Jemina (looking a the pictures) – 2006
Gillian Furlong is an artist who has stuck with me since the beginning of my practice, my work always leading back to hers in some way – I find her work totally inspiring, and funnily enough it mirrors photography very clearly.
Furlong is a British artist, born in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1948. She has attended two art schools and even won the ‘David Murray Landscape’ prize whilst completing her studies. She has four children, who are regularly depicted within her artworks. Her work is exhibited in a large number of galleries across the UK, including the Francis Isles gallery in Rochester, which is where I first stumbled across her work almost 4 years ago now, so it really has had a massive impact on me to still be the first to spring to mind today.
Both before and now I was instantly drawn to her paintings because of the way she plays with light, often entering the scene from unusual angles and creating very harsh shadows and halo lighting effects – backlighting the subject when one would normally choose for the subjects face to be lit. It creates intense shadows that partly obscure the face of the sitters creating a mysterious atmosphere.
Reading : Bedroom Blackheath (oil on board) 
Gillian Furlong
Sunday Morning – Newlyn, 1998
`There is always mood in my paintings, never brooding or ominous but always gentle and thoughtful’.
I enjoy how natural the scenes she paints are, creating a sense of timelessness. Her work feels very personal, as if the viewer is imposing on her life – a goal of mine has always been to build a connection between the viewer and my own work as Furlong successfully creates among her work, as it allows the most emotion to be evoked from the viewer.
Furlong uses oil paint to create her paintings. I particularly like how she uses block colours with limited shading and range of tone (emphasised by large brush strokes and lack of blending, although the images are still smooth and softened due to the soft light). This gives the effect that it was painted very quickly over a short period of time, as if from a live scene. Obviously with photography, this effect is created no matter what as the scene is live and documented in less than a second (in most cases). To combat the flatness that could be created by the small range in tone, depth is created by the harsh contrasts between light and shadows. It adds intensity, but somehow in a way that does not add negative connotations as she stated herself. Her work is always gentle and thoughtful – probably sue to the narrative and warm tones – a lot of yellow ochre and off whites are apparent.
She obviously focuses a lot on portraits – in the four photos I decide to hand in for the environment project, I have to be quite strict on myself with differentiating styles as it is very few images for a series. I have started with composed landscape scenes, so stick with that style, but will definitely look into exploring the work of Gillian Furlong in future, especially in lighting workshops.
The light in these images is what I am hoping to take into my own photography – I love experimenting and playing with light, whether in studio or using an ambient light source. Light can one of the main deciding factors of a photograph and can completely change a mood and purpose of an image.
jayciefryUCA 