A comparison between my work and the work of Cy Twombly.

Recently, I have been looking at Cy Twombly’s body of work as I like the kind of marks and textures that he manages to achieve in his work. I have been wanting to create a piece of work that mimics his kind of marks and textures in order to convey my theme across to the viewers. I wanted to use his marks to show chaos and pain in my piece to illustrate the fact that I am against animal cruelty and that it is barbaric and inhuman.

            To start off with, I used red acrylic paint to create small experiments that showed different marks and textures. I placed the paper upright as this would allow me to paint with more control and I was able to paint in a similar way to Cy Twombly. I managed to complete six different experiments that had different textures and marks. I thought that the most successful experiments were the ones that were freer and less controlled as this allowed me to acquire a more chaotic outcome. This was similar to Twombly’s work as although some of his pieces appear childlike, the marks are also energetic and uncontrolled. I really liked the techniques that involved using a dry brush and the splatting technique. I thought that these allowed me to convey my message successfully and effectively. However, I think that some of the marks were very basic which is why I then went on to develop them and create more interesting pieces that resembled the style of Twombly’s work.

            I was able to combine my favourite outcomes from the initial experiments to create more powerful and interesting artworks. I thought that there was a lot of depth created in some of these experiments as the differentiation in tone created an almost 3-D form. I thought that the most successful development was the one where I used a dry brush technique in the background and then splatted paint on top of the dry brush layer. The layer of dry brush created the impression of pain, stress and chaos as the rough, dry texture made me think of scratches (of something trying to escape). I then liked how the splats created the idea of blood of an animal; I think this strengthens the power of the piece and shows the pain and torment that an animal would feel when being abused by its owner. After having witnessed the effects of animal abuse, this is what I took from the situation and I want other people to understand the repercussions of animal cruelty. However, I wanted to develop my work further and see whether ink would allow me to get more contrast in marks and tone in order to recreate the style of Cy Twombly’s work.

            I started off by making some initial experiments with red ink and seeing whether I can get the same marks, textures and tones as Twombly did in his pieces. However, I got the same result as before; the best techniques involved splatting and using a dry brush. This is why I then went on to combine these to see if I could get the same amount of depth as I could with the acrylic paint. I think that by layering the ink, I could achieve a high amount of depth and I think that this resembled Twombly’s work more than the acrylic experiments as he layered his work to show depth. However, I think that it didn’t show enough texture as there was nothing coming out from the page; I wanted the splats to appear like they were still dripping, even when they were dry. Therefore, I went on to combining different materials together to achieve the right amount of depth, contrast in marks and the right texture.

            As a result of combining some materials (for example: acrylic paint, ink, PVA glue and water), I was able to find out what materials work best together to get the best possible outcome for each layer. The best combination for the dry brush technique included, red acrylic paint, PVA glue, black ink and a small amount of red ink. This allowed me to get the right consistency to show how rough and chaotic animal cruelty is. The fact that I have combined materials, means that my artist link has been strengthened as Twombly also combined some materials. As I wanted the texture to be rough, I didn’t put a lot of PVA glue in the mixture as this makes the dry outcome shiny – this is not what I wanted. After having found this out, I then went on to combining the mediums again to see what was the best to create the splatting technique. The best outcome included, red acrylic, red ink and PVA glue. I used a lot of PVA glue as I wanted the dry outcome to appear shiny and to resemble fresh blood. I think that the consistency helped the paint to drip and it also showed a lot of contrast in marks, even though some of them were accidental. However, I think that some of Twombly’s marks were also accidental which is why my work resembles his.

            Finally, I created a final outcome of those techniques and combinations that I thought were the most successful. I really liked the outcome of this as I think it showed a lot of variety in marks, tone and texture. Despite the fact that some of them are controlled, they are still quite free and accidental, which is similar to the marks that Cy Twombly uses in his work. The dry brush technique illustrated a lot of chaos, frustration and pain which is something that I wanted to show in my work. Whilst the splatting technique resembled dripping blood which conveyed the idea of torment and mistreatment of the animals (this will be reinforced by the depiction of a cat that will be on top of this piece).