Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas’ work spans various subject matter, from death, to relationships and politics. The element of her work that captures me however is her interest in ambiguity. Dumas mentions in a YouTube video about her 2015 show that she is fascinated by things that look the same but aren’t the same. An example of this is when Dumas uses textures that look like the ocean but are in fact an abstract polaroid where texture has been created by the development process. This also ties into her practice that a lot of the source materials for Dumas’ drawings and paintings are her own polaroid’s.

Another element that I am drawn to in Dumas’ work is the expressiveness of her work. Nothing I have seen from her is overworked, and balances the line of over-simplicity. A reason for this could be, that she never does sketches for her paintings, although sometimes she does do sketches afterwards, possibly as an effort to understand the works. I can relate to this as I feel my most successful pieces are those were I allow myself to work with my media.

the way that many of the works that I have included in this post share a similar atmosphere with the works that have concluded my WAWWA project. This could be due to the lighting and the use of dark backgrounds, but I also feel the emotion that the works are routed in could be similar to the feelings I had when I created my Images.