ceyssonbenetiere.com/en-artist-Denis-Castellas.html.
Denis Castellas is a French artist who works with a variety of media – drawing, painting, installation, photography and film but work primarily in paint. His inspiration is from a variety of source – comics, cinema, sport and his work is described as being ‘ usually a journey between images from their defacing to transformation’ which I think is a perfect description of his work. I am drawn to him as an artist because his work consists of layers superimposed on top of each other to give a cohesive whole. I find his work textural and I am very interested in layering. His work brings to mind textiles and how layering is used in textile and this technique adds a lot of interest to a piece of work and gives it depth. His work holds a lot of information and detail without being overpowering which keeps the viewers interest for a long time, keeps you coming back to look again.
The colour palette he uses is quite muted even yellows when used are dull or dirty which probably helps to stop his work from becoming chaotic. Some of his work is just black and white, but even these are muted and not bright.
His is a way of working that I am interested in and would like to see if I could develop it in my practise.
Top left: 2015 Piero. Second Left: no title Third left: Hand of keys Right: Point of view.
Below images from my sketchbook exploring working in a similar manner – adding and taking away layers. Needs work but worth developing further.
I wanted to explore working with this type of background further.
I have tried various methods the painting in the right I applied base colours in geometric shape – these were dark colours which I then over painted with paler blocks of colours. I then drew an outline of a figure (myself) with pale blue and white surrounding it – reminiscent of being outdoors in the sunshine. I left the details of the figure blank other than for the top through which the background colours show through and the dark sunglasses. I did this because it make me think of identity – a subject a referred to in Project 2 and which interests me. I thought this fitted well as being a woman of a certain age you start to become invisible – you are no longer seen for who you are and it feels as if there are barriers and hurdles that you have to climb. I thought this worked well and could be something I will continue to work with.
The painting on the left was worked with pastels and charcoals light and dark and I thought that using this for figures/ portraits might be interesting – but needs work.
However from @isolationartschool I have started to follow Jonathan Yeo whose work I admire and who I will research further. He has been showing videos of him working and I found his video of how he prepared his canvasses very helpful. So after that I produced this painting.
I prepared the background by painting it roughly with 2 colours (acrylic) raw sienna and burnt umber, then when they were dry over painting with Van dyke red hue. I left this for about 5 minutes then rubbed it off – perhaps I could have done this earlier but the timing is something I need to experiment with. The end result is below.
I liked the result and would like to use this technique further – it gives an image depth and atmosphere. To work on top of this I decide to keep it simple and to use an Alli Sharma image I had worked with earlier in black and white.
I think this has huge potential. I really enjoyed working in this way .
gillmerlynntom 