Blank Space January Sale- Go see my work relaxed torso

Go Support Blank Media Collective at their January Fund raising sale 7pm on Saturday 28 Jan 2012.

I donated this piece of work which will now appear at auction among loads of really interesting local work. It was my exam piece for my fine art final in college. We were given a range of titles and I had to choose one that referred to areas of work I had been exploring during my A- Levels.

The title I chose was Relaxed Torso as I had been studying portraiture and in particular Jenny Saville’s work. The figure is of woman who is a heroin addict in the corner you can see her track marks, I was aiming for an image which reacted against the fashionable ‘heroin chic’ image and showed an average woman who was fuck off her face without a trace a glamour.

To get the same fleshy tones like that of a Saville painting; I actually went down to my local butchers and took pictures of hanging pig’s corpses in a lorry freezer! You won’t fully get the sense of flesh from this picture, so you’ll have to come down to blank space to take a look at it in person.

The piece is oil on board; I think we had just a couple of days in college to make the final piece. Very intense painting time frame!

Above is the original a6 photograph that I worked from, as you can see I used my artistic license to change the bra to red. The women in the photo is one of my oldest friends (I just attended her marriage- so pleased for her!) I’ve known her since I came to Newent (my home town) when I move there in 1990 we now both live in Manchester and she lives just 15 minutes walk away from me.

Best of luck to Blank Media I hope they raise lots of dosh!