Paul Sloan

Primarily, I wanted to have a closer look at the artwork of Paul Sloan because I noticed his use of repeated skull imagery, but I found it interesting to read on his website that ideas of the apocalypse and dystopias/utopias are not consciously incorporated into the work. Sloan states that his inspiration comes from a variety of sources, such as "light in the Australian landscape, our relationship to natural history, found images of social uprising, revolt, revolutionary activity and points of flux [and] the relationships that exist between music and art" (Paul Sloan About), but whilst I am not pursuing any of these themes, I can still see parallels between his art and my own. I like the way that Sloan works across a range of mediums, incorporating drawing, painting, sculpture and photography in various ways. I like that he employs the appropriate medium for the idea behind specific artworks he wants to make, which highlights the need to be adaptable and experimental in how to convey the message right. It is interesting to see the aesthetic differences in his practice, such as the looseness of his gouache paintings compared to the atmospheric moodiness of his photographs. I think this is the strongest message I take away from looking at what he has made - that it is okay for me to work between mediums to find what is specifically relevant for what I want to make. I like how he has represented the skull both through an actual object and the representational image of one, and I particularly enjoy the way his painting of the skull is abstracted and minimised. I would like to use a similar representation of a skull in my diorama in that it will be suggested, but not meticulously replicated. I also enjoy Sloan's largely monochromatic and naturalistic use of colour, which encourages me to continue working with black and white although I could probably experiment more with how precisely I am trying to paint.