An Evening at Home

An Evening at Home Series

  In the final term I worked on a series of paintings called 'A Evening at Home'. It is a series involving four pieces, each one constructed with four to five canvases and is showing the actions of my family on a different hour of the same day, and each canvas a separate room in the house.  My aim was to capture an atmosphere and sense of a family and their daily routine over a everyday night. The focus would be drawn to a particular room by using the tonal techniques I'd developed over the last year. What I wanted most in this series was to involve the audience and make them feel as if they know my family and have spent an evening together.

Surreal mock up

   I made an extensive mock up for the entire series, working out which scenes I wanted to select and what combinations. At first I thought I would simple use a single canvas per hour before realizing how much fluid I could be with the series structure. More than that, how much more flexibility a room per canvas layout would allow me. With this in mind I painted a mock trial, to size on wooded panels. Once this was completed I photographed all, laying with different room combinations.
  Again subtly alluded me. The tonal balance is a bit clumsy and the colours are not vibrant enough.  The idea of the actual series I still like and want to spend more time doing, possible with daylight house series as well as night time. This teach me a hell of a lot about using tone and colour to convey different types of light.

Mock up for dinner loft scene

 

    While exhibiting this piece I noticed how slowly people walked along it, and how closely they stood to the canvas. The size of the work makes them more intimate and draws them closer. It is something to consider when deviding on the size of canvas for the painting. Big = impressive and enveloping and small = intimate and inviting.

 

9:00 pm