Sustained Investigation #2

REFLECTION:

As with my last piece, my main goal of this was to show the role of female nurses in WWI as well as emphasize their importance. Style is very dependent on the era that the group or person I am attempting to represent is from, so composition is very important to me in being my main tool to convey the stories of these people. Because of this, I spent a lot of time in my sketchbook planning the different elements, making sure that I had an explanation for all of my choices whether it be background, placement of characters, expression, etc. After I had decided on my composition, I got to do a lot of research into the art during the Great War. It was very interesting to see the effect that the war had on artists and the art that they made—in looking at the art, the elements that stood out to me the most were the dark colors and the uncertain, distressed tone to the general body of work produced during the 1910s. What came through almost all of these war-era paintings were the distinct sadness that each of them emulated, and I wanted to capture that in this painting with the dark color of the background (which was also in part to serve the purpose of emphasizing the nurse), the sad expression on the nurse’s face, and the tense body language of each of the characters. Oil paints were a medium that was used frequently which led to my medium choice. As the nurse stands behind each of the soldiers, often prioritized and learned about in history, she struggles to carry the weight of the war that she, and many other women, were not prepared to be on the front lines for.  

This piece required a lot of experimentation as I was, and still am, very unfamiliar with oil paints and how to properly use them. They were very different to acrylics and it was difficult to deal with the fact that, unlike acrylics, they actually did not dry. Because of this, it took a lot of patience and revising to make sure I got things to look how I wanted, specifically the nurse’s face which I ended up revising many times so that she looked somewhat alive. I also spent a lot of time practicing and solidifying my ideas in my sketchbook so that everything was clear in my final piece.

It was definitely a very interesting, exciting experience to use oil paints for the first time in a way that was not simply experimentation. Since acrylic paints were not widely used by artists until the 1960s, I will most likely end up returning to oil painting at some point. In addition to medium, I felt really good about the amount of planning I did for this piece as it helped me to have something to return to when painting and make sure that all of my ideas were well thought out and had a purpose. I would like to keep the same amount of planning with my other pieces to ensure that their meaning is solid and is able to come across to people. For my next piece, I have been doing a lot of research on the Abortion Caravan, women who rode from Vancouver to Ottawa in protest of the legislature that outlawed abortion in Canada. Although I grew up in Canada and feel as though I like to keep aware of these historical movements, especially on issues that are very relevant today, I had no idea that there was even such a big pro-choice movement in Canada. I think it would be especially interesting to make a piece about these women as, although they were responsible for the first Parliament shutdown in Canadian history, they are rarely talked about as abortion was not completely legalized until twenty years later. In looking at these women I would also get the chance to explore Canadian art which, from what I have seen, is very expressive in color and style.