And the winner of the Oakwood Art Competition is….Jane.
Congratulations to Jane, who produced some lovely drawings and worked hard to put into practise new techniques learned whilst on a school trip in the Dordogne, France. She was really willing to try out new things and to develop her thinking and her skills in all areas. She persevered and using a limited palate of materials that we had brought with us for this task, created the interesting image you see above.
The trip, which took place last month, in Beaulieu sur Dordogne, included visits out around the local area to sketch and observe the peculiarities of a provincial French town with seven young people from Oakwood High School in Salford. As an accompanying artist I travelled with and stayed with the young people Sunday – Friday, incorporating a derive walk through the suburban landscape, sketching in cafes and developing work in response to the Fauve movement, looking particularly at colour and re-interpreting some of the ideas of the fauves using collage, with limited a self-imposed limited palette of resources, to inspire thought and questioning amongst the group and to stretch their thought processes whilst creating the work. One of the things that worked particularly well was five-minute sketches. The young people felt that this was something new they could try that was fun and brought different results that you don’t necessarily get when you work for a long period of time on a piece. It can also help you to plan other drawings more easily and to see what the most important parts of a drawing might be. Give it a try and let me know how it goes: hello@emilypitts.com.
The results of the competition and the sketch sessions were excellent, with a really wide range of thoughtful and exciting interpretations of the landscape of the town, which you will see from the pictures attached to the blog. Aside from the work for the competition, the young people developed and particularly enjoyed the sketching sessions, more time for which will be incorporated into future trips. Some young people chose to continue to sketch outside of our session times, finding it relaxing and quite a consuming activity. Congratulations to everyone who took part and for working hard.
Later this year I will be working with another small group of young people on a project focussing on Russian Constructivism/Rodchenko and Popova and bringing together creative, mathematical and construction skills to create another provocative and high quality collaborative artwork.
Here are just some of the images produced on this trip:
