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An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism

My interest in oneirism grew out of my search for a concept that would encapsulate my concerns in painting at the start of this project, namely the formal values I exploited, the quotidian subject matter I favoured, and the sense of contemplation I wished to convey. The correlations I perceived betw...

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Main Author: Simons, Bridget Anne
Other Authors: Siopis, Penny
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Michaelis School of Fine Art 2015
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access_status_str Open Access
author Simons, Bridget Anne
author2 Siopis, Penny
author_browse Simons, Bridget Anne
Siopis, Penny
author_facet Siopis, Penny
Simons, Bridget Anne
author_sort Simons, Bridget Anne
collection Thesis
description My interest in oneirism grew out of my search for a concept that would encapsulate my concerns in painting at the start of this project, namely the formal values I exploited, the quotidian subject matter I favoured, and the sense of contemplation I wished to convey. The correlations I perceived between my concerns and oneirism became more emphatic as my research progressed. The more I read about oneirism, the more I became aware of how the concept could be translated into painted form, a process which in turn inspired my practice. This document serves as a means to reflect on something of this complementary process. Within this framework, my discussion of theories related to oneirism is presented to amplify my painting practice. As a reflection on oneirism, the body of work submitted for my MFA comprised paintings in ink and oil. Many pieces were based on snapshots of views and objects in my surroundings. I often cropped the photographs to focus on a single object or a minor detail of a view. My approach was figurative, although it verged on abstraction depending on the source imagery I selected. I used a close-value palette that was dominated by chromatic greys. The structure of my paintings is quite simple in formal terms and my work is generally small in scale. I used these features and selected my subject matter to parallel theories about the oneiric zone that I discovered in my research. In terms of my aims in this project, and the media and approach I used in my practice, the figurative paintings of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and contemporary Belgian painter Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) were most compelling. I responded to their muted palettes and, for me, their work shares a contemplative quality, despite differences in subject matter and approach. However, I was also intrigued by certain artists who used media other than paint to produce work that related to my concerns. I thus touch on the work of some of these artists, in addition to Tuymans and Morandi.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
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license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2015
publishDateRange 2015
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13995 An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism Simons, Bridget Anne Siopis, Penny Fine Art My interest in oneirism grew out of my search for a concept that would encapsulate my concerns in painting at the start of this project, namely the formal values I exploited, the quotidian subject matter I favoured, and the sense of contemplation I wished to convey. The correlations I perceived between my concerns and oneirism became more emphatic as my research progressed. The more I read about oneirism, the more I became aware of how the concept could be translated into painted form, a process which in turn inspired my practice. This document serves as a means to reflect on something of this complementary process. Within this framework, my discussion of theories related to oneirism is presented to amplify my painting practice. As a reflection on oneirism, the body of work submitted for my MFA comprised paintings in ink and oil. Many pieces were based on snapshots of views and objects in my surroundings. I often cropped the photographs to focus on a single object or a minor detail of a view. My approach was figurative, although it verged on abstraction depending on the source imagery I selected. I used a close-value palette that was dominated by chromatic greys. The structure of my paintings is quite simple in formal terms and my work is generally small in scale. I used these features and selected my subject matter to parallel theories about the oneiric zone that I discovered in my research. In terms of my aims in this project, and the media and approach I used in my practice, the figurative paintings of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) and contemporary Belgian painter Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) were most compelling. I responded to their muted palettes and, for me, their work shares a contemplative quality, despite differences in subject matter and approach. However, I was also intrigued by certain artists who used media other than paint to produce work that related to my concerns. I thus touch on the work of some of these artists, in addition to Tuymans and Morandi. 2015-09-15T10:30:24Z 2015-09-15T10:30:24Z 2013 Master Thesis Masters MFA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13995 eng application/pdf Michaelis School of Fine Art Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Fine Art
Simons, Bridget Anne
An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
thesis_degree_str Master's
title An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
title_full An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
title_fullStr An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
title_full_unstemmed An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
title_short An irreal realm: painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
title_sort irreal realm painting as a means of reflecting on oneirism
topic Fine Art
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13995
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