$T£PH£N J@€K50N's photostream  

I have graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University on the 12th July 2010. I am 22 years old and living in Leeds. My work at the moment is focusing on large scale portraiture, drawn from photographs. I have developed a systematic approach to portraiture in a way that deconstructs and manipulates the properties inherent to portrait photography. I am interested in how photography can be manipulated by artistic representation.

More recently i have been supplementing my income by doing commissions. They have included both people and animal portraiture but i am willing to draw anything. If you are interested in having a portrait done please get in touch and i will be more than happy to talk to you.
My mobile number is 07547753441 and my email address is; info@stephenjjackson.co.uk

Personal Statement

In order to engage in a more direct way with the concept of recognition and misrecognition within portraiture, I am currently drawing from photographs of blank facial expressions.

I work/draw from photographs of people I know which I have taken digitally and printed out. This allows me to manipulate the photograph in a physical way which affects the surface of the photo, therefore affecting our recognition of the sitter, but also enabling me to question the idea of surface and process.

By using Graphite, I can show certain attributes of photography such as picture plane and depth of field in the form of blur and focus. Graphite also enables a high contrast but at the same time, grasping the tradition of portrait drawing.
My systematic practice reveals certain ambiguities; the process of photography, the transformation of what the photograph shows and the drawings effectiveness independent from the photograph.

The drawings I produce are on a large scale, the biggest is 10x8ft. I intend to emphasise the physical effort that the process requires. The process I use is very systematic as the larger the drawings get the clearer the representation of the photograph becomes.

By segmenting the drawing I am adopting an unbiased relationship with every detail of the working photo. Gridding the photo facilitates the need to accurately capture the likeness of the person in a very subjective way. Also by doing this I am able to draw on parallels between the digital image and the drawn image with the suggestion of pixels, and how the clarity of the image correlates with scale.

I have refined my working methods to represent the factors affecting the success of portraiture within the realm of recognition. The transformative power of photographic representation is the vehicle for my investigation into recognition.

By isolating small portions of the image I deny myself the view of the assembled/finished image until the last unit is completed. The slippage between the assembled units shown in the ‘Self portrait’ 10x14, 80x80mm Squares is the result of dissecting the image into smaller squares and isolating each one to stop any unconscious correction.

The inaccuracies of the assembled work illustrate the difficulties I have encountered in creating ‘successful’ images. This permits future study into the concept of failure.
In order to ascertain the importance of recognition, my intention is to adopt a psychoanalytical approach to my investigation by understanding the implications of using the self portrait as the subject of my future work.