Meet the Artist: Dannielle Robertson
Hi! My name is Dannielle and I’m one of the painting students on the course. I mainly use acrylic paint with cotton duck as a support, although I have experimented with oil and watercolour paints as well as with lino prints. I tend to use cheaper materials to get my point across, as my work is political it’s not my intention to be making ‘pretty’ things. Instead, I go for a shock and awe tactic, which usually works well with the very strong political/activism theme throughout the pieces of work and the large scale. (If you are easily offended, look away now!) Recently, I have been looking at the US election and Brexit, making works in response to news articles or my own personal opinion. The other running themes within my paintings are sexism, homophobia and racism to name but a few.
At the moment, like all students on this course, I am busy preparing for our degree show. Whether that be through finishing paintings, creating new ones or building stretchers for them. In my space, I’m working on finishing a presidential piece, featuring all the presidents from JFK to Obama with a hidden twist at the end. It is quite a large piece, which is almost five foot in length, and I’ll be very happy once I’m finished with it as it is the longest that I’ve spent on any one painting. I am also working on building stretchers for four large canvases that I have already painted, which is quite a long and technical task - it takes me a whole day to make one stretcher, from cutting the wood down to stretching the canvas over the frame.
I have two more large square canvases ready for my next ideas, if you want to know what they are – you’ll just have to come along to the degree show and have a look! But I can promise that they are something exciting and a little bit unusual, like a lot of my other pieces. Thank you for taking the time to read about me and what makes me tick, it would be amazing if you could come along and support not only myself but all the students on the course – they’ve worked hard and their work is awesome! Look out for more blog posts by students coming your way soon.
