Painting completed in fifteen hours about oppressive regime that my country lived through

Hello everyone,

I'm following the theme of my A level project of demolished dreams, that people try to pursue in the face of oppression. It's about a journey that my country went through during its Soviet years. This particular piece is about fear that Soviet regime put in people's daily lives. Two subjects could be anyone as they relate to all the Soviet community who was sharing equally same amount of fear but could not dare to share it with anyone, even in the privacy of their home. Another inspiration for this piece is dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell's, that is also based on omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. As this is my exam piece, I only had fifteen hours to complete it, which was divided on three days. 15 hours of work for a 2,5-meter-long painting means no time to reflect and think on the day of exam so it had to be pre-planned and the canvas had to be ready made on the day.

Initially, same as with the other pieces, I started by choosing two subjects with not a precise direction. I took multiple pictures of my friend Holly and my teacher James in various settings. In the end I narrowed it down to three paintings that somewhat delivered the emotions and a layout that I desired.

Before an A level Art exam, you are allowed to prepare the canvas that you’ll work on during an exam. I was sure that I wanted to create an installation piece, with projections on one side of the board. For this, I had to make board stand still and plus have a large space. Artists often tend to choose a scale according to the subject and the theme, the more prosperous we want it to look, the bigger is the format that we choose. I chose a large scale purely to make bigger emotional effect at first glance of a viewer. I started building the frame from scratch. It’s first time that I had to cut wood and make a frame all by myself. I’m not going to say it was the hardest thing I’ve done but it was pretty close to it, for sure. First I measured the woods, then cut them out, and screwed them in to create a general frame. Then I stretched out the canvas by screwing it in multiple times. Like so :

Then i screwed in the stand for the canvas, with other pieces of wood and started putting the background on as this is another thing we’re allowed to have pre-made before an exam.

I painted the canvas in a bright vivid colours, as acrylic with its long drying properties and high pigmentation allows to repaint or fix any mistakes pretty easily. This background would allow me to have more space filled up even if I didn’t finish the composition in time.

On the day of an exam, as I usually do, I started by painting out the main figures according to the picture that I chose. Then I divided the composition by creating a gold line in between figures- matching to the colour of the stand. This gave more dramatic feel to it. When working with acrylics I usually try to put as many colours as I can and layer it up eventually. Blending is not something I concentrate on as it happens naturally with multiple layers.

In the next few hours, I toned down the painting by glazing it with mustard yellow. This gave more depressed ambience to the composition. I also painted the background black as I felt like it would go more with the installation and the other side of the board.

In the end, I just added some details, dripped down more colours on the lower part of the board and glued down a triangle golden wood on top. This gave more private setting to the work. I used some stencils to paint the sleeve of the woman’s clothing. Man’s hands is what I painted with more of watercolour look to it as face is the most important factor of the work and I wanted it to stay that way. I also added more lively colours to the figures to increase the realism of the scene. Adding highlights on faces equally helped me in this task. So did painting more detailed eyes.

In the end painting turned out just as I wanted especially for fifteen hours. When I put it in its setting I layered down a flag of Soviet Union in front of devastated faces and played famous speeches that turned out to be a lie on the other side of the board.

I hope you all enjoyed it and if you did make sure to check out other paintings from this series on my blog and leave the feedback, it really means a lot.

Maria