Charlotte Caron Analysis.

Young French artist and photography included, graduating with fine art, honours in 2011, her work is divided into four sections - Landscapes, portraits, anatomy and vanities. Her portraits series shows human portraiture photographs with paint on top of them creating an animals features and face instead of keeping the humans. Exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, the work was created personally, the 2 portraits coming together to try to give a form of duality and create harmony between the 2 mediums. It is a fashion piece and relates to catwalk fashion in terms of over the top head gear which hides identity or gives an animal like behavoir impression.I have chosen to analyse this piece because I really like the way to two mediums sit well together and the way it looks so natural and normal even though it is completely unrealistic, the colours blend well together and being a painter myself I think I could incorprate similar elements in my own work. I could use the same materials or perhaps try embroidery instead of paint, I also think the pieces would look good on material such as cotton fabrics.

I translated the information from French on her website (charlottecaron.fl) and looked at trendland.com for photographs of this work and information about her four different types of work and when she graduated/the type of art she does. I have noticed in her other works she uses a similar techniqure when painting, for example her landscapes colour is blended very well and gives a dripping down effect within the painting as does her portraiture work here. Caron quotes 'The series of paintings/photographs are trying to respond to a form of duality, ultimately creating an osmosis of the two mediums. The genre is portraiture, although mixed media is used to enhance the original photograph, making it more interesting and worked on. The title of the works is as a series is simply Animal Portraits over Human Portraits and ach individual work isn't named, this lets us focus completely on the visual side of the work and how it sits, she also supplies us with a set meaning rather than letting a title put this into place or letting us interpret it. The subject of meaning is the consistence of two sides, this being the human side and the animalization of them with including the animal side, it shows we are all mammals and beings of this Earth and combines us into one being. She is trying to present duality in her work, this could be because of its theory of good and evil forces being balanced on Earth, if the animals can do bad and good then so can we as humans and she has found inspiration in this personal and desired attempt to create a visual representation of it.

Materials used are a DSLR camera to take high quality photographs of her human subject as the base of the work, I suspect photoshop or an editorial has been used to brighten the contrast and smooth the photograph over for a more flawless effect on the materials we see seen as the faces are completely hidden. Painting being her mostly used skill and what she did for the main bulk of her degree, she paint realistically in terms of the animal subject and colour mixing is an important skill for her here. Various brushes used, small ones for hairs on the beak and larger ones to create shape with is important for the composition, the colour element alone isn't enough to produce the whole painting part of the composition, because of the subtleness line isn't too important because nothing needs outlining because it isn't there when we look at the subject in reality although tone when mixing colour is important to achieve various shades in the same colour spectrum. She uses colour in a similar spectrum for example the colours in this bird one merge together, the browns gradually lighten forming ochres and yellows, with are then lightened to create a white which blend blue in gradually, we can see that she has spread the colour down the painting and perhaps used water as an additive to let the pale colours drip over the slightly darker ones in a rather subtle way, depth is created with small brush flicks in the direction of the skeletal structure on the birds face, the paint is used quite sparingly in terms of how it is applied, there are no thick blobs or worked on bumps, the paint in flat but texture is created by the drips and the smoothness of the paint strokes she blends. It reminds me of the realism art movement, although this was particularly used on humans it has a similar look in terms of texture and a flattened paint approach creating a realistic look with complex tones of the colours used and shadow being applied to add to the realism as Carom does with the fine brush strokes for the beak hairs and the deepness of the eyes and the gaze they give off. The scale of the work is around a meter by a meter and presented on canvas, I think the scale is important in terms of each composition, it should always be kept the same so that one composition doesn't stand out too much and over take the others. The scale is perfect to looks around at each piece, if it was too large it would be too overbearing and seem less like a series when exhibited like one.

My first reaction to the work was that it was more simple in terms of paint but when I looked closer I could see more detail and that it fitted to the facial composition. I like the colours used and how effective they are in terms of the piece being more complicated than simple. The blending also helps it to be more subtle. I am inspired because I feel this could be good to use my painting skills in my own photography work, also the idea of using other mediums such as sewing and fabric printing to enhance my own photographs when trying out this method. It doesn't remind me of anything I've seen before, I think the work is such a simple idea yet never thought of and produced in this interesting way.