used to get a bucket of water from it and remove the lid! I have some photos of newbliss which I took in the early 1980s and decided to use them for my self directed project - revisiting memories and the journeys to newbliss as a child. My love of nature and bright colours came from my childhood in Newbliss.

Self directed - new direction january 2010

After the assessment I was stuck what direction to take with the work. I decided to go to the beginning and discover why I like photographs and colours, my earliest inspiration was the work of Ansel Adams whose black and white photographs of nature always inspired me. Edward S. Curtis's photographs of Native Americans in the 1890 and early 1900 were always fascinating to me, they were always such sad and solitary photographs of a vanishing lifestyle.



The photographs above the one on the left Edward S. Curtis, the one on the right Ansel Adams.

PAULINE DUFFY - RESEARCH PROJECT FURTHER PHOTOGRAPHS

I have been working with black and white photographs and started printing them on different papers, bought museum quality etching paper, sugar cane paper, photo rag paper and photo pearl paper and started printing in black and white, what a difference compared to ordinary matt photo paper, the print just sinks into the image, when I then paint over the images with gouache paint the difference is more noticeable. I have discovered that some of the black and white images look so good on the better quality paper that I dont want to paint over them!  What I have done is keep a black and white pristine copy and printed another copy which I have painted over so the comparison is more noticeable, I attach herewith an original colour photo taken in St. Stephens Green, I also attach a black and white copy and two photographs which I have painted over, each image is so different and yet it is the same image, this demonstrates what I wanted, showing how by painting I can alter an image so that each image is different and yet because I paint them rather than using photoshop to enhance them I feel there is more personal input into each image.  The most interesting discovery for me has been how amazing some of the images are in black and white particularly when using some of the heavier photograph papers, the images have an olde worlde quality and could have been taken a century ago, this seems to be because the density of the papers museum etching is 350gsm and photo rag 320gsm .

Pauline Duffy December 2009

PAULINE DUFFY - RESEARCH BASED PROJECT

Photography has always been my favourite subject, I found a photograph at my home taken in the 1950s which had been hand-tinted, I decided to investigate this area as I like the idea of combining photography and painting to create unusual images. I took a range of photography with particular interest in the subject matter, something I knew I would be colouring with paints or inks. I printed photographs on black and white matt paper and then painted by hand using gouache paints, I also tried inks and oil paints but did not like the result of the inks or oils, the colours were too strong and also the gouache gives a hint of the image underneath which the oil paints and inks were covering up. I attach some examples, one photograph of a bottle stall I only painted in the bottles and left the rest of the photograph black and white, it looks more interesting that way. The original colour of the stall and the background were very strong colours, the black and white I felt made the image much better. The other photographs are fully painted in gouache, I attach the black and white and the painted versions for comparison.

Pauline Duffy
Unable to post any photographs at the moment, it just does not work, frustrating I am not very computer literate, sorry about that, will try again later.

trying to post now - fingers crossed! Thanks for your help Val.