An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism

My interest in oneirism grew out of my search for a concept that would encapsulate my concerns in painting at the start of this project, namely the formal values I exploited, the quotidian subject matter I favoured, and the sense of contemplation I wished to convey. The correlations I perceived between my concerns and oneirism became more emphatic as my research progressed. The more I read about oneirism, the more I became aware of how the concept could be translated into painted form, a process which in turn inspired my practice. This document serves as a means to reflect on something of this complementary process. Within this framework, my discussion of theories related to oneirism is presented to amplify my painting practice. As a reflection on oneirism, the body of work submitted for my MFA comprised paintings in ink and oil. Many pieces were based on snapshots of views and objects in my surroundings. I often cropped the photographs to focus on a single object or a minor detail of a view. My approach was figurative, although it verged on abstraction depending on the source imagery I selected. I used a close-value palette that was dominated by chromatic greys. The structure of my paintings is quite simple in formal terms and my work is generally small in scale. I used these features and selected my subject matter to parallel theories about the oneiric zone that I discovered in my research. In terms of my aims in this project, and the media and approach I used in my practice, the figurative paintings of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and contemporary Belgian painter Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) were most compelling. I responded to their muted palettes and, for me, their work shares a contemplative quality, despite differences in subject matter and approach. However, I was also intrigued by certain artists who used media other than paint to produce work that related to my concerns. I thus touch on the work of some of these artists, in addition to Tuymans and Morandi.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Simons, Bridget Anne

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Siopis, Penny

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13995

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13995