Artists influence

Certain artists have inspired me, informed my work, helped me to understand certain things, what I will do here is just highlight a particular relevant aspect about this artist that has been important now, in my working practice at the moment.

Jenny Saville who explores the manipulated body and flesh in all its forms of brutal manipulation, and horror, is someone I feel I must look at as a reference when looking at flesh and skin, she is the best painter of flesh in its raw, true and confronting nature. In my portraits I want to convey the vulnerability of skin and I want to learn how to create fleshiness through paint, to illuminate the blemishes the wrinkles and the aspects of the persons face that makes them individual.
Jenny Saville creates these paintings through thick layers of paint, she almost moulds them. What I read recently in her book is;

"I'll have photographs of my body, and sometimes I take photographs of bits of my friends bodies, and i have lots of medical text books that I use as reference, for instance if I want to paint stretch marks, then I'll look up in a medical textbook to find what causes them. Because if you can understand what makes them, you can understand how to paint them better"

Jenny Saville in the book 'Saville' p14

This highlights the importance of understanding the features of the face and what muscles and bones cause them to move, or what causes the shadow on the face, this is extremely relevant to my own work, and shows the connection between this and the style in which old masters painted, where studying anatomy is of great importance to the painting.

Jenny Saville www.saatchigallery.co.uk/artist/jennysaville.htm