The Wonder of Life
Artist Statement
My name is Vlada Averina. I am a young artist who mainly works with pencils and watercolours. Most of my work consists of drawings and paintings of the natural environment.
For this project I picked the theme of ‘Habitat’ where I focused on my surroundings to capture the environment throughout my everyday life. Most of my focus was on the bright and vibrant colours that I was attempting to capture, mostly through the use of photography.
I am interested in working with the outside, capturing elements like trees, plants and flowers. With different media I also push my work to extend to animals and humans.
I studied art at all my education sites and sought it outside too by finding classes full of inspiring people and branching out to different styles and perspectives.
For the ‘Our Golden Lockdown’ project I explored new media, artists and styles. This was my first time working with photography as an art media rather than a reference, I experimented with editing and new software’s. Looking at new artist I attempted a more peaceful style that focuses more on reality rather than its interpretation.
Images
My Images work was inspired by artists such as Ben Gest and Hannah Starkey. But I decided to primarily focus my work on nature and the Habitat around me, exploring ‘The Wonder of Life‘ meanwhile the artist that I have looked at, have primarily focused on people.
For my own work I decided to go outside and capture the passage of time through photographs. For about four days straight, I went outside three times a day at the exact same time each day, at 10:30, 13:00 and 16:00, to capture the change. I chose those time slots in an attempt to capture the morning, noon and evening. For the most part, it was a success and I only had a few photographs where the time of day is not obvious due to the clouds. Overall, below you can see a few of the successful examples of the project. Some of them are as they were taken and some were edited with saturation.
After that I decided to go back over the photographs and experiment on them with filters. I applied a black and white filter in an attempt to bring out the shades and shapes. My main focus was on the sky as it has the most variety amongst the photographs.
The other filter I applied was a colour filter which I did out of curiousity for its effect. In the end I found it plain as it did not add anything to the work. Finally, the saturated filter was effective in bringing out the sun and the vibrant colours of the outside.
Text
My next part of the project was centred around Text. The idea was to send a message through words, possibly by exploring other languages or going deeper into a specific one.
Following through with my theme of Life I decided to look through books and poems covering these themes. I shortly came across this page. The wording was great for found poetry and after some fiddling I was able to write the following passage.
‘I know these stories become old,
But right now moments are not stories,
This is happening.
You’re not a sad story.
You are alive.
See the lights on the buildings,
Drive with the people you love most.
In this moment, we are infinite’
On top of that passage I decided to make a drawing. I had previously brainstormed other ideas in order to figure out what I wanted to do. Originally, I wanted to paint the background in a variety of green and yellow paint in order to capture the “Life” but I scrapped that idea and decided to draw two flowers because I associate plants, flowers and trees with life and I thought that this would be the best way fro me to capture it.
Moving image
The final part is the Moving Images. This was initially supposed to be a short clip or a movie. We were given multiple artists to look at for inspiration.
24 Hr Psycho (1998) – Douglas Gordon
This was a slowed down version of the movie Psycho. The idea was interesting but I found that prolonging the intensity of the moment took away the element of interest.
Lucia (2007) – Cristobal Leon
This was a stop motion movie which I found very captivating to watch but not so easy to recreate.
2 in 1 (1997) – Gillian Wearing
This was a short movie about family members discussing each other but the voices are synced up to have the voices be mismatched.
A Little Life (2001) – Still Life – Sam Taylor Wood
This was perhaps my biggest inspiration. This movie consists of a time-lapse on the peaches and it captures their rotting and decay.
After I looked through all the videos my plan was to create a time-lapse following the same theme I had throughout this project. I had concluded that as the most visible variable in my previous work was the sky I decided to make a time-lapse of a day and capturing the movement and the flow of time.
After recording the original video I decided to experiment with different styles and filters hence continuing the topic of ‘The Wonder of Life‘
The primary focus behind my work was to show that reality is up to interpretation. By focusing on my daily Habitat and paying attention to my surroundings, I was able to capture the ordinary and using editing and filters I was able to show how I personally perceive reality. Through this project I was able to delve into the concept of interpreting reality and recognise that it is possible that two individuals will look at the same thing, presented in front of them and have completely opposite interpretations.
This could be due to me being an artist who is fascinated by the variety of colours that I can see in one specific area but exploring ‘The Wonder of Life’ in this project allowed me to explore many perceptions and interpretations that I have never considered before, but now allow me carry it through my artwork.
Golden Lockdown 