Contempory art .

I started looking at an artist called Yayoi Kusama. Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation. She is most well know for her sculptors / installations covered in dots.

What first drew me to her work was just the size of it, and how many dots there are. I like how the viewer would see this work, i like that you can walk around it and interact with it. I wanted to try and paint dots myself. I started by grabbing some boxes around the class and painting onto them.

I decided to use the primary colors at first but i found it to look so childish and i just didn't like it. I found painting these so therapeutic, just drifting into the land of dots and not thinking about anything else. I usually listen to music while i paint but i found myself not needing to at all because i was so engrossed in it.

I wanted to start thinking about the theme of the unit. I was drawn to one theme - fragile. I wanted to think about that theme and look more in depth.

I kept going with the dots, i thought about the world fragile and i liked the idea of painting things considered fragile and the relationship of the paint on a fragile surface. I decided i could use egg shells for my first experiment. I then decided to just use white and red i really liked the way it looked on Kusama's work.

I painted two egg shells, a plate and a strip of fabric.

I really liked the way they came out, i liked the broken shell because i could paint the inside which i said before i felt worked well with the way a viewer interacts with the work, looking around / inside it.

I then thought about more objects that i would consider fragile and thought about setting up a still life. ..

I really liked how these came out. When i put it all together i was really pleased. I really liked how the dots reflected in the bottom of the wine glass.

I do think the key to her work, the reason it is so interesting is because of her obsession with dots. I obviously enjoy it but i don't have that obsession.

While researching i found a series painted by Damien Hurst, well his assistants anyway.

Spot paintings by Damien Hirst on display at Houghton Hall. Picture: Ian Burt

I actually really liked this, i think his spot paintings work so well in this old setting. So i started paintings dots....

I tried painting on fabric, canvas and paper. I liked the over lapping dots more than the ones i had done before that were spaced apart.

I then started thinking about the eggs again. I really liked them and they worked well with my theme fragile.

So i started thinking about the egg shells and had the idea of carving circles into them rather than painting on them so i tried...