After the collage workshop (my work is above) with Steven Max Ernst’s work was recommended to me by a tutor. His work concerns his own unique vision of a dream world. Ernst developed frottage in the early 1900s and as said on the Tate website he was inspired ‘an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing.’. It is intriguing how he is able to see images in something as mundane as a wooden floor and is able to inspire his creativity, he then pursued this interest and took charcoal rubbings of this floor. From this he created a book, ‘Histoire Naturelle’ which contained all these images, like those below:

 

His frottage work inspired some pieces and has helped me anchor an interest in collage. I can indicate elements of this within all my work, I have not looked at his work directly yet since I have been attempting to settle into the course but now I have completed a few projects I have come to understand the need for detailed preliminary research.

What captivates me with this technique is the rapid thought process, in the workshop with Steven he highlighted the importance of not overthinking but maintaining a clear mindset where you can make quick decisions. I believe that this element of not planning is useful in creating a more intuitive piece which evolves in the process. Taking pieces and bringing them together so that they work together and are cohesive has a sort of triumph behind it when it is achieve, since you have created links between pieces which are not meant to be together, yet you have made them work together. I have mentioned this before about how I like to create a story between the pieces I put on a collage, as if I am illustrating a piece of text by bringing these pieces together.

Ernst’s work developed into what he called ‘Grattage’ which is where oil paint is scraped away to reveal a variety of surfaces and objects below. I would also like to take inspiration from this too. Lately I have been working with different mediums and now I have decided to come back to collage, I would like to bring this adding bits and pieces to my work. Making my 2D work more 3D to me creates a pieces with more depth not physically but as part of the meaning, by extending the canvas.

Therefore I believes that Max Ernst is the most prominent artist in my mind at the moment. I can’t directly pin one artist to all my work since I have been exploring with different styles however Ernst has definitely influenced my thoughts and will continue to.