These pieces were made after I began researching the way that humans, as a species, deal with grief and death. The idea was to represent the 5 stages of grief by drawing the image of a skull and then wiping it away, leaving behind a faint after image, doing this until the 5th skull is layered over the top to represent the last stage of dealing with grief.
The idea for the phyical creation of the work came from watching the work of William Kentridge and his animated films, the way in which he would wipe away part of his work in order to draw back over it for the next frame of animation. I liked the idea of showing the history of a piece of work, of not hiding the previous marks that had been made.
With this piece, I moved back into workin in monochrome as I thought that it might better capture the early stages of grief with it's sombre tone, removing the connotations that bright colour can hold.
More of an experiment into using a darker background beneath the chalk, with this I was depicting the first stage of grief, denial. I thought that by increasing the focus on the brow with harsher mark making I could create a sense of confusion, like disbelief.
