Yelena Popova

Monday 24^th April 2017

Yelena Popova

With their transparent, softened geometric forms, Yelena Popova’s paintings recall the graphics and aesthetics of both Russian Constructivism and Minimalism, and open up conversations about the materiality of painting today. – Saatchi gallery website

Popova’s practice includes painting, installation and video. She paints fluid movement with a minimal effect. Her palette is soft using only a few pastel colours. The patterns in her paintings are layered on top of each other, making it hard to see what the image behind is representing. The lines in her work aren’t rigid but smooth into the next colour, unlike my own.

 

After looking at her work, I want to try layering up the pattern in my painting next semester. I also want to experiment with different shaped canvases to make the installation more interesting with movement.

Raised painting

Wednesday 19^th April 2017

Raised painting

All the paintings I have produced this semester have been two-dimensional so I challenged myself to create one with a raised/three-dimensional element. Some parts of the painting are still flat but some are thin cardboard, painted the same colour.

From straight on the painting looks like an illusion of some parts being raised which is interesting as I like the thought of creating optical illusions with paintings. This will be something I explore further next year.

I would have preferred for the raised parts to be made from wood so it looked more professional but it was very difficult to mark the unusual shapes out onto wood. When you begin to walk around the piece, you can see the cardboard edges that look messy and unfinished.

I stuck to the same palette of grey as my previous piece because it was successful but I chose to only paint with one tone to see how the painting would evolve. The painting looks structural and uniform with the same colour running throughout, more so than my previous painting.

Structural/industrial colour

Wednesday 19^th April 2017

Structural/industrial colour

 After my minimal off-white painting, I wanted to experiment with light grey tones to see if it could be more successful. The grey tones, combined with the straight and rigid lines, gave the piece an industrial effect. The colour grey in this piece makes me think of a factory, where the wooden board was made and it’s own process before I started my own with it.

The lines flow through the painting with adjacent lines running through from side-to-side. If I were to improve the piece, I would keep the pattern/lines the same as they look sophisticated on the board however I would try a more subtle grey as I think parts are too dark and contrast too much with the rest of the painting.

As with my other paintings, there is a similarity to Mondrian and van Doesburg’s use of line to separate colours.

This work was on a bigger scale than my previous paintings, I believe this is a reason towards why it is one of my more successful. The bigger the panes of subtle colour mean you are able to see the colour more clearly. This does however mean that you can see the colour from a-far and isn’t like an optical illusion.

I think it’s interesting to see an image of it on paper (above) next to the real painting to see how scale transforms it. It is much harder to see the detail and colour in a picture.