Now before we even start this, we should define what party exactly is. For me, party is many things, but the reason why I ask this question is so that we can have a baseline for what I mean when I say party. And just to clarify, these definitions of the party come directly from the first page of Google.
Now that we've cleared up what party exactly is, let's talk a little about the artist in question, Emily Powell. Now first, obviously I won't go into full detail about her life, but I'll give some context for how I chose this artist in particular, and why.
So, during the first task of college, we were introduced to the brief, which was "Party", and they told us that we should do an artist analysis of their art, and they had a couple of examples we could use. I couldn't really find any artists that I liked myself that had the theme of "Party" in their pieces, so I went back to the document to see their recommendations, and so I found Emily Powell.
Emily's work really struck me due to the mediums that she used, and how he combined them into artwork which I really like. With this tool, I also like the large usage of bright colours in the pieces, which for me definitely scream a party, specifically a child's birthday. One more thing I liked about her pieces is the abstract way she painted animals and people, which isn't exactly linked to parties, I just like how they look. Now, onto the analysis of some of her works.
What mediums did the artist use to create this? Well from what I can tell, Emily only used oil paints for this, due to the texture of the paint and how it loads up, which is more prominent on the sky-blue table.
What characteristics in this piece make you think of “Party?” To start this, my definition of a part for this piece is “a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment.”, the source is the first page of Google and their first definition. And for myself? This hits it on the head. There are many birds here, and in this instance, we could call them guests, along with food, which is the cupcakes we see scattered around the place, drinking which comes from the pot of tea on the very end of the table, and for entertainment, for the sake of the argument, we could class the pink creature as entertainment. Now, could we say that they’re invited? F the cues of the pink elephant creature coming over, as if to ask to come in to see if they’re invited, I would say that they are invited but could be easily convinced otherwise. One more thing I’d also like to touch on is that we can see they’re all being quite social with each other since we can see many birds facing in each other’s direction with their mouths opening, which can signify that they’re talking to each other.
Now, what do I see in this piece? For myself it’s exactly what it says on the sign in the bottom right corner, a party to make sure your new friend doesn’t eat you, where a whole bunch of birds father for cups of tea and cakes in their cyan floored and red wallpapered house, with a beautiful single striped chair and their plants that grow cake, their painting on the wall of a rainbow with a funky frame, not to forget the cheetah print overhead light. And at the window, we can see it’s a big Olmsted of some sort, some people might be inclined to say it’s a tiger or an elephant, but for myself I would simply call this a monster, emerging from the wilderness to come to their window frame as it’s open wide, wanting to make friends without eating them.
Well, what mediums do I think have been used to make this? For me, you can tell they’ve used I think oil paints because of how textured the brush strokes, but if I could have a second guess I would absolutely say acrylic paint. We can also tell that Emily has used scraps of PG Tips and TyPhoo tea bag labels, due to their size along with their overall look. Another PG Tips-related item that’s in this is the framed picture of their mascot, which these parts can be found on their teabag boxes. Sorry, I got sidetracked there, but Emily has also used lots of collage to make this piece, from the PG Tips bunting to the teapots, teacups and mugs that can be seen on the pink tables with a heart pattern on such.
So, how do I associate “party” with this piece? Well for me, that’s quite simple. The first thing I associate part with is these bright colours, now to keep everybody on the same page, I myself am talking about birthday parties for this piece, but anyways, not only that but the bunting also reminds me of parties, since I usually have some for every birthday of mine. Another thing that says part to me is what I could make out to be a table of pink with hearts that have a lot of PG tips logos in them. I like to think these are little nibbles for the guests who may come to this party will eat. One more thing that says party to me is the cake in the middle. Now, it’s very hard to understand what this middle piece could be, since it has cups on, but also a darker blue that contrasts with the pinks and lighter blue, along with the second level of this blue, which is a black background with white polka dots with a bouquet of flowers, but my brain likes to envision that this is a cake! And all of the candles that are floating around are floating onto the top of it, getting ready by themselves to be blown out.
One more thing, what do I see in this piece? I see a party, just about to get ready, with the magical candles preparing themselves to be on top of the cake, the many mugs around that are gliding to the table, bunting that is as bright and colourful as rainbows, and a table full of PG tips, which we could consider to be good in this painting.
What’s mediums were used to create this piece? well for myself i think this is yet another oil painting. this is for the same reasons as last time, because of the marks from the paint which are commonplace for oil paintings. to go into further detail, I could hypothesise that there was first a painted background of purple, then the artist painted the human figures on, but then didn’t like how the purple looked, and so they changed it from purple to this lovely green-hued blue.
Now, why would I say that this is a party piece? Well, if we go off one of the lines from the first definition on the second page, which talks about a social gathering. As we can see, there are many people who are also wearing the same outfit! now got me, this could be like a fancy dress party because everybody came at the same thing, although such could be interpreted as other things too.
Now, what do I see in this piece? for myself, I see a story of a bunch of people agreeing to do a big Halloween party (because they’re all dressed in what could be classed as costume-ish apparel) with their fuzzy blue built-in carpet. In this scene, they’re all on the designated dance floor! but the music hasn’t started yet so now they’re in the little awkward moment in between the music starting so they can dance and get up from their tables.
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