Experimentation for new ideas

Moving on from personal identity, I am now looking more into the identity of other people and how we punish or celebrate them because of how they look to us. Recently I have seen the effects that money has on people and how we percieve people because of this. Television programs such as Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex celebrate people for having money even though they may not be the nicest of people. The same with footballers and footballers wives. Personally, I watch a lot of "The Real Housewives" and these people are horrid to each other and other people yet we reward them by giving them a television program broadcast to the whole world. And then we come to the homeless. The people who actually need this money yet the rich and famous that are celebrated through these programs don't give them a penny. My project, still through self portrait (in a Cindy Sherman type way), will challenge the viewer into thinking about how we reward the rich further and evert our eyes from the homeless cowering in our doorways.

This oil painting was taken from a still from Paul Bettany's new film Shelter. I have brought my love of film into my experimentation. For the first time I gave myself no guidelines to paint this piece and painted directly onto the canvas. Before I started with the oils I painted the background in a copper acrylic to juxtapose the portrait itself.