Personal Investigation Learner Statement

Explain the MAIN IDEA(S) for the development of your responses

The theme I have decided to explore is “love and heartbreak in 14th to 17th century art”, and I’m wanting to use a range of techniques to create multiple outcomes, which may lead to the final development of a style or idea for use in a final outcome. When given the chance to choose my own idea for a self-identified brief, immediately I thought of the renaissance/baroque era of art as it has always been my favourite because of how detailed and intricate it can be, as well as the stories each painting tells. However, just looking at 14th to 17th century art is too broad of a topic, so I started looking for ideas on the internet for what I could explore. Looking at photos and paintings it became clear that the theme of emotion is a main point in each piece of artwork. This gave me the idea to explore the theme of love and heartbreak in the style of the pre 17th century.

Outline your PLAN(S) for the development of your work

For my exploration I am going to split my sketchbook into two sections, one being love which will express the happiness and good emotions love provides, and the other being heartbreak which will be centred more around sadness and bad emotions you feel during a heartbreak. I will decide eventually whether to bring the two ideas together to create one final piece or whether to keep them separate and create two pieces as a kind of series of emotions. I will research artists and old masters, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Caravaggio and apply any knowledge I gather to my work and try-outs. I want to try out new medias such as oil paint and clay for sculpting as I am using this topic to expand my skills and use of medias, and hopefully I will find out the best methods to suit me.

Describe the CONTEXT (influences, purposes and meanings) of your work

The meaning of this theme is to explore the deeper emotions of love and heartbreak evoked by paintings. Art styles have changed so much over the centuries and new movements such as the post-modernism movement that we are in right now can be full of emotion for some people, but personally, I don’t have the same feelings and wonder about modern art like I do with baroque or renaissance. I want to be able to use the styles of old masters and various artists in order to create an outcome that can elicit such a feeling and will have its own story. My subject matters for my chosen topic will be humans in the pre 17th century style. I would also like to try and incorporate more modern people with an antique twist in some sort of way just as a little experiment, and maybe by doing this I can expand my appreciation for modern art.

REFLECT on your work critically as it progresses and on its completion

I have experience already with some methods that can used for this theme, I definitely have room to improve though, but through the exploration of this theme I can improve my skill because they are a large part of creating work in the pre-17th century style. I can first-hand explore this topic as I am very privileged to live in a city with so much art so I can easily take photos from galleries of artworks and sculptures. Furthermore, I already have first-hand evidence from my trip to London as I took many photos of the style I want to explore just for personal use, but they can easily be incorporated into my self-identified brief.