NCEA Level 3 - Visual Arts 2011
Examples of Candidate Work – 90667 Painting
The highly skilled drawing in ball point pen that establishes this project is put to good use in the generation of ideas. The
photo derived subject matter is quickly analysed and developed into Pop-Surrealist cross references and visual puns.
This is advanced as the works refine ideas about mystical overlays of animal and human symbols and forms related to
popular American Indian mythology.
The transitions of space and imagery become increasingly synthesised. Having three large works occupy a large area of
the latter part of the folio is risky, but the sophistication of the these works and the repetition of compositional structure
using discrete subject matter is insightful and difficult.
This idiosyncratic folio is unusual in its strongly thematic approach to picture making. The work playfully juxtaposes re-
worked found portraits of our monarch with pop imagery from the punk era. The gooey materials are laid on thick as
icing to make jokes about tea and cakes and fuddy-duddy dress.
In places the candidate’s inexperience in figurative drawing cause’s lapses but the invention and regeneration carries on
regardless. The latter works take on a Monty Python-esque absurdity where the pictorial space and materiality are
pushed with insight and wit.
This folio shows a level of skill in drawing and painting sufficient to the candidate’s purpose. The recording of
urban/architectural subject matter and the experimentation with composition and painting procedure are integrated in
panel 1 and developed in panel 2.
Although the references to artists are obviously stated in works in panel 1 and 2, these influences seem genuine to the
candidate. That is, that the project is centred around the interaction of linear and planar forms floating in a space of
varying depths of illusion. This idea is usefully positioned in reference to the artistic precedents used. The work on the
lower part of panel 2 tends to reveal an uncertainly of purpose. However, the works on panel 3 develop and refine the
vocabulary and its use in a series of final works. The larger final work, (risky move here), shows that the candidate can
manage the shift in scale successfully.
This work reveals a systematic approach in which architecture is used for its geometric and colouristic subject matter. The
project is constrained but not defeated by the students’ lack of skill in tonal and perspective drawing, as it develops with the
intermingling of linear points of view in works in the middle panel. As the colour and paint treatment is loosened in its
relation to the linear drawing, the work becomes more painterly and inventive. Composition is handled well too, as in the
latter works the pictorial elements of each picture are used successfully in relation to the frame.
The project is modest in its scope and the shifts in spatial dynamics, colour and composition are all regenerated through
analysis of earlier works.
This folio shows a systematic use of the photo-generated subject matter shown at the top of panel one. Evidently taken
by the candidate, this work provided figurative imagery and some pattern and feather motifs used in subsequent works.
The candidate struggled to purposefully generate, analyse and clarify a compositional structure. Radial, grid, graphic
(flat) and illusory compositions are all experimented with and the group of latter works lacks clarity in these terms.
Integrating photographic, collage and painterly methods was a difficult task for this candidate. The last work, being a
simpler interplay between photographic space with an overlayed lattice is more successful.
The project overall reveals a lack of understanding of how photographic subject matter can be applied to the
development of practices in painting.