Virginia Bodman - Customs House

Today we went to the Customs House in South Sheilds to see Virginia's painting exhibition that she was showing there. We got to learn a lot about her life and how all of her ideas come about.

Her paintings are usually very large scale, about 8ft by 8ft, sometimes bigger or smaller. She also does some small scale paintings. Virginia uses photography to gain information for her paintings, focusing mostly on the nature side of things, linking back to her childhood growing up on a farm. She also uses fashion icons, such as Twiggy, who was a massive inspiration and main feature of some of her work. The image of Twiggy would be seen throughout her range of work.

Her 8ft painting was based on the idea that she would attend her own funeral. She has all the figures standing and posing, with the one figure in the centre lying down, which would seem to be representing the deceased. Using the bright and vibrant colour pallete totally contrasts to the idea of the art work.

All in all the experience was very interesting and informative and it was nice to find out more about Virginia and where she gets her ideas from.