Sylvia Philpot

The Mixed Media course encourages students to explore the physicality of making, in a structured but experimental painting practice,
It encompasses a broad range of processes and materials, you are asked to engage with an open mind, take risks, and challenge preconceived ideas. The painted surface’s presumed flatness may be affected by collage or (de)construction and it is open to interpretation.
You can make art with anything or on anything. OCA student Sylvia Philpot discusses why she chose to do this course and shares some of her work from her blog
It has always been my intention to develop different textures within a painting and the Mixed Media element of the degree course I am doing with OCA has been inspiring and challenging. I like the idea of layering the surface with paint texture, oil pastels, sand, artex and in some cases garden fleece and sacking. The Peruvian head painting incorporated many of these techniques, including lolly-pop sticks for the teeth, and string for tying the fingers! Anselm Keifer is a great influence.

Sometimes it is nice to allow images and colours to blend on a flat surface as with the Red Bull, creating texture through design and shape, the matt finish helps with that I think. Subtle collage for me is more interesting than creating an image with collage, probably because I can’t do the latter very effectively.

I was influenced by Tàpies and Keifer’s monochromes as well as Picasso in terms of the subject matter, if not style. I have also been influenced by Rauschenburg with his use of collage and paint.  My painting incorporates some collage, lettering, and various more subtle textures than the previous piece.  I was taken by Jasper John’s Periscope, which uses text in the background. My painting is based on the Bull which is my birth-sign, and includes images for the bull, including photocopied pieces from Picasso’s Bull in the Guernica painting.  The hardboard has been slashed to give texture and to hint at the sword in bull-fighting. Some of the collage hints at the visceral.  The strength of the bull is hinted at and the monochrome (more or less) red is the colour of the Spanish earth, the cape, blood, death, passion and man’s inhumanity not only to man but to animals. Motor-racing has been part of my life so I couldn’t resist the Red Bull logo, it is about speed and strength. 

Ambivalence was interesting for me as I had taken a photo of my own shadow and enhanced it.  It occurred to me that the notion of “I”, the person, was there and not there in the shadow, and I wanted to explore this idea in the painting I printed the image on to newspaper which I used as collage and overpainted ruined church elements using Chinese writing as the tracery in one of the windows  These echoed the idea of ambivalence between structure and text, real and unreal. Sometimes the viewer is left asking is it a door, a window or a house.  Similarly the light is questionable, sunlight, moonlight, artificial light.

The drawing, Journeys, explored the idea of literal journeys and life journeys and hints at cosmic perspectives, barred access, closed enmeshed views with either daunting or joyful outcomes. Different modes of transport are also referenced in the painting. It uses collage and enhanced photographs with overpainting in acrylic, a technique which suits my way of working.
The methods I have adopted in these paintings are techniques I will continue to use as it has liberated my style; an aim I set out to achieve when I joined OCA . It is also exciting as it offers opportunities to expand texture and composition in a contemporary way without succumbing to too much detail, and maintains the sponteneity that most artists desire and value in their work. The Mixed Media course is challenging and veers close to craft at times but forces the student to think outside the box and away from pedestrian practices. For me, it has released an inquisitiveness and creativity that has moved beyond the conventional.