I'm a reject

Yesterday was a grand day, as it brought me two rejection emails!
One was for the residency in Turku that I applied for, and the other was for a London based competition/exhibition I entered. It's obviously a shame, but I can't say I'm overly surprised, especially with the residency in Finland. It's an occupational hazard, so I'm not going to dwell on it too much.
I'm constantly looking for new opportunities, so I have applied for plenty of other competitions and open calls. I'm very eager to look at other residency opportunities abroad, as travelling is also something that's big in my life. A couple of months ago I was looking into a residency in Dublin, but decided it wasn't suitable, and have also seriously looked into an opportunity in Germany. I think today I'll be scouring the internet looking for suitable residencies and working on my two commissioned portraits.
The good news at the moment is that this week Yeliz and I have been really working on putting our exhibition together. There has been a lot of procrastinating with this for various reasons, and a few setbacks, but now we're both determined to just get on with it. I'm sure it's not going to be completely straightforward from now on, but we're working on it. Originally we hoped to have this done by now; unfortunately that didn't happen, but things are thankfully developing now.

Update/Evaluation

As promised, I can now say what I've been doing with the piece I'm currently working on!

I decided to leave it outside for a week to become weathered and affected by the elements. For example, being battered by wind, bleached by strong sunlight, or saturated by rain. My rationale was that the majority of people are born perfect, with no scars or bruises, physically and mentally. As you go through life your experiences affect you and you end up with all manner of scars and bruises. When I paint, I strive to create something perfect, so allowing it to become weathered and damaged over a period of time was an analogy to going through life and being affected by your experiences.

I intended to leave it for a week, and then use embroidery as normal, possibly as a means of repair. Unfortunately, there has been no extreme weather at all during the past week, so doing this seems to have had no effect on the painting. One day I came home to find it had been knocked over and slightly soaked during an afternoon of wind and rain, but this didn't really alter the piece permanently. I think this is one of the only times I've ever wished for bad weather.
Because of this, I'm going to leave the work out for longer. Unfortunately I cannot say how long I will need to do this for as I'm entirely dependent on the weather. I think I just need to be patient and hope that there's a storm soon.
In the meantime I've got a few other things to work on, including two new commissions. Hopefully I'll see some results with this piece soon. Today I will also be sending off my residency application to Titanik gallery in Turku!

The old and the new

This is the final piece from my body of work on my time in Finland, featuring stereotypical English phrases translated into Finnish. Selected pieces will be shown in central London from June 8th.

I've already moved onto new things, working with the themes of self-examination and the conflict between public and private lives. This work will centre around a list of 50 little known facts about myself, confronting the viewer with them, and questioning how much information is too much. The viewer might react with interest, shock or disgust at finding out these facts. I'm expecting to show some work on these themes at an upcoming show in July.

New work to end this

I'm getting started on a new piece, which will be the final part of my body of work on my time in Finland. I've really enjoyed making this body of work, and I'm proud of what I've done, but I feel like it's time to move on. When I started this work the experience was really fresh for me, but now six months have passed and other concerns have come up for me which I'd like to work with.
Recently my work has become concerned with human experience, not just relationships, and I think the new piece is more reflective of this. I'm very interested in language, and whilst I was away I was very keen to learn and speak as much Finnish as possible. Even now I still try to keep practising with it. In London it's very normal to hear foreign languages around you, so I didn't find it too daunting to be surrounded by the Finnish language. Finnish is such a minority language that few people are familiar with it, so I thought it would be really interesting to confront my audience with it, allowing them to share my experience of being surrounded by it. I think it will be easy for an audience to relate to this piece, as viewers have likely had the same experience whilst on holiday abroad, or may have lived abroad themselves.
I've chosen to embroider a variety of stereotypical English phrases and concepts, translated into Finnish. The image is of a trial piece I did yesterday, reading "cup of tea". I'll provide a handwritten board with translations, otherwise no one will get the joke of the two cultures being mashed together, unless a Finnish speaker happens to see the work.
For this piece I'm using a style more reflective of handwriting than the block capitals I used previously. This adds to the human element.
I think my exhibition will provide a strong feel of my Finnish experience, and I'm very glad that I'm able to share this with others.
Additionally, I'm currently applying for an artist's residency in Turku for Autumn 2013. I might be back sooner than I think!

Postcard/philosophy piece

I had an extremely busy and productive weekend whilst visiting my parents. I completed this piece, which I am so excited about, and was kindly assisted by my mother, who cut out all the pictures.
The premise is a 2000 word original philosophical text, presented in a visual way to be shown alongside my other exhibition pieces. I wrote about the nature of distance and separation, and it's effect upon relationships, as this is very relevant to my life and work. Originally I wanted to write the text onto postcards from Finland. However, the tourist postcards I found in Turku at Christmas cost €3 each, and as I used 30 postcards for this that would have amounted to €90 in total, plus I didn't particularly like any of the available options. Instead, I used blank postcards and printed some of my own images that I took during my time in Finland. Another advantage of this approach is that the imagery is much more personal to me, and will allow the viewer a better understanding of my personal experience. There is a huge variety of different images in this piece, including a photo of my old house in Turku, images of public artworks that were part of the Capital of Culture programme, and pictures of places that I particularly loved.
Finally, I stitched the cards together to form a very long concertina. The cards can be flipped over to read the text or look at the picture. The finished work, when completely laid out, was the same length as my parent's living room! I'm still considering how to present this work in an exhibition space, but I'm keen on the idea of laying it out as it is in the above picture, probably on a table.
I really love this piece, and feel it successfully shows more of my experience in Finland. This week I'll be working on an embroidered map I started last week of the subjects in the portraits, and the connections we have amongst ourselves.

Starting something new

I've decided to begin something new within my work, but I've been so busy doing it that I've only just remembered to write about it!
I've now completed 6 portraits, which I'm happy with, and it would be a good idea to have something slightly different to go alongside it. Working on something new is convenient now, because I had a subject for another portrait, but I wasn't sure who to use after that. I wanted each portrait to be of someone significant, who played a big part in my life in Finland, rather than choosing people I'd only met once or twice just because I needed a subject. I can think of a couple of people I might like to work on if I decide to make some more of these portraits, but after that I might end up scraping the barrel.
Recently I'd also started thinking more about memories I have of my time in Turku, and memories of the people in my work. This, and the use of my friends as subjects, relates to the idea of my internal world, and my domestic life.
I had an idea of filling a bag or envelope with pieces of paper on which my memories are written. Someone can take out a memory and read it. This worked well in my sketchbook, but I'm uncomfortable with doing this in a gallery setting, as there is a risk of theft. I don't want my work, or my memories, to be stolen.
I hit on the idea of embroidering a surface with the memories I have of the people in the portraits, colour coding the sentences to correspond to each image. Embroidery is traditionally a feminine, domestic act, but this is not highly important in my work. What's more important is that the embroidery will be consistent with the portraits. The surface I'll be using is a blanket I got on a night train in Norway, when I was on holiday. The blanket is too thin to be of real use to me now, plus it provides symbolism. It is an object that I acquired during my time away from England, even if it didn't actually come from Finland.
I feel that the blanket piece could still be considered as a portrait - a portrait of me. I think that your experiences and memories shape you, and make you who you are, and all of these memories and events have formed me and my life today. In a way, this piece puts me alongside my friends.
I'm planning to start sewing the blanket during Christmas, and this week I've been working on some preparatory pieces. This work may take a while, so I'll see where I am after that. In the future I'm quite interested in doing something focussing on the continuous line drawings I've been doing.

The gist of it

Readers of Frozen in Finland will already know that I am primarily a portrait artist, and I have recently returned to England in order to finish my education (BA Fine Art and Critical Theory). When this is completed next summer I intend to move back to Finland permanently, and paint and write for the rest of my life.

The year I spent in Finland had a profound effect upon my life, and changed it in many ways. I met some wonderful people who are now very important to me. My work has always involved people who I personally know, and who have a significance to me - painting generic figures has always felt cold to me. I have decided to begin making work about the friends I met in Finland.

Whilst I lived in Finland I read work by William Burroughs, and became inspired by his cut-up poetry. This involves cutting up a paragraph of text and randomly rearranging the words and phrases to create surreal poetry. Poetry and writing has always been of interest to me, and I will write a cut-up poem to be shown alongside each portrait. I will begin with a simple text about each subject and our relationship and rearrange it. Through the vague poetry, I hope to reinforce the feelings of distance, communication difficulties, and fading memories.

Recently I have also renewed my interest in embroidery. My work is often in mixed media, and embroidery was once used heavily within my work. Over time my interest waned, but I am now keen to use it again as a method of adding highlights and texture to each painting. I also want to include it in the presentation of the poetry as a way to connect the portrait and the poem. I am considering using embroidery and thread to physically connect the two parts, but currently my ideas on this are not completely solid.

My intention with this work is to demonstrate the value of these people and this experience, and to show my affection for the people I paint. I hope that the poetry will help viewers to understand the fragility of these connections, caused by being in different countries.

I have started by writing the poem to accompany the portrait of my first subject/victim - my friend Emmi, who became my best friend in Finland. My process, research, and work will be documented here as it goes on.