Lucian Freud

Alright, getting back on track... One thing I plan to start doing is blogging about artists that I find inspiring. I will then add them to a list of artists, which will hopefully grow with time...that is if I can keep on track with my blog. 

Lucian Freud has recently become one of my favorite painters.  The majority of his work focuses on the nude, or at the very least portraiture. Using a thick impasto makes the paintings feel especially fleshy, which might make some people feel uneasy, but personally I find it makes them more intriguing and real.  Though his later works are mostly representational, he started out as a surrealist painter and in his 70's he started using him self as the subject matter in the nude, and not just models and people he knew. 

The raw texture with which he paints is not meant to discuss the human condition, or how we are in spite of our selves, but more to simply depict the actuallness of ourselves.  He does not depict the human figure as a transcendent being, but looks at people as just another object to depict. His sets for his paintings are rather simple, normally a couch or mattress on a wood floor with its human object set posed somewhere on the page. In regards to his palette his colors are just as raw and natural has the paintings themselves.  With the combination of color and style his paintings almost become two dimensional sculptures that you can easily get lost in. At first glance the corpse like figures are just figures, but as his work is considered you realize just how abstract they are.  Technically he is a realist painter, but his intention is known, they are just objects, and they take on a life of their own without actually becoming human, they are beautiful shapes brought together to make a solid composition. 

Currently most of my time is spent in ceramics, but I am still in search of what my work is meant to represent. As a painter I feel it is important to know what story you are trying to tell with your work (or what story your work is trying to tell you) which is something that Lucian Freud has clearly managed to accomplish.  I feel it is not only important to know what it is you want to say but knowing the right way to apply art to tell that story.  As a "novice" artist I am saturated with ideas but no real direction, something I hope to discern sometime within the next several years. Since my recent interest to Lucian Freud I've noticed that his mode of telling a story is something similar to what I wish to convey. But unlike Freud, I want to talk about the human condition, particularly in reference to how the self is in relation to the world around.  How do I stand up to the world? To time? To myself? Just a few things I wish to consider when telling my story.  Maybe wanting to use the direct relationship between my self and other things is to obvious, but some trial and error may help me to decide.